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Friday 15 June 2018

First Impressions of Strongsword

Kev backed the Westphalia kickstarter which included a set of fantasy rules authored by the excellent Dan Mersey and brought them along to the club to let myself and Rory have a go
I had a band of adventurers, basically humans plus an elf ranger and a dwarf whilst Rory took the Goblins.  A gang of Forest Trolls had taken up residence in a village and were steadily eating their way through the corpses of the former residents, our mission was to destroy the trolls and then battle it out for control of the village.
The defining mechanic of the rules is the fact that each force has to define one of 6 battle states (or was it stances?) at the start of each turn. 1 and 2 have the emphasis on rallying and falling back, 3 and 4 shooting with some movement and 5 and 6 attack.  Each force has to change its state each turn.
I started with some turns at 3 and 4 shooting at the trolls and then the goblins at either full or half strength.  Rory did a couple of shots and then moved up into contact.  The trolls were difficult to kill with a hit roll needing to be followed by a kill roll (enough for most) and than a second kill roll.  Despite this my archery was effective and in the end I took down 4 of the 6 trolls.  My magician had bad night not getting off any difficult spells at all and only causing some minor nuisance.
The trolls blocking the road
 


With the trolls out of the way the goblins advanced into contact and shooting was largely forgotten.  They had lost some casualties to the trolls and were split up a bit so were rather outnumbered, although to be fair this had a minor effect and they did a good job of holding on for quite a while before I was able to pretty much finish them off.
The Goblins advance


All in all an interesting game.  The rules were not stand out but had a couple of interesting twists and should be good for a few more games.
Nice to have photography available again!  

Games 61
 Rules played 25 New 10
Places played 10 New 0

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