The Dreaded Ambull

Having finished the Quest for the Hidden Vault, we weren't about to just sit around on our laurels! Monday evening is now "Blackstone Fortress Night" - Amanda and I are planning on playing every Monday evening until... well... we run out of Quests!? So this week, we played on Tuesday... and... Wednesday....Long story, but at least we still got to play!


A rogue Adeptus Mechanicus Genetor has established a presence at Precipice and was in a position to offer great rewards to anyone able to secure the eggs of an Ambull Hulk that is rumoured to have been sighted in the Blackstone Fortress. Our intrepid explorers have decided to take on this quest. The Ratlings, however, decided that sounded like SUICIDE and decided to sit this one out, so the rest of the team sought out Dahyak Grekh, the Kroot Tracker they'd worked with for some time, while the Ratlings were recovering from their previous death... or... something like that...?

To succeed in this quest the explorers have to return to precipice with three Ambull eggs - which need to be retrieved from it's lair. But before doing so, said lair must be LOCATED. To do this, one must find Ambull Spoor and an Ambull Trail token - similar to the clues required to do Stronghold Assaults in the original Quest for the Hidden Vaults. The Dreaded Ambull has it's own discovery deck which includes Ambull Spoor Cards and it's own Exploration, which form the deck to be used for the initial exploration. It wasn't clear in the rules how one was to obtain an Ambull Trail token, but I figured there would be an Exploration Card (either a Challenge or Combat) that could allow the explorers to obtain one - I suppose I could have read through them and found out for sure, but I wanted them to be bit of a surprise!

To make the Encounter Deck for explorations in The Dreaded Ambull, the Encounter Cards from the base set are shuffled and nine are drawn at random - to these three Ambull Encounter cards are added. The Ambull appears if the card is set up in discovery location #1, in locations 2 and 3 it's a bore worm (or two?) and in four it's an Condition.

I thought briefly about upping the ante and including some of the cards from Abominal Intellect - and expansion that has "more challenging" encounter cards. I picked it up ages ago, but haven't even looked at it (I pick up card expansions whenever they come out, as they often sell out immediately and are never reprinted for some reason!?). So I cracked the deck and had a look...



First card I looked at... 21 Traitor Guard... TWENTY-ONE!?

Maybe not quite ready for THAT sort of challenge!

Ended up just using the Encounter cards from the base set! (The Abominable Intellect also uses a number of hostiles from other expansions that I don't even have painted yet, so... that's my excuse... and I'm sticking with it!)


Expedition Round One - Challenge



Miraculously, despite having a couple d6 agilities, everyone got through this one just fine!


Expedition Round Two: Combat



Short and nasty... four Ur-Ghuls and a Boreworm (and Ambull larvae)



Amanda's commentary on the Boreworm was "Awwwww! What's this little thing, it's so cute! Wait, it's a hostile? Well it can't be that bad..."



Morgan Freeman Narration Voice: "It WAS that bad!"

(Actually, Amalyn Shadowguide shot it dead - BLAM!)

They aren't fun. Sure, it's only a d6... But it attacks three times! Odds are it's going to miss twice, and then cause one wound or one grievous wound... OUCH!



Of course it just showed up again later in the turn and bit her in the ass. That'll teach her for suggesting anything in the Blackstone Fortress is "cute"!

She survived.

The Boreworm didn't.



Killted the last of the Ur-Ghuls and we were on our way. Amanda was disappointed as Vorne wasn't able to burn three of them in one go and get Insprired. Grekh didn't even get ONE point of inspiration - the ONLY way he gets Inspired is by spending three inspiration tokens - he does gain them a little easier than others, but it's still not THAT easy... despite killing most of the Ur-Ghuls, no inspiration tokens were acquired.


Expedition Round Three: Combat



Another Combat. Grekh snuck forward and planted his booby trap in a nice bottleneck before the first round started (as his special ability allows)...



But then he happened to go first and decided to run off in the other direction to hunt down the Boreworm and collect the goodies it was sitting on.

It felt like it was a safe place to be - out of range of the Chaos Beastmen's charge...



Forgetting entirely that they have a special action: Rush - take one move, THEN Charge the nearest explorer... Whoopsie! He only took one wound because of this momentary lapse in judgement.

All the others came rushing to his aid...



Then MORE Beastmen arrived as reinforcements.



Finally, just as everyone was about to leave, another Boreworm showed up as part of a "Not Dead Yet" event...

Everyone got away safely - no inspiration, but having picked up a couple pieces of Ambul Spoor.


