The Wolf of Iskedumdrum

The kids and I finally sat down to play another game of Song of Shadows and Dust. Often I set up games by coming up with two factions, we roll for objectives, set up the game and go… I take pictures and most of the fluff – the background situation, etc. – I come up with afterwards. This time the kids made up their own factions (with my figures) and came up with their own names (or ideas for names – which I them found rough translations for…) and backgrounds for their factions.

They are both working on assembling and painting their own miniatures for their own factions at the moment – hopefully we’ll see them in action shortly!

Iskedumdrum, 69 BCE

SITUATION

Magnus Malus Lupus is a rather corrupt property owner in Iskedumdrum. He is not above forcibly ejecting – or even murdering – occupants to take over new buildings. Recently he put an old hag out of her (and his) misery to take over one such building, but is beginning to regret that action. The “old hag” happened to be the grandmother of Rubia Cuculla – a young firebrand not to be trifled with!

Rubis Cuculla is out for justice. If she cannot get it through the Magistrate, she will find some way to personally ruin Malus Lupus…

SCENARIO

Magnus Malus Lupus is aggressively trying to take over a few new buildings in a new neighborhood (“Seize the Suburb” objective). He gets 1 Victory Point per 50 points of defeated enemies, plus one Victory Point for each turn one of his faction is in control of any of the three target buildings, but suffers -1 Victory Point for each turn his rival’s faction is in control of a building.

Rubis Cuculla is simply out for blood (“Looking for Trouble” objective). She gets 1 Victory Point per 25 points of enemies defeated.

The scenario took place at midday - 12 civilians on the table. 

FORCES

Magnus Malus Lupus – Corrupt Property Owner

Q 3+, C 2, 50 points

Leader

Foreign Bodyguard

Q 4+, C 4, 42 points

Armed, Barbarous, Heavy Drinker, Protect Leader

Cretan Bodyguard

Q 3+, C 3, 60 points

Agile, Armed, Bow, Protect Leader

Armed Henchman

Q 4+, C 3, 36 points

Armed, Bellicose

Henchman

Q 4+, C 3, 27 points

Grey

Boxer

Q 2+, C 3, 83 points

Hard, Street Fighter

Rubia Cuculla - Faction Leader

Q 3+, C 3, 60 points

Leader

Cretan Bodyguard

Q 3+, C 3, 60 points

Agile, Armed, Bow, Protect Leader

Armed Henchman

Q 4+, C 3, 36 points

Armed, Bellicose

Henchman with Javelin

Q 4+, C 3, 27 points

Javelin

4x Henchmen

Q 4+, C 3, 27 points each

Grey

Blind Prophet

Q 2+, C 0, 8 points

Distracting, Slow, Short Move, Clumsy

THE GAME

Rolling for his Hard Drinking Foreign Bodyguard, he turned out to be "Slow" for this game. The Boy won the initiative roll and things were off and running...

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

The terrain – as set up by The Girl – for this scenario. Magnus Malus Lupus and his men are entering the table on the left. Rubia Cuculla and her men are entering from the right. The three target buildings are marked with chests on the roofs.

Magnus Malus Lupus looking to expand into an new neighborhood.

Rubia Cuculla and her hanchmen ready to spread out to defend the neighborhood.

Turn One: The Boy goes first. Magnus Malus Lupus rolls two successes and parades into the neighborhood ahead of his men calling for them to follow (issuing a group move order). The Boy rolls a one and two twos… turn over. They were hesitating... something just didn't feel right about this neighborhood... 

Meanwhile, on The Girl’s end of the turn, she has better luck with the dice and contacts two of the target buildings, putting The Boy 2 victory points in the hole!?

Turn two… as before Magnus Malus Lupus rolls two successes. He declines to move any further into the neighborhood without his gang and issues another group move order. The Boy rolls two ones and a four… so the gang catches up.

At the bottom of the 2^nd turn The Girl gets two guys in contact with the third target building and The Boy is now down 5 victory points!

On his next turn his guys get two actions and he cleverly gets one guy in the corner contacting TWO of the target buildings – so at least The Girl isn’t putting him 3 points in the hole each turn any more! Not sure if that's totally legit, but I let him do it since things were going so badly for him... 

The rest move out into the square by the neighborhood well.

On The Girl’s half of the turn her Cretan Bodyguard knocks down the leading henchman in the group and The Boy is now down 6 victory points….

We began to wonder about that – perhaps he shouldn’t be able to lose more than he’s gained…? Not allowed to go into the negative victory points….? This seemed a little harsh!

On The Boy’s turn he moves Magnus Malus Lupus once and that ends his and the downed guy what was not able get up was finished off by The Girl’s Cretan Bodyguard. 

On The Boy’s next turn he got Magnus Malus Lupus moving towards the third target building – hoping he may be able to at least contest it so he would stop losing points he didn’t even have yet (but not before he lost one more victory point)! The rest of the gang started moving through the square under withering fire from The Girl’s Cretan body Guard – in The Girls’ turn her Cretan Bodyguard shot The Boy’s Cretan Body guard who was recoiled by her arrows – and a civilian fled (on short) away…

On The Boy’s next turn he got Magnus Malus Lupus in contact with the third building so he would no longer be losing points. The Gang got one action so The Boy’s Cretan Archer fired back recoiling his opposite. The rest declined to move – partly to stay together as a group. Partly because the Foreign Bodyguard couldn’t move much further anyway otherwise he’d be beyond one long form the leader – something a bodyguard isn’t really supposed to do!

At the bottom of the Sixth Turn The Girl’s Cretan Bodyguard took down The Boy’s Foreign Bodyguard (and moved up her Blind Prophet).

The Boy, seeing no way out of this mess, conceded and fled the field with is remaining four faction members – dragging the bodies of the two fallen members with them… as it turned out the Foreign Bodyguard was seriously injured, but made a miraculous recovery and gained the Lucky special rule! The Henchman was not so lucky – his serious injury left his leg permanently crippled and thus gained the Short Move special rule.

The Girl Scored 7 Victory Points – 4VP for the faction members that fled the field and 3VP for the 78 points worth of foes her forces took out.

The Boy… ended with -8 Victory Points. I think in a campaign we’d call that zero – rather than taking away from points gained in previous games. I think the negative victory points should be counted for the scenario though – if it had been the reverse (The Girl with a not-so-great faction for the objective, setting up poorly, and having bad dice rolls) the boy could have racked up 8VP for himself – which The Girl would be hard pressed to recover from…

I had kind of wanted them to, despite all the wonderous toys I have available, design a faction with figures that I have that they would be able to make with the figures they have – so they could see how it works out. The boy, as I had kind of predicted, took a small number of high-point, hard-hitting brutes… which, I’m hoping he realizes, was PART of his downfall here.

I like “Seize the Suburb” it forces players to split up their forces and prevents a simple brawl in the center of the table… sometimes… You do need numbers to do this, though – enough to contest all three, with a large enough group of others to go clear off enemies from one building to start scoring Victory Points.

As the last week of our summer wraps up I’m hoping we’ll get in a few more games – next I’ll probably get them to try building some different warbands with their fantasy figures as we’ll be running a Song of Blades and Heroes/Song of Deeds and Glory campaign starting in September.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

More games. More figures painted – I have a bunch of Roman Legionaries I’m just finishing up.