Warmachine in Kuhmo

This game was played a little after Christmas eve.

It was a traditional 35 point game versus Protectorate of Menoth.

I had:

Mohsar the Desertwalker
- Riphorn Satyr
- Gorax
- Rotterhorn Griffon
- Woldwyrd

Minimum unit of Wolves of Orboros + Unit Attachment
Druids of Orboros
2x Gallows Grove
Totem Hunter

Objective: Fuel cache

Opponent played:

Grand Exemplar Kreoss
- Fire of Salvation
- Dervish

Minimum unit of Choir of Menoth

Maximum unit of Exemplar Bastions
Knights Exemplar
Daughters of Flame
Vilmon
Paladin
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord

Objective: Arcane Wonder

Scenario was Fire Support and Circle started game. First picture is from the end of Circle turn 2 I think. I've skipped quite a few pictures as the images are of poor quality.

White AoE's are Pillar of Salt spells. Official AoE's are Vortexes on Druids. Mohsar has already used his feat.

Circle had Mirage on Wolves of Orboros and Sunhammer just for kicks. Inviolable Resolve is on Bastions and Sacrosanct on Daughters of the Flame.

Turn 2 Bastions wrecked two salt pillars, which just opened a charge lane for Fire of Salvation to Woldwyrd. It was so really damn close that had I placed the pillar just a few millimetres to the left, the charge would have failed.

Turn 3 I'm not sure if I should use Primal on Riphorn Satyr. I decide not to, and instead charge it with one Wolf of Orboros, Riphorn Satyr and Totem Hunter. Wolves used Power Swell, as I didn't believe Wolves officer would live to see another turn.

I chose not to use Primal, and as a consequence the heavy protectorate warjack was left alive with one box remaining. I had to use Totem Hunter to finish it off. Mohsar spammed pillars to eat enemy activations and used his feat again with a permission from the opponent.

Protectorate made Kreoss use his feat. Results could have been devastating if there wouldn't have been salt pillars around. Well, actually they didn't help. Results were game breaking devastation anyway. Who would have guessed that Dervish would kill an Arm 19 heavy warbeast all by itself? Well sure, it was one P+S 15 +3d6 and four P+S 15 +2d6 damage rolls, so it wasn't that egregious.

Turn 4 I wondered what to do, as I had lost the only real damage dealer in my army. To be on the safe side, I used Mohsar's feat again with a permission. I saw some sort of a possibility in playing scenario at least for a little while, but there were at least four Daughters of the Flame contesting the flag.

Wolves of Orboros officer charged one and killed her. Sacrosanct knocked him down. Something, probably Totem Hunter, killed another. Rotterhorn Griffon placed it's own animus on itself and went within 2" of two Daughters. Fun fact: POW 8 just isn't enough to kill an ARM 12 model even with two attempts. This sucks.

Originally I wanted to advance a Druid of Orboros to the flag and then use Sands of Fate to start scoring points. I had already used most of my activations, so the Druid who was going to sacrifice himself couldn't reach the flag as he wasn't able to walk directly towards it. One of the Druids did score the killing blow with a Force Bolt, however.

Mohsar then uses his ranged attack on Dervish and casts Primal on Gorax. He shifts away with Sands of Fate and puts one Pillar up. Gorax wrecks Dervish.

Vortex cloud saved Gorax from the Bastions. Knights in shining armour started to look quite scary when I pretty much had only POW 10's at my disposal.

To make things interesting Kreoss camps all focus and runs forward closer to my friendly flag. Yes! This was my moment. One assassination coming right up.

This required quite a lot of shuffling around with Druids of Orboros. They had to pull a couple of Bastions away so they wouldn't get free strikes against Rotterhorn Griffon. Druids succeeded in that - as well as bringing in a major bonus in knocking down Kreoss himself.

I charged Rotterhorn Griffon to Kreoss, but didn't do that much damage. But now the beast had Fury, so Mohsar could use maltreatment on it. So, Mohsar with nine focus charged Kreoss. First he cast Curse of Shadows on him.

