In my last Five Leagues from the Borderlands game, my party of orcs arrived at the Uruk Hold (a large orc encampment deep within Moria) after being ambushed by some of Balin’s folk along the way.
Upon reaching their destination, they fell in with a group of returning scouts as they made their way past the outer barricades, and into the camp proper.
Anyway, before I continue with Muzlug and Lagashi’s story (and also because there are other games I would like to try out over the holiday period), I thought I would rewind slightly, and play out a battle using the One Page Rules ‘Age of Fantasy: Quest’ ruleset… and use that scenario to represent the patrol that these scouts were returning from… and maybe weave that into the story somehow (maybe Muzlug & Co. will investigate the same area too… you know… since I already have the table set up ;) ).
However, before I get started, I will say that I’m not playing ‘Quest’ rules as written… and instead of having multiple ‘heroes’ I’m just going to have the one – but he will be accompanied by a small warband that’s worth the same amount of points (i.e. my hero came out to 90 points, so I have put a 90 point list together to represent his small patrol, and together that should roughly equal the power level of two heroes for the purposes of working out the strength of the various ‘waves’ that they’ll be encountering… if you’re familiar with the way ‘Quest’ works, then you’ll know what I mean).
Speaking of which, here’s a picture of Ulskrag’s patrol:
Left to right: Ulskrag (orc ranger 90pts), 3 goblin warriors with spears and ‘furious’ (30pts), and Izdin (black orc – 60pts).
Now, this is more of a test game than anything else – so there’s not much of a story – other than Ulskrag being tasked to patrol the area I’ve got set up on my (small) table… and then taking it from there.
So, as you can see, the way I’ve got things broken up into 4 quarters (shown in red) is a little unconventional – but that’s because my playing space is made up of 2 magnetic blackboards (which my tiles are attached to)… one larger than the other (hence the L shape).
Furthermore, rather than having the heroes and enemies arrive at random table corners, I’ve instead set things up so that there are six specific entrances (shown in blue) – which, as you’ve probably guessed, I can randomise with the roll of a d6.
Now, as far as the mission goes I’ve selected an ‘Investigation’ – which means I need to investigate two markers (which I’m rationalising as my patrol route), and I also ended up with 4 search tokens as well.
The last thing I placed was the ‘sentries’ (in this case a group of 3 dwarf spearmen)… and rolled to see what doorway my patrol would be entering from...
...and with that, I think it’s time to start the mission!
(but that will be my next post ;) )