Expedition Round Four: COMBAT! 



Another Combat! All of the Combats in this set are in tight little areas - like a knife-fight in a Phone Booth! So most only had 2-3 hostile groups.



And they were pretty quick to play through...



Always waiting for Brogan... most of the time he spends the entire combat just moving towards the exit... and we STILL have to wait a couple of turns for him. There are, however, the occasional moments where he has been VERY handy plugging a hole and denying Hostiles the ability to get past - and AT the rest of the explorers. He can take a LOT of damage - and just shrugs a lot of it off, with his d12 Defence!


Expedition Round Five: Challenge!



Vorne and Shadowguide both got cards... Grekh and Locarno... not so much.


Expedition Round Six: Combat! 



Another short combat in a tight area... and an ambush at that... and... wait... is that...?



Oh, yes, that's Obsidius Mallex alright! (I though we Killed Him!?)

(I guess that's the miracles of Transhuman Physiology for you!)

(Wait... and Espern Locarno is still carrying his Thunder Hammer!? I guess he found - or fashioned - a new one! Does someone get to pic THAT one up if we survive this and finish him off!?)

At this point it was getting a bit late, so we left things set up on the table to finish off the following evening - Wow! What a Cliffhanger!?

Luckily card three introduced a beneficial Condition rather than ANOTHER Hostile group - might have been the end of us if it had been another hostile group!



Amanda plotting and planning and trying to get her head around how we were going to survive this.



Mallex was the first to go and fell for the old Grekh-sneaks-forward-and-plants-booby-traps schtick! Conveniently, in addition to causing a grievous wound, the boobytrap also STUNS hostiles. As the move was his second action (the first was... sneak..? or... hold...? I forget now, but he wasted it, moved up, and then blew up and remained stunned and was unable to attack Grekh!



Others moved up and shot or charged... I think Dorg took a belter round from one of the Chaos Space Marines?



Shadowguide was the first of the explorers to go. Grekh assured her that he had it under control and would finish off the Chaos Lord - and then FOR SURE get some inspiration, so she went and slaughtered a Traitor Guard and one of the Chaos Space Marine. Grekh missed. Like, a LOT. So then Dorg stepped up and started pounding on Mallex with his shock-club-thingy (I forget what it is called...?) Then, Locarno finished him off with his Third Eye!

BAM!

Chaos Lords ain't so TOUGH!



Vorne then Burned the remaining guard. She ran up to the Rogue Psykers... but then realized she's not awesome up close...



So she stepped away from them and roasted the remaining Chaos Space Marine!



Or... at least grievously wounded him..  This is the end of Round One

In the second round the Chaos Space Marine and Psykers were finished off.

I think by the end of the third round the discovery markers were searched and all were in the escape chamber!


Expedition Round Seven: Combat (and THE AMBULL!) 



YIKES! The AMBULL!

Well, at least we now knew how to get a Ambull Trail token.




All set up and ready to go.



Thought maybe we'd let THEM come to US...



Vorne laid down some fire - everyone else got into position and went on overwatch.

Kind of forgot to give Dorg a spot at the front...



BOOM! Those booby traps are handy!

And Fire. So much fire.



BAM! Ambull driven off! Oh, you don't kill the thing... You just make it annoyed enough that it decides it's had enough and burrows a hole in the wall and bolts. A token is left where he left and if rolled for reinforcements, it just pops right back up at full health - 16 wounds - more than Obsidius Mallex!



So it was time for us to get out of Dodge!







WE did take a moment to grab a few treasures and finish off that last skulking Ur-Ghul.

There were two more Exploration cards in the deck... but, at that point, we had more than Three Ambull Spoor and the Ambull Trail token, so there was no real reason to continue...


Precipice

There is no Legacy step. We're working on the assumption that, since there is no Legacy step, that none of the legacy card effects are still in effect...



The aforementioned Three Ambull Spoor and the Ambull Trail token!



At this point, everyone else pretty much has everything they need (or at least as much as they can carry!) so everyone gave all their Archaeotech and spare Spoor to Grekh and he went on a spending spree at Kraav'Cha'To! Woo!

So... Next Monday... we shall face The Lair of the Beast!


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

While having a very productive burst at the beginning of the week, things have slowed, slightly. Just about don't the XV-86 Coldstar Commander for Finnegan's T'au... but other distractions have arrived on the workbench.

Monday is the next Blackstone Fortress game - and that will be our first crack at the Lair of the Beast - expect a game report shortly after that. On Tuesday I'll probably post June Games Part Two.