In total I did nine points of damage in. Seems like yelling "get off my lawn" doesn't work on Kreoss.

After the game I thought out an alternative way to try the assassination - to activate Mohsar first, cast Curse of Shadows on Kreoss and Primal on Rotterhorn Griffon. Though the number of attacks would have been reduced greatly, I guess damage potential might have been higher thanks to effectively getting the Griffon to P+S 15.

Crushing Christmas Spirit

I'm on my bi-annual trip to visit Kuhmo. This time I brought A Touch of Evil with me, as I knew I would be seeing only this friend of mine with whom we're playing Touch of Evil campaign.

And there's really only one Villain you can play against on 23th of December... the Volgovian Nutcracker. Though nowadays you can also play against Krampus, but I haven't printed him yet.

Heroes we had were Inspector Cooke and Isabella von Took. Ah, this Christmas would be a child's play, then, with such an overpowered character as Isabella.

Except Isabella spent two first rounds beaten to the ground with zero investigation points, which are essentially her extra wounds. First culprit was a Stuffed Bear who appeared from Ye Olde Woods and second time it was Toy Soldier. Toy soldier was especially depressing to fight against - Isabella got it to one wound remaining twice during the fight. And yet the combat ended with the toy soldier being at full health.

Inspector Cooke was much more efficient, and was quickly rolling in investigation. But no matter how many investigation points there was - all he could see (though very, very clearly) was their impending doom.

Isabella, by the way, got Devil's Mark mystery card (-1 Honor), which made her rather depraved at her grand total of Honor 1. Cooke bought a Crossbow for himself, but he also got a Devil's Mark (-1 Combat).

None of these setbacks were insurmountable. Biggest problem was the huge map size. Shadowbrook + Echo lake + the Coast had so many corner locations, that a few unfortunate spawnings of Toy Cannons at the Tidewater village caused Shadow Track to fall way too rapidly - and our heroes did not have reliable ways of killing four wound minions, not to mention the difficulty of reaching the Tidewater village in the first place.

Cooke and Isabella tried to trigger Showdown with the Nutcracker, but they didn't even reach that far. Because one evil elder had the "Shadow's Puppet" secret and the Shadow Track was at "1" when we had our chance of starting Showdown. We'd have to kill the 16+ wounded villain with about eight dice worth of attacks in one round or lose. So we didn't start the showdown and hoped for events that raised Shadow Track.

No such events happened, and game was over. Volgovian Nutcracker was victorious. Cooke's and Isabella's corpses were half-chewed and the parts littered all over Ye Olde Woods where villain's lair was.


Game 2:

Well, we took another match against Volgovian Nutcracker right away.

This time heroes were Abigail Sturn and the Scarlet Shadow.

Very early in the game this Mystery card "Ominous overture" was drawn, which is one of the better mystery cards for heroes. It gives a 100% certain investigation point at the start of every Mystery phase. The drawback is that every time a hero rolls "1" for movement, the hero draws a mystery card instead of an event card. But rolling one is not guaranteed.

This game was characterised by the Volgovian Nutcracker developing a growing hunger for human flesh after grinding Cooke and Isabella into bits. At least every other mystery card was the villain killing a town elder. Luckily not every murder attempt was successful or the Shadow Track would have plummeted again uncontrollably.

These unfortunate accidents were pretty much the only occasions that were reducing Shadow Track in this game. When compared to the last game, the Shadow Track was almost as quick as thick maple syrup. This, the ominous overture and a couple of relatively profitable encounters with toy soldiers and cannons gave a pretty good start. Abigail exchanged Book of Town History with Scarlet Shadow's Book of the Occult.

Scarlet Shadow made an early purchase of a Duelling Pistol from Tidewater Village. With seven Fight Dice none of the Nutcracker's heinous villains were much of a threat, though one of the Toy Soldiers fought Scarlet Shadow to a draw. Toy cannons became ridiculously easy after Scarlet Shadow found the Fisherman's net (-1 Fight dice for enemies) - toy cannons were shooting with just one Fight dice from then on. This toy butchering gave the outlaw such amounts of investigation points that he went and bought Silver Bullets for the Duelling Pistol. Eventually he dumped the Book of Town History away and bought an Old Map.

