Black Dog Ambush

Fun was had today at Stately Counterpane Manor when Ron, Jamie and I played a game of Song of Blades and Heroes.  The scenario was set in Glorantha and was as follows:

A Troll merchant caravan is heading for the village of the Black Dog clan on a trading mission.  The rival Marshedge clan plan to attack the caravan and make it look like the Black Dogs were responsible.

Unknown to the Marshedge, a group of Broo and Scorpion-men have occupied some local caves and have their own designs on the caravan.

Meanwhile, the Troll merchant, alerted by worrying omens, has decided to lay on some additional protection for his goods.

Mules have medium move and Cbt 0.  They never attack and only move when an accompanying element does so.

Victory points 

1vp per 25pts of enemy killed
1vp per mule under your control at the end of the game.

Jamie played the Trolls and commanded an Argan Argar merchant, five Trollkin guards, two Trollkin bearers, four loaded mules and an enormous Giant!

Ron looked after the Marshedge clan warband who were led by Kollyr Stonebrow accompanied by her Vingan bodyguard, Kai Sorrowsdaughter, and four weaponthanes.

I ran the Chaos gang who had four Broo, two Scorpion-men, and a Jack-o-Bear.

The game began with the Trolls wandering down the trackway.  Jamie decided to keep his Giant off-table for the first couple of turns (for greater shock value when it did arrive as Ron didn't know what was coming).

The Troll caravan enters the table.

Shortly after the above photo was taken my Broo Hero charged forward and attacked one of the Trollkin guards.  Despite massively outpointing his opponent, the Broo lost the combat and fell at the feet of the Trollkin, at the mercy of any nearby Troll with a handy mace.

I did the only thing I could and threw the more powerful of my two Scorpion-men into the fight to try and drive off the threatening Trolls.  This worked nicely.  I got a "gruesome kill" on one of the Trollkin and the resulting morale rolls drove off the immediate threat.

Shortly afterwards the Marshedge clan members arrived and I found myself fighting two opponents simultaneously (but then so did the others).

At this point Jamie decided to bring on Guurgh, his Giant mercenary!

I got really unlucky with the die rolls and Ripper-of-Guts (the big Scorpion-man) was killed by Kai Sorrowsdaughter.

And then I lost my Broo hero too!

While the merchant and the Giant held off Broo and Orlanthi alike, Jamie's Trollkin began to move the pack animals back off the table.

Only two mules left!

Look, there's only one mule left now! Told you we should have eaten
them when we had the chance!

The Trollkin guarding the last of the pack animals had a particularly distinguished action fighting two tied rounds with one of Kollyr's weapon thanes before defeating a Broo in single combat and then knocking down the Uroxi weapon thane and escaping with the last load of trade goods!  And all this with a Combat value of 1!

We called it a day after a couple of hours (including the preceding rules tutorial) and totted up the victory points.

I'd killed a massive 20 points worth of Trollkin for no victory points at all!

Ron had taken out both of my Scorpion-men to end up with 4VP. One more point worth of figures killed would have given him five!

And Jamie?  Well Jamie got all four mules safely off the table and killed large swathes of his opponents' war bands for an impressive total of 15VP!

We're going to have to find a way of dealing with that Giant!