The Falcon's Honour have long since come out from under the Misty Mountains where they rescued their comrade from the goblins. Having had a few encounters with Etako's Expeditionaries they have well and truly entered the depths of Mirkwood now.
Finding themselves in a clearing, lost and bewildered in the dense woods, they hear a chittering sound and suddenly the source of the thick white webs that can be seen become clear...
In this mission the company starts in a clearing surrounded by trees, every turn there will be 4 Mirkwood Spiders. They appear randomly (you'll spot some dice in 6 locations on the board). When a spider dies, on the next evil movement phase it rolls a D6 and comes right back from whichever location that matches.
The goal is to last for 9 rounds without being reduced below 25% of your starting force. For the Harad team, that means 2 figures.
My brother set up his table with bits of cotton wool here and there to look like webs! Really cool!
Here's the Harad force, ready to roll, the figures on horseback are surrounded by those on foot.
Right from the get-go we saw just how awesome cavalry with poisoned war spears could be on the charge! The Talon and The Fox charge the yellow spider and take it out beneath the hooves of their charging horses!
The Falcon and The Tiger likewise charge in to battle to destroy the green spider.
The Fang takes a long shot and hits the purple spider, wounding it.
In round two, the next yellow spider shoots a gooey web and paralyses The Serpent! More spiders rush towards the Falcon and his band.
In round three The Fox and The Sparrow charge the green spider... which rolls double 6s! Then the Harad team also get two 6s! Fortunately their fight scores are higher and they smash the spider to goo!
Meanwhile there are two spiders on the western side of the board, the purple spider is smashed by The Pincer and his horse. The orange spider wins its combat but rolls snake eyes!
The Falcon and Black Cloak fail their courage tests! The Falcon spends his point of will to charge at the yellow spider to rescue The Serpent, knowing that while paralysed he'll be easy prey for the spider. Again, the charging horse and war spear easily dispatch the low defence spider.
Round four! At this point in the game we thought that we should have made the mission harder, so far it's just a massive grab for experience! With this high spirited feeling, the Harad team passed all of their courage tests this round!
The Fox and The Sparrow again team up to slay a yellow spider.
The Fang and The Hawk team up to help The Serpent recover from paralysis.
Meanwhile, The Wolf is paralysed by the orange spider, who is counter charged and slain by The Talon. The Falcon uses a point of might to take out the purple spider.
Round five. The yellow spider spits webs at The Serpent and paralyses him AGAIN!
Priority was with the spiders and unfortunately there were some courage tests failed this round. The orange spider takes an arrow to one of its many eyes from The Pincer. The green spider charges at The Wolf who, poisoned and strung up by webs, cannot fight back and is out of the game. Bad news, but it's already round five and that's the first loss, so all is going really well still!
Round six. Four of the Harad team fail their courage tests this round.
The Fang shoots at the yellow spider, who is about to devour the paralysed Hawk. Thanks to his poison arrows he kits and wounds the yellow spider! Unfortuantely, the yellow spider has enough health to weather the arrows and takes The Hawk out of the game.
The Falcon kills the orange spider on the charge in the southern part of the clearing.
The Tiger charges and kills the purple spider, taking a dangerous move to attack by himself!
The Talon has to use a point of will to charge as his courage wavers. However, once spurred on he slays the green spider.
Round 7 and things are still going really well!
The Tiger, having left himself out by himself on the previous turn is charged by another purple spider, and this time falls beneath the eight legged monstrosity. The Fox, with a little help, dispatches another green spider.
Black Cloak shoots at the paralysed Serpent, aiming for the yellow spider beyond. His arrow misses the spider, hitting his fellow, but the arrow doesn't penetrate far... but it's a poisoned arrow and the poison finishes off The Serpent! Oops! Black Cloak's first mission and this is not a way to get on the good side of your teammates!
Round 8 and three courage tests are failed!
The Fox is attacked by the purple spider, wins the fight and wounds it! Meanwhile his less courageous friends can only stand and watch as elsewhere...
Having priority, the spiders do not hesitate to skitter in for the attack, yellow spider crawls up The Fang's horse and drags the man down screaming. The Talon is taken out by the orange spider. Suddenly the game is not a certainty any more. There are four spiders and five humans. If the spiders win priority again at this stage it's quite likely that they'll take out four humans and the Harad team may lose! What to do, what to do!?!?!
Round 9. Well, the spiders are dumb, we ruled right from the beginning that they always charge the nearest model. So the brave Harad foot soldiers position themselves in such a way as to guarantee the last two riders will not be attacked.
It does not go well for them, all three remaining foot troops are taken by the giant spiders!
Wow, what a match!!!
We were so sure up until the last couple turns, that this was just a massive xp grab (which it was, just from combat xp the Harad team got 24xp) but once a few courage tests failed and the spiders got priority things were very different. The poisoned war spears and charging horses are awesome... when they get the charge. Otherwise they're still relatively low defense humans!
After all the xp and influence were tallied up, here is the Falcon's Honour.
Abd al Alim "The Falcon", A warrior with heavy armour, war spear and a horse, extra defence, extra wound, extra point of might, Bane of Kings special rule and an old battle wound.
Borak "The Talon", A warrior with armour, poison war spear and a horse, extra fight, extra wound, Fell Sight special rule.
Dabir "The Hawk", a raider with war spear.
Faris "The Tiger", a warrior with spear.
Hakim "The Pincer", a warrior hero in the making with Lethal Aim and a poisoned Elf Bow that was found beneath a dead spider after the elves left the area.
Ibrahim "The Serpent" a raider with poison bow.
Jabbar "The Wolf" a warrior with poison bow.
Kaseem "The Fox" a Serpent Rider with poison war spear.
Malik "The Sparrow" a warrior with spear.
Black Cloak, a warrior with poison bow.
And new to the company, a Watcher of Karna... more on him next game!
It was a fun game! Things changed dramatically once the Spiders started winning priority and stopped me from charging them with the horses so much, but it all worked out. I love that I 'found' an elf bow afterward, and was then able to spend 'evil' points to poison it :)
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I'm looking forward to that Elf Bow or not since next time it'll be against me! Yeah, the charging horses are really awesome, but if they lose the charge it's not so great!
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