Abigail built up an amazing amount of hit points. She had six or seven. She was also carrying all book items from town items, including the one that gave re-rolls for cunning tests.

Now, I said the Shadow Track was almost immobilised. This means that a nasty amount of Remains-in-Play mystery cards had been drawn. There were a few Orders's Influences and a grand total of +3 Fight dice for the Volgovian Nutcracker. The continual Town Elder killing spree drained all the "I think not!" cards we had, and after that the Shadow Track put up a new dial. We thought we had pretty much already won the game, and we were intentionally stalling a little, trying to get the perfect build-up to start Showdown. This was almost our demise.

Both heroes didn't have any suspicions who was behind the holiday killings - both had so much investigation points that neither would have had any problems at convincing Stephen Hawkings that a malicious toy was slaughtering local people all alone by itself.

But still the Shadow Track somehow fell to space number five and showdown hadn't even started, and we knew there was at least one Shadow's Puppet elder again.

Big fight started at Manor. It must have been some sort of a record that there were only two evil elders. One was +3 wounds, +1 Fight die Darkest Secret villain, and the other one was the Shadow's Puppet.

First round of combat was mildly interesting. Our hunting party was Scarlet Shadow with Sophie and Abigail with Doctor Manning. Sophie would have died right away and Scarlet Shadow would have lost his Fisherman's Net on the first round if it wasn't for the "ignore all wounds dealt in one round with a roll of 3+. Abigail, Scarlet Shadow and Sophie all succeeded in the roll and Doctor Manning didn't even have to roll.

Eight fight dice with each roll of six inflicting two wounds came up as two wounds inflicted on the Volgovian Nutcracker. Two of those dice had been dedicated to the Shadow's Puppet, which wasn't enough even with one re-roll that came from an event card.

Oh well. There was always Abigail's turn. She had nine dice total with re-rolls available to every failed roll. She dedicated two dice for the Shadow's Puppet and the rest to Nutcracker itself. She dealt only something like two damage to the villain, but killed the Puppet.

Second round was a little anti-climatic. Scarlet Shadow dealt nine points of damage and all of Nutcracker's damage was prevented with Knocked Away. Abigail did the last two or three damage points in, and that's it. The clockwork mechanics had fallen silent in the big fight. Nobody had reloaded the Volgovian Nutcracker despite it having eaten around ten persons (town elders and heroes) in both games combined.

Both games were quite random this time around. They had their exciting moments, especially the last one. Still it feels like the first game was a complete facerolling of heroes, while the second run was a peaceful little strolling on a meadow where you accidentally step on a poo, and notice the poo was a sinister and powerful ancient evil that you just happened to squash under your feet.


Campaign statistics:

Villains defeated: Spectral Horseman, Vampire, Siren, Bog Fiend, Volgovian Nutcracker
Villains still to be defeated: 13

Heroes dead: Argot Blackwell, Inspector Cooke, Isabella von Took & Liliana, Lost Soul
Heroes remaining: 20

Stashed investigation: 5

Frostgrave campaign game five

Last Monday I played a fifth campaign game of Frostgrave.

It was the second scenario from campaign book Thaw of the Lich Lord.

Second scenario, where there is a frozen river flowing through two of the board edges, was problematic to modify to a multi-player scenario so we just played it as 1v1 game. My opponent was the necromancer team.

A non-player controlled wizard would appear from the shipwreck on the creature phase of turn three.

There were only two treasure tokens per player. The NPC wizard would be carrying a special treasure that's worth two rolls on the Thaw of the Lich Lord treasure table.

The four regular treasure tokens were placed in a loose square, so it looked pretty much 2-2 situation. At least treasures #3 and #4 were pretty much out of my reach. Treasure #1 was a slight race. Struggle would have been real if my Treasure Hunter, who had had Fleet Feet cast upon him, would have been taken out of game by stray arrows shot by enemy archers. Luckily this was not the case - he was taken down to five hit points instead. But, as it happened, the archer did not kill or injure him and I won the initiative on round three. Treasure Hunter had picked up the treasure on soldier phase of round two. A costly Leap was cast upon the Treasure Hunter, and the treasure was all but secured.

