Dragon Rampant: The Yellow Watcher.
Ian and I had another game of Dragon Rampant today. This time we upped the points to 36pts a side which allowed us to try using spellcasters. We randomly chose the scenario and came up with 'The Yellow Watcher'. We swapped the yellow watcher in a glade for an owlbear in a stone circle. We opted to put 12 white gaming gems in the stone circle to represent the Owlbears 12 strength points (often referring to them as eggs!). With players grabbing an 'egg' each time they took a strength point from the owlbear it would become a race to the centre of the board.
The owlbear poses in it's stone circle before the battle with a couple of dwarf spellcasters.
There was just time for the dwarf spellcasters to return home for a swift half.
Dwarven house was scratchbuilt by me a year or two ago.
The dwarf spellcasters did quite well during the game boosting either my attacks or my defensive abilities.Well worth taking asa troop option!
Ian and the goblins to the left, myself and the dwarves to the right. Owlbear in the stone circle in the centre.
We rolled randomly for Leader traits, Ian diced first and earned a trait of no use in this scenario but then my poor dwarf leader rolled and became 'cowardly' which meant that his unit could not issue any 'attack' orders for the whole game. This meant that the toughest unit on the board could not attack anyone. Ian wisely opted to just avoid fighting this unit and chose to shoot it to weaken it instead.
A close up of the owlbear with her eggs/strength points. The owlbear is an Asgard Miniatures figure I think from the 1970/80's?
Hinchliffe Goblin wolf riders racing to the centre of the board.
Asgard trolls advancing behind a Ral Partha goblin chariot.
A unit of Conquest Miniatures dwarf axemen race for the centre only to be beaten there by the faster moving goblin chariot and goblin light infantry.
Despite a few turns of awful dice throwing the goblin chariot and goblin light infantry delight in picking off a few strength points/eggs before the dwarves even reached the stone circle.
We used red gaming gems to denote a spell had been cast on a unit. Here the goblin spellcasters had placed an 'Utter Chaos' spell on my dwarves forcing them to use a d12 for activations rather then 2xd6. It caused a bit of chaos to be sure with a few activation failures being thrown on the d12.
The trolls helping the goblins proved to be tougher than the Conquest Miniatures ogres helping the dwarves... at this point.
Once the dwarf axemen reached the stone circle they did manage to grab 4 strength points/eggs including the final point that slew the owlbear but Ian already had 8 and technically took the win then. We decided to fight on as the game had only been going for about an hour by then.
The ogres rallied to then eventually defeat and rout the trolls only then to be squished by the goblin chariot.
(You can see that I like to write names on the bases of all my old school figures; just like I used to back in the 1970/80's).
This game was so much fun and the spellcasters certainly had an effect on the game. I think I made a mistake with my deployment but will keep what I did wrong secret until after next week's game when my dwarves will sek their revenge.
Great fun, and a wonderful collection of old school lovelies.
ReplyDeleteBy the sounds of it, spells, at least, have changed with the new edition.
And I thought 'cowardly' was standard for dwarves?
Some of the smaller goblins had cowardly as a trait which did not affect them too badly. We are going to use a giant next wek, you may recognise him when you see him.
DeleteBrilliant!
ReplyDeleteThanks David.
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