Chas: Back To Customscape

[chas]

Since last Christmas, now over three months past, I've been playing tons of Super Scape, and redoing and greatly expanding my supers collection with cards for about 650 characters drawn from all over the site and my own. Except for my regular monthly game with The New York City Gang of Four, I've been playing supers exclusively during this time--see other threads onsite in the Marvel and Battle Reports areas. We even allowed low level supers in one of these group games.

The Armies
Yesterday a pal and I played our first game of "regular" Heroscape, including C3V/SOV customs, using for the first time the newest customs wave and even one card by Dok. To complete our "historical" Medieval themed armies, we also revised one of our own old customs cards and put a second of mine back into play. So here is a description of these armies, because they are two different forces that play well together. The Vikings get Dwarves and the new common squad Vikings (bonding with Valguard). The Knights get Classic cavalry and a D&D Unique. Both sides get ranged units.

The Scenario: "Medieval Madness"
The board is "Elsdenopolis," that described in my Pulp Adventure thread, a large one big enough for four players, on which we played large armies and expected 15+ turns per game; in fact we played 20. In the future, we plan to try new armies, such as Barbarians vs Orcs and such, on the same large board. It included varied but not particularly difficult terrain. The central river is crossed by two standard bridges. One side has two ridges. The entire board is nicely covered with many pine trees and jungle bushes to allow melee units to advance in cover, if they break their adjacent formation.

Two of the four buildings, one on each side, were designated "castles." Each castle got one Glyph of Brandar's Chest (passive) inside. The game is won if you get the other player's treasure back to your own castle, or closer to it than the other player gets his--otherwise points left on the board.

First both sides could set up their Castle Guard (inside, on the roof, or adjacent outside), then the rest of the figures were placed on their board edge. We played lengthwise, with the river between us.

Msc. Special Scenario Rules: Pregame roll to pick board side. Cavalry may not enter castles. All figures may carry glyphs, including squad figures.


MEDIEVAL MADNESS SCAPE:

Army One: Vikings Plus (Chas)

Finn 80
Thorgrim 80
Eldgrim 30
Valguard 110
Tarn Vikings 50 (Highlander Figures)
Dreadgul Raiders x3 195 (Tarn Figures)
Mogrim 120
Migol 110
Darrak 60
Dwaves x2 70
Weston Longbows(3)** 70 x3 210 (Aubrien Archers Figures; only 3 per squad)

TOTAL: 1, 185


Army Two: Knights Plus (Chas' Pal)

Sir Dupuis 150
Tandros Kreel 120
Sir Gilbert 105
Sir Denrick 100
Templar Cavalry x2 240
Templar Knights x2 100 (Dismounted; by Dok--Custom Figures)
Knights of Weston x3 210
Weston Longbows(4)** 70 (Custom Medieval Archer Figures)
Guard Crossbows(3)* 80 (Armored Crossbow Custom Figures)

TOTAL: 1,175


OUR OWN CUSTOM UNITS

*Guard Crossbows (3 Figs)

(Jandar)

Human
Common Squad
Soldiers
Disciplined
Medium 5

1 Life
Move 4
Range 5
Attack 3
Defense 4
80 Points

Bolt Blow
Double skulls rolled (zero remains zero).


**1. Weston Longbows (4 Figs)

(Jandar)

Human
Common Squad
Soldiers
Valiant
Medium 5

1 Life
Move 5
Range 8
Attack 3
Defense 3
70 Points

Special Shots

Start the game with 4 Archery markers. One is used each time a Special Shot is taken as below:

1. Double Fire: The squad may make one extra attack.

2. Giant Slayer: Each figure rolls one attack die against large or huge targets. Targets may not make defense rolls.

3. Hail Fire: No movement. The entire squad must be adjacent to each other and have Line of Sight to the target. Each figure fires two attack dice against the same target, combining their dice into one attack. This roll also affects all figures adjacent to the target. At least two figures are required.

Battle Report

It was my pal who suggested we play a Medieval themed game lengthwise on a board I'd created for SupersScape, after participating in many games by staying over a couple of nights each week for the last three months--I'm retired and he's a part time worker. Because his die rolling is constantly outstanding (he can't roll less than 3 skulls on 4 dice) and mine plunges when I play against him (he must have some kind of invisible force field), I planned defensively. Getting my entire army except the castle garrison out on the ridges, I set up counterattack traps where when he whipped a figure or two I had someone else to counter with. I had three archers up on my own castle roof, and Thorgrim behind two Dreadguls inside (with the third standing on my own treasure glyph). The way he rolls dice, I wasn't going to cross into his territory unless I had already repulsed him badly. So we didn't get to use all the figures.

I advanced my other two archers squads up on the ridges, which were in the center between the two buldings on my board side, so rather than use the central bridges he crossed the two hex river slowly on the far flank, with Sir Dupuis and one cavalry squad, where I had no defense at the river. (He later remarked that he should have brought them both). My Finn and Tarns fought them, using his bonus when possible, but they went down. Playing well, he moved Sir Denrick up after them, with a squad of knights to threaten my forces on the ridge closer to the river. After losing three of my Tarns, the last charged up, but failed against against Sir Denrick from the height of the river bank, and died. This was my only river defense in the game, except for one longbow shot killing one crossbowman, as I had the superior range on him from a ridge. Now he moved up his other two crossbowmen to climb the ladder of the (non-castle)r building for the height. I shot one on the ladder, and later another on the roof.

I had to be careful with my archery markers, for keeping some back kept him away from me with much of his army. I had one squad of archers on each ridge, protected by melee figures, and with the fight moving to them I shot down his remaining cavalry and Dupuis. However, his amazing dice continued to roll incredibly well and mine badly, so I was taking heavy casualties. He also advanced using terrain particularly well to block my line of sight whereever he could. I said "Hey, this is supposed to be Medieval; it feels more like an episode of Combat, with the Americans taking the town away from the Germans!"

Finally he brought knights up from the bridge or across the river itself, flitting from bush to bush around the castle entrance. At one point I actually called my last Hail Fire down on my own Migol, to hit three of his figures adjacent to him=--but only kill one after finishing of poor Migol! Curses--foiled again! (Official History: 'Migol the Mighty died bravely defending the castle to his last breath'). My castle guards went down at the entrance, my last guy on the glyph coming out to counterattack but be killed. Most of my archery kept bouncing off the knight armor, which you expect to happen, but not to the extent it did. This despite my winning the initiative most of the time due to my dwarven leader bonus! My defense rolls were even worse than my offense!

Now I'm usually a guy who fights to the last figure, but in our preliminary game without archers, he'd beaten me so badly I had to concede after about 15 turns. Well, let's face it, in Medieval times when very bad things happened, some of the armies would just rout! Now at 20 turns, in this second game, I was in the same place. But it had been a lot of fun. We'd tried out the new Dreadguls (although not the Templar Knights). Bonding with Valguard like crazy, I kept taking disengagement strikes (he's got 7 Life) to reuse his First Strike bonus more than I usually did, by "bouncing" from an engagement to an attack on a different opponent.

Its always fun to have C3V adding to the mix, and their supplementing the old units with some of the new ones. I'm dying to try the Cathar Spearmen, since I had some input into how they were designed by playtesting them with Taeblewalker some time ago!

Although the game was too long to give too much detail, I hope these armies will interest you enough to consider using them. Of course, we're not talking about standard tournament play, but a longer game on a larger board between pals who have lots of physical gaming resources and experience to bring to the table. And that's BrooklynScape!