I returned the favour around treasure #4 when my marksman was able to shoot some kind of enemy warrior down to injured status while he was carrying the treasure - but killing shot never came.

Honourable mention goes to the slippery ice itself that caused enough damage to actually kill a model, had they been inflicted only one soldier.

But now the challenge was pretty much all about the NPC wizard, who emerged from the left side of the shipwreck. A well timed accidental finger is pointing pretty much directly to the NPC wizard. That guy put up a pretty good fight, surviving multiple crossbow bolts and rounds of melee combat. Who knows... perhaps he could have escaped the scene with Lich Lord's precious treasure if the most notorious killer of all engaged him. I'm not talking about the Possessed barbarian who was scaring off the enemy knight. I'm talking about the war hound.

Once the enemy infantryman was dead, opponent thought it to be of his best interest to retreat. He only had his wizard there and a knight with only one hit point plus some ranged weaponry in the distance. I had quite a few models piling in, but I'd like to think it was the war hound who scared the enemy necromancer. Since both of us had been casting Leap for quite many times, the special treasure token was last token on board. Crossbowman picked it up and he Leaped away from the closest table edge, ending in favour of Cruor et Caedis.

I rolled Book of Rangifer and Eyes of Amoto from the Lich Lord treasure table, and a little money and potions from regular treasures. Total experience acquired was 305, which translated into three levels. Jack improved his knowledge on Reveal Secret, Fleet feet and Imp spells.

I wanted to take my first step towards achieving Ascendence, so I sold one of the more interesting potions I had got: Demon in the Bottle. It was worth one hundred gold coins when sold back to the market, and I didn't want Jack to end up without any pocket money in his coffers.

So. I bought a grimoire of Plague of Insects as well as kennels to the headquarters.



So here's the more detailed roster I try to keep updated as accurately as possible:

Jack Saturn is level 16 with 1615 experience.
He has levelled fight by +2 and health by +2.
Fleet Feet spell has been improved by +4, Elemental Ball by +1, Leap by +1, Possess by +1, Imp by +1 and Fog by +2.
He has learned the Reveal Secret spell, which has been improved by +1.

Home base is Inn with Sarcophagus of Healing and Kennels

Vault has Magical two handed weapon (+1 damage modifier) and Sword of Undead Slaying
Book of Rangifer
Eyes of Amoto
Grimoire: Poison Dart, Control Construct, Willpower, Furious Quill
Bought Grimoire: Plague of Insects
Scroll of Planar Tear.
Potions of Invulnerability, Teleport and Healing

Total gold that has been collected is 1470, unspent gold is 100.

Warband roster is worth 1230 gold (level 16 apprentice is 360) and includes:
Barbarian (with the two handed weapon from vault)
Marksman
Crossbowman
Thug
2x Treasure Hunter
Apothecary
Bard
2x War Hound

Debut of Captain Orange

Ages ago on Tuesday I played a 50 point game of Warmachine.

I played with Circle of Orboros with following list:

Cassius the Oathkeeper
- Riphorn Satyr
- Warpwolf Stalker
- Woldwatcher
- Gorax

Minimum unit of Tharn Ravagers + Chieftain
Maximum unit of Wolves of Orboros + Unit Attachment
Shifting Stones + Stone Keeper
Minimum unit of Farrow Bone Grinders
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew
2x Gallows Grove
Druid Wilder
Lanyssa Ryssyll

Opponent had:

Darius
- Stormwall
- Centurion
- Ol' Rowdy

Black 13th

2x Stormsmith Stormcaller
Journeyman Warcaster
Gorman diWulfe
Ragman
Sylys Wyshnalyrr
Epic Eiryss

Scenario was Close Quarters and Cygnar started game. There are a couple of important proxies in the pictures - huge base is obviously Stormwall. Orange medium base on the other hand represents Darius. Gobbers are storm pods.

