Light in the Dark proved valuable as, not only did they gain the Blessed Aquila artifact - the prize for conquering the Traitor's Fane - they also happened to collect the Secret Coordinates - Espern Locarno's Secret Agenda!
It took us a bit of time to get started - both the kids were trying to organize online things - at the same time - that involved figuring out new technologies (to us!) and downloading and installing new web browsers and programs and such...
Some of Keira's dance instructors tried to organize an online practice for a bunch of the girls that come to the same classes that Keira attends on Tuesday evening. They seem to be suffering under the delusion that this pandemic will all be over in "a couple weeks" and that they still might get to go to the competition that was supposed to be in a couple weeks to June... I just don't see it, but it was a chance for them all to connect and dance... together... in their own homes...
Part way through the old computer she was using somehow dropped the connection... and we had to interrupt our game and try and shuffle things around and get the newer computer set up and turned about so she could catch the tail end of the class... but after much fussing around, we just couldn't get them back on...
There were tears.
Finnegan usually plays D&D on alternating Tuesday evenings - and this was D&D week... so Amanda got him set up in his room on her laptop and - though it required downloading a new browser to make it work... it did work and he had a great old time!
For this game I decided to play Espern Locarno and the Ratling Twins - Rein and Raus. I like Locarno, he's an interesting character and has a couple of cool abilities. I hadn't tried Rein and Raus, and wanted to give them a go.
Amanda selected Pious Vorne - her new favourite character - and Amallyn Shadowguide.
So... we kind of had TWO long ranger shooty characters...
Our first encounter was a combat over a large spread out series of cavernous areas.
the Hostiles didn't seem TOO bad... three Spindle Drones at Threat Level 0 and four Ur-Ghuls. Ur'Ghuls are nasty - to be sure - but we has some distance and could deal with them...
Pious Vorne went first.
So Amanda had her charge out of the Mag-lev chamber and through two caverns to try and burn the group of three Ur-Ghuls - the ONLY group of three we faced in this first encounter - while they were still a group of three... because her Secret Agenda is to kill three hostiles in a single Cleansing Flame Attack!
She killed two and wounded the third in her first attack... no Secret Agenda accomplished for her.
She finished off the third with a second action and then turned around and set up some flame to block the remaining Ur-Ghul
Everybody else moved out - Shadowguide took a shot at one of the Spindle Drones, wounding it.
At the end of the turn, the Event we rolled was NOT DEAD YET! (or... whatever it is called) and one of the Ur-Ghuls, previously though to be killed, springs up next to a character... Whoopsie!
It looked bad for Vorne, but Rein and Raus went first and killed ONE of the Ur-Ghuls... and then expended ALL of the Destiny Dice trying to kill the second before it went (as it was higher in the initiative order than Vorne)... and failed...
The Ur-Ghul went and rolled Onslaught for it's action - SIX attacks against Vorne! Luckily only ONE hit her and she saved it with a defence roll... and then roasted it with her flamer.
Things were really looking up. Locarno wander off into one oft caverns to collect some Archaeotech, The Ratling Twins wandered into another to do the same. Vorne and Shadowguide went Spindle Drone hunting and collected up Clues from the caverns they started in...
Just as the Ratlings were about to summon the mag-lev chamber....
Another NOT DEAD YET! (or... maybe I rolled reinforcements...?) Whatever it was, ANOTHER Ur-Ghul appeared right next to them and attacked!
And utterly savaged them! No problem, there was only ONE Grievous Wound... They'll be fine in the recovery phase - they'd only die if I rolled a one on the twenty-sided Blackstone Die...
Well fuck...
At that point, since it was getting kind of late and we were one (well TWO) explorer(s) down, we decided to head back to Precipice. Locarno went to his ship the Traveller to try and revive the Ratling Twins all he needed was a 16+ and even got a reroll...
Nope...
So the other two went there as well and tried again...
Nope...
So Rein and Raus are dead.
Well, for now...