First picture is from the end of Circle turn 1. On the other hand I tried to stay far from the Stormwall AoE's, and yet I wanted to present some sort of a threat. But I was sorely suffering from the symptom that's being called a "clustercoitus" in the internets. Well, technically that's not true. The actual term is far less... clinical. Anyway. Everyone was in the way of everyone.

Turn 2 Cygnar advanced a little bit and laid down a curtain of damaging AoE's. Stormwall had Arcane Shield.

I decided to charge with Ravagers anyway, and lost one in the process. Only one got to make any attacks, and those were against Black 13th. The Ravager killed two of the gun mages. Repair those, Darius!

The rest of my forces just gathered into a huge blob of meat and soul, and Cassius used his feat. He also cast Stranglehold on Ol' Rowdy.

I had intuitively thought that Lanyssa's Winter storm does not affect colossals, because, well, nothing affects colossals. But Winter storm does. Damn it. That would have made the game to look very different if I would have advanced more with Lanyssa and use the spell in question... but alas, I didn't.

Turn 3 Stormwall tramples right next to my heavy warbeasts. After that Darius spams Jackhammer with all of his focus points, which results in dead Riphorn Satyr. What kept me somewhat in the game was the fact that defence 14 made Warpwolf Stalker survive the onslaught.

The situation is a bit tricky now. And I guess my greatest failing as a competitive player is not making up my mind with different plans, and stick to it. I had two options: try to assassinate Darius now. There might not be another chance to do that even if I would be able to bring Stormwall down. Another one was try to beat Stormwall dead.

I made a compromise: I'd beat Stormwall with everything I got, and then decide what to do with 11 fury points Cassius would have. What happened was that Primaled Stalker, Woldwatcher, Wolves of Orboros with Power Swell and Tharn Ravager chieftain charged it. They did okay-ish... but did not destroy the colossal Arm 22 warjack. It had only a few damage points left, so I was torn between trying to assassinate Darius and finish the colossal off with Cassius.

I chose to attack the colossal. Now. If I had originally planned just to kill the colossal and bother with Darius later, I could have activated Cassius first and cast Curse of Shadows on it. This way I might have had some resources to attacks something else.

Turn 4 Darius starts scoring points from his own flag, and his warjacks just shuffled around - because they could. My warpwolf would be frenzying next turn.

I had a clear charge lane to Darius with Cassius. He was camping something like five focus points, though. So instead Cassius charged either him or Ol' Rowdy, I forget which. He casts Curse of Shadows on Darius, and jumps back to safety with Unseen path. Woldwatcher advances to contest the enemy flag. Wolves of Orboros tried to kill Gorman and perhaps tickle Centurion.

Turn 5 Gorman survives a free strike from Wolf of Orboros, and he lobs Black Oil on Warpwolf Stalker. Centurion then butchers the warbeast. I don't remember how Darius spent the rest of his focus, but an educated guess would be on Jackhammer to Ol' Rowdy. There must have been some pretty awful dice rolls involved, because Woldwatcher didn't die. However, Journeyman Warcaster cast Arcane Shield on Darius.

So now I needed to kill the orange medium base. I did have the tools for it, I just used them a little bit foolishly. First I tried to shoot Darius with everything I got - that included Arcane Bolt from the remaining Bonegrinders and Ice Bolt from Lanyssa. Lanyssa was hoping for a lucky critical hit. After the game it was pointed out that had they killed Journeyman Warcaster instead, that would have meant Arm 16 Darius for me to handle. Well. Killing the journeyman would have required at least 7+ hit from both, and 8+ to instantly kill with Ice Bolt, and 9+ with Arcane Bolt. But perhaps combined...

I see one more desperate chance to aid Cassius in his endeavour. First Woldwatcher advances so it quite doesn't leave Ol' Rowdy's melee range. Gorax then performs a two handed throw on it, and tries to throw the wold on Sylys Wyshnalyrr, who had ran to protect Darius. Initially I estimated that perhaps Gorax would clip Darius on a direct hit and if Gorax would miss, deviation still had a chance to knock Darius over. But a direct hit it was, and Darius did not get knocked down. Even Sylys had the insolence not to die to the collateral damage roll.

Well, that was all I could do.

Next Cassius and Wurmwood used cool party tricks and shenanigans to get next to Darius, and started beating. I would roll damage with -7 and Darius did have twenty two damage boxes. I decided to roll without attack boosts, because I had enough fury points for either two fully boosted attacks (and perhaps one completely unboosted), or three or four damage boosted attacks if I skipped the attack boost and rolled 7+ to hit.

Two attacks hit and made Darius go somewhere around eight hit boxes left or something. So at least the six additional damage points it would have meant for me wouldn't have made a difference... if that's of any consolation.

But it was all a phantasm, really. There was only some orange glow on the ground where Darius was supposed to be.

You can't kill what does not exist.

Lich Lord vs Void Lord

A few Sundays ago I played a 35 point game of Warmachine.

I played with Skorne with following list:

Void Seer Mordikaar
- Tiberion
- Archidon

Minimum unit of Beast Handlers
Maximum unit of Praetorian Swordsmen + Unit Attachment
Minimum unit of Cataphract Cetrati
Agonizer
Void Spirit

Objective: Arcane wonder

Opponent had:

Lich Lord Asphyxious
- Desecrator
- Nightwretch

Maximum unit of Bane Knights
Minimum unit of Bile Thralls
Withershadow Combine
Bane Lord Tartarus
Skarlock
Warwitch Siren

Objective: Arcane wonder

Scenario was Destruction, and Skorne started game. Hollow was cast on Praetorian Swordsmen and the rest of Mordikaar's fury were dumped into Agonizer. The bigger template in the picture is Scather from Desecrator, and smaller ones are Caustic mists.

Skorne turn 2 the swordsmen went and offered themselves on a plate to the Cryxians. Mordikaar cast Ghost walk on himself so he could enter the forest and cast Banishing Ward on Cataphract Cetrati.

Cryx charges forward with Bane Knights and kills a few Praetorian Swordsmen. The Bane Knights weren't the problem, but the caustic mist and scather templates were. Praetorian Swordsmen who entered the play via Revive wouldn't be walzing through the knights... at least not that easily. One big consideration was also the presence of Admonia. If I did pop a couple of swordsmen to the back of the enemy, Admonia would be able to disbind Hollow with leisure.

So, turn 3 I started clearing charge lane for Archidon. I couldn't figure out any way to kill the Bile Thrall in front of Admonia other than exposing Hollow to her. That... uh, that didn't sound right.

Anyway, Mordikaar was one of the first models to activate, and he cast Lightning Strike on Archidon, used his feat to give +3 def for just about every model except maybe Void Spirit. Then he brought a couple of Praetorian Swordsmen back.

Cetrati advanced in shield wall, and took a few swings at the enemy objective. They also killed the Bane Knight who was engaging Archidon.

Both warbeasts had been enraged by the Beast Handlers.

Swordsmen succeeded in taking out the Bile Thrall, plus others of their kin.

Archidon charged Admonia and killed her. Attacks against Nightwretch failed miserably. Killing Admonia triggered Sprint, so the beast backed a little.

Tiberion charged a Bane Knight and then proceeded to buy attacks against three other knights. Something like three Bane Knights survived the turn.

Cryx turn 3 Asphyxious casts Parasite on Tiberion and hit the titan despite it having Def 16 from feat and elevation. The brown terrain in the middle is nothing but a hill. Then Tartarus and his remaining buddies charge Tiberion and already put it in pretty bad shape.

In the middle Praetorian Swordsmen die, but who cares about Praetorian Swordsmen.

Skorne turn 4 I think I broke the objective, Bane Lord Tartarus, remaining Bane Knights and Maelovus. I was too afraid to commit Archidon to do anything useful, because Tiberion was most likely dying rather sooner than later.