The facilities at Traveller can be used any time we are at Precipice and rolling a 16+ (if ever we could!?) brings back a fallen Explorer (which, honestly, I think is a bit silly... but whatever future space magic science says it can happen, so who am I to argue).
In the destiny phase we just got a countdown clock tick, so at at least there's that (things in the balckstone didn't get worse!) but we now have only eleven Expeditions to take down four strongholds and the Hidden Vault!
It's a busy day for everyone today - online work meeting for Amanda in the early afternoon, online D&D game for Finnegan in the later afternoon, volunteer online board meeting for Amanda in the evening... so I don't think we're going to get in another game of Blackstone Fortress today - unless we tried to power through one while Finnegan's playing D&D...? Maybe tomorrow...
Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:
Not sure... Probably another Blackstone Fortress game report.
Painting has strangely slowed somewhat... maybe it's the extra games we're playing...? Maybe it's the extra TV we're watching (but watching upstairs on the computer - where I DON'T have a painting statin set up - I do bring some stuff up, but I'm just not getting as much work done...).
How's everyone else doing in this trying time?
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Your sure making it tough for me not to jump into getting this game painted..alas I must stay focussed on getting my barbarians painted atm. I must say I prefer these skirmishy games to the army romps. Great that Amanda & you can play the game, adding in other characters as you progress!
ReplyDeleteDOOOO-EEEET!
DeleteThanks, Terry!
Despite more theoretical time for doing miniature stuff (by not having to drive in and back), I haven't done anything but one lonely blog post. So I completely understand painting volume going down, not up. Hopefully that will change in the near future.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to more actual GAME PLAYING taking up time, I think part of the drop in production is because Amanda is at home... and I feel a little guilty about taking painting breaks (which I often do throughout the day)...
DeleteThat is very true. I would have taken some time to do gaming stuff but it seems a bit selfish, because my wife doesn't really have an alternative, what with everything being closed.
DeleteThose dice are cursed!
ReplyDeleteGreat to see some more BSF reports, I picked up Escalation as a support to our local game store/ tax refund gift, seeing as everything is closed down this week.
It's definitely a weird time, some of the larger companies aren't taking the treat serious enough. But it's nice to see places like Bodhi Tree give out free 3 month unlimited access to all nurses that are part of Sun Life. It's a nice way to say thanks.
I can't tell you how many times Iv'e rolled two of the d8s in this and the current game we're playing and got ZIP! We started a game yesterday and had to pause it. Hopefully we'll finish it up today and I'll post a report this evening... or tomorrow! I think Jainus Drake might be done for as well. Amanda actually suggested re-rebooting the campaign again!
DeleteIs Bodhi Tree still doing in studio classes? I thought most yoga studios were closed! Maybe that's just here... I know some were starting to do online classes.
I'm doing well. Being retired and an introvert I haven't had to adjust my life too much. The main change is not going out anywhere, with the exception of grocery shopping roughly once a week (depending on when I start running out of things like milk).
ReplyDeleteI haven't been getting as much painting done either. Partly because I'm working a bit on prepping some minis, and partly because I have also been spending more time on my computer (playing Civ IV) and/or watching tv/videos.
I can go on like this for months if need be (and don't believe anyone should be expecting things to be back to normal by Easter).
I saw a well meaning post on twitter the other day telling everyone to respect social distancing and stay home so this will "all be over in 3 months instead of 12" with #flattenthecurve... and my first thought was "despite your #flattenthecurve, you don't actually know how to read a graph, do you?" If you look at that much repeated graph with he two curves representing infections over time - one short and tall where there are a lot of cases all at once and the local health care systems are overwhelmed and a lot of people die because there isn't enough resources to properly take care of them, and the longer one where the same number of people are eventually infected - but over a longer period of time so the system isn't overwhelmed and all can be properly taken care of because social distancing protocols are in place... yeah, China and Italy are that short one... and it's been three months and China is only seeing the tail end of it in Hubei. We WANT it to take 12 months to run it's course. Regardless of which track Canada and USA are on, it's not going to be over in a couple of week, for sure!
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