As Asphxious had not used his feat yet, I was also afraid to come and dominate the middle zone. So Skorne went to two scenario points.

Cryx turn 4 Asphyxious uses feat and makes barbecue out of Tiberion. The delicious smell of freshly slain Tiberion distracted the rest of Bane Knights that had entered play with Spectral Legion - out of six or seven Bane Knights only two hit Archidon and scored low damage.

Opponent conceded after this turn. If Bane Knights would have killed the Archidon I think Cryx could have had a fair chance of winning, though they were desperately outnumbered. In fact most likely I wouldn't have been able to keep an assassination threat going on. No, I should have killed every other model instead and control the zone. Hellbound made Asphyxious impossible to charge, and what would I have had left? Well, Cetrati at least for a little while. But P+S 11 + 3d6 still needs relatively high rolls to deal any damage to Arm 22.

But, yeah. It was not to be. Fury 4 beast would keep Mordikaar from starving for a long time.

Frostgrave campaign game 4

Last Thursday we played a four player game of Frostgrave. Scenario was Total Eclipse from Thaw of the Lich Lord. In the scenario visibility is reduced to just sixteen inches, and only drops from there. Well, technically it starts to rise up again on turn five, but usually game's very much nearing the end by that time.

Pictures are rather poor quality yet again. The first two were so dark I had to lighten them up with a photo editor.

So. Yet again I've placed approximate locations of treasure tokens right into the picture. I can't remember where one token was, but somewhere there on the opposite side of the table between sigilist and summoner.

There were (in my estimation) too many treasure tokens close to the necromancer, so I put most of my aggression in that direction. By far this game saw the most useless imp yet. Jack summoned it and empowered the spell with four health points. Then in the creature phase the imp died right away. In matter of fact the only thing it gave was 1" of additional movement for the warrior who forced combat with it.

I had been planning on taking treasure #0 and #2, plus one from #1, 3 and 4. Treasure number five might also be within realms of possibility.

The treasure #0 disappeared into thin air when a zombie picked it up and necromancer cast Leap on the zombie. Treasure #2 was an easy grab, but after that I didn't know what to do. All three treasures I was considering looked like they'd be hard to get. Random sigilist war hounds and whatnot teased troops that were going to grab #3, and one fast sigilist treasure hunter was already climbing to get #4. Tons of necromancer warriors were there at #2.

So my choices looked like either mass everything I had left to one treasure and get only two fairly certain treasures, or spread my forces all over the place and possibly end up with only one.

But then Jack did what Jack does best.

He went insane.

There at treasure number #1 he blasted two necromancer warriors with an Elemental Ball. This amount of pyrotechnics in the eclipse did not satisfy him - he scored yet another kill the very next turn. Then a thug or something came to punish him in melee, but things ended up Jack bathing in the thug's blood.

Wow.

Things didn't go too badly on the sigilist side either. One real angry dog bit my marksman down to one hit box remaining, but other than that there wasn't too much aggression. I'm not sure how much my vague promise of not coming to interfere with treasure #4 helped my thug to carry treasure #3. Adon had cast Fleet Feet on the thug, though. Lot's of g's and h's there. Thug, though. Uh... now I digress.

The astonishing performance of my wizard gave me the treasure #1, but somehow I didn't manage to get to treasure token #5. I'm not sure why is that. After all, the only warband members that actually were put down by enemy attacks were both of the war hounds. It's possible my spellcasters and various soldiers were in such a bad shape that I didn't want to risk their deaths.

Apothecary carried off #1 and thug #3. Both got off the board before game ended.

Post-game one of the war hounds had to miss next game. I disbanded it and got a bard instead. There's one sweet Eden miniature clown with a music box...

Jack got an amazing amount of 420 experience points. The scenario had a special condition of giving +50xp for every wizard who are on board during turn 5. This gave Jack five levels. I missed sixty point of experience from our set of house rules. That wouldn't have given me an extra level, but considering I also lost 75xp from earlier game, I have now effectively lost one level to house rules. And I don't regret for a second. Missing one level from a course of four games doesn't seem much, but my wizard has pretty much just been lucky - he isn't geared towards spelly destruction.

A story post that relates to happenings in this game is just below or here.



Progress:

Jack Saturn is level 13 with 1310 experience.
He has levelled fight by +2 and health by +2.
Fleet Feet spell has been improved by +3, Elemental Ball by +1, Leap by +1, Possess by +1 and Fog by +2.
He has learned the Reveal Secret spell.

Home base is Inn with Sarcophagus of Healing

Vault has Magical two handed weapon (+1 damage modifier) and Sword of Undead Slaying
Grimoire: Poison Dart, Control Construct, Willpower, Furious Quill
Scroll of Planar Tear.
Potions of Invulnerability and Teleport

Total gold that has been collected is 1170, unspent gold is 560.

Warband roster is worth 1190 gold (level 13 apprentice is 330) and includes:
Barbarian (with the two handed weapon from vault)
Marksman
Crossbowman
Thug
2x Treasure Hunter
Apothecary
Bard
War Hound

Cruor et Caedis Chapter VI

Earlier chapters:
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V

---

"Books! Books! All these books are useless. And they won't even burn! What was this city about, anyway? Was it one big library or something? What did the people eat? Letters? Were they fighting with pens and building houses with ink? There is nothing in Frostgrave. We're out!"

"I do not think you should judge so hastily. The books contain more than you should think of. Mayhaps you could study just one of the volumes? And you have found artefacts of power, no reason to deny that. You have even found a respite from this... affliction of yours."

"No! I have sacrificed everything. I sacrificed everything, and I gained nothing from it! Frostgrave... bah. I'll drown the city in sea of flames, and what's left I will burn with rain!"

"What a spectacle that would be, I must agree. But such a grand show requires a bewildered crowd."

"Yes! A crowd! There are people there, I know! We have ran into them many times now. We will capture them, we will shackle them and we will offer them a show they shall never forget right in the middle of this stupid city and its false riches!"

"If that is your wish, mister, then we will proceed. But we don't have enough food to feed Groldo. I hope you consider how Groldo can be when hungry."

Ennu was right. Still Jack felt strangely attracted to the city, despite his expression of frustration. Being overly dramatic was, so to say, an illness that came with the profession. Something was happening. The dimming of light felt like it was in direct relation to the mysterious power he felt coursing throughout the city. Jack could sense these sort of things.

Circus had been camping on the outskirts of the Frostgrave area. They didn't have too many supplies left as Ennu had commented, so they'd have to pay a visit to the inn soon enough. If not for anything else, they'd have to do it because of Groldo. Cruor et Caedis couldn't afford to lose any additional clowns. But time wasn't right, not just yet. The atmosphere was exciting... almost thrilling. There was no clear reason for that, but it felt just like it had felt in his childhood when a new set of performances were about to get revealed to the audience. You'd have to be crazy to miss the chance to watch how things would act out... That moment was one of the few happy memories Jack harboured until this very day. The moment didn't usually last very long, as the crowd started to slowly realise the somewhat more... experimental nature of many of the numbers. So it goes.

Now it looked like Jack wasn't the only one who sensed the surge of magical power. Various travellers had started gathering on the scene.

"Alright! We have our crowd!" Jack told nearby members.

"Dim the lights! Take positions! We're going to offer this rabble our greatest show right here, right now" Jack was raising his volume as he spoke. "Ladies and gentlemen... welcome to Cruor et Caedis! Tonight's show is called Total Eclipse of the Heart... we hope you enjoy what you shall see!"

The "rabble" was groups of multiple rival wizards, but this tiny detail escaped Jack's attention. He was no longer present. Deep inside his own mind he was re-living some smashing success of a show. In that show there had been a debut of a new stage number: the Human Torch.

The fire had been supposed to be magical in nature, then, and wouldn't burn the performer. Thirteen year old Jack disliked such illusion and tried to manipulate the performer's clothes with flammable oils. He had been stopped, though...

But tonight there would be no-one to stop him.


Next chapter.