Brisham Wood - Campaign Turn 10

Last time, the Silver Hawks had a great success against monstrous creatures threatening Woodcross following a tough failure to rescue a local. Their confidence is up and they have a plan!

Preparation Stage

The warband spends an evening musing on their travels so far, and where they might end up.

(This event awards me another Story Point. I should remember to use those sometimes.)

While here, the heroes spend another night assisting the town guard, mostly out of a lack of interesting things to do. During their shift, they are approached by another merchant who would like to hire them to negotiate a deal with her counterparts in other nearby settlements. That’s not really the kind of work they feel qualified to do, so Maurice politely declines the contract.

Looking at their options for missions and adventure:

• A few letters need delivering: one from Brisham Hall to the Priory of the Blessed Pines, and another from the priory to Irongate. Neither of these have a time limit.
• Outpost Loren needs supplies. If the Silver Hawks travel there now, they will have next turn’s upkeep covered and earn an additional 2 Adventure Points.
• A secretive group would like some goods conveyed from Irongate to Brisham Hall. This needs to be done in the next few weeks, and it will earn 3 AP.

Maurice informs the group they are headed to Outpost Loren first, then Irongate.

Adventuring Stage

The travel from Woodcross to the recently-occupied military outpost is uneventful. Perhaps the Brisham Wood has gotten somewhat more peaceful?

When they arrive, the supplies bolster the strength of the small defense force. This will help them continue to safeguard the area and push back against the various local threats.

As long as they’re here, the Silver Hawks decide to ride patrol in the area.

The enemy is known for their tendency to create traps and lures. One area looks particularly suspicious, and you decide to search carefully.

The objective they’re searching is at the edge of a forested area, where a small stream waters the plants - and, it turns out, is home to a pack of Northern wolves, including a feral wolfman who has taken over as the pack alpha. (Yes, I know that’s not how real wolves work. These aren’t real wolves.) In fact, the pack detects the warband’s approach and prepares to outflank them…

For this fight, I use another Gabriel Pickard forest map that I’ve had for a long time. I also get some more Devin Night animal tokens for the wolves. (Note that these are both affiliate links at DriveThruRPG, which helps me keep paying independent creators there for the materials I use here.) I add a few more terrain features such as the stream, lots more trees, and a few rocks. For the random terrain feature to search, I chose the trees and a few rocks on the northern side of the map so that it’s less trivial than when I previously had a random objective on the map. The dice indicate a large tree towards the center of the map will contain the objective, and they also determine that the warband will enter via the south edge of the map.

Wolf Battle at the start

Because the wolf pack has outflanked the warband (something the Silver Hawks of course do not know), only about half of them are on the board when the battle starts. The others will enter on a random turn later via one of the “neutral” map edges.

(The instructions for the allowed size of the warband in this scenario are contradictory, so I opt for the more restrictive reading. Danticus stays behind with the horses, while the rest of the warband moves on foot towards the objective.)

Turn 1

Zealous Chert is the first hero to realize that vicious wolves inhabit the area and sees them on the northern stream edge, poised to attack. He targets one of them; from this range, and with so much tree cover, he’s unable to hit.

Sure enough, half a dozen wolves dash through the stream towards the warband. The water counts as difficult terrain, so they don’t get much further than that.

Most of the rest of the Silver Hawks also let fly with their missile weapons, wounding one of the wolves. Carves-The-Dark, a fey-blooded hero, positions themselves a little forward of Tiffany to attract the beasts’ attention and allow the others to continue to volley.

Turn 2

Chert and Drog each fire a volley of arrows from their bows, but neither hit. In fact, Chert runs out of arrows, not having ever hit a target due to the trees making it difficult to get a clear shot.

One of the wolves jukes a bit through some rocks to give it cover, but the others don’t have that option for their approach and end this turn in the open.

The other members of the warband are still unable to drop any wolves, and in fact Maurice finds himself short on crossbow bolts. Carves-The-Dark steps back slightly, now that the wolves have gotten closer, so that they have combat support from Tiffany when in melee next turn.

Turn 3

Drog and Maurice each fire on the enemy. (I realized while writing up this engagement that this is a mistake: Maurice should be out of ammo!) Drog misses, but Maurice hits the previously-wounded wolf and takes it down.

Drog then finds one of the wolves upon him and draws his war spear, managing to score a wound on it but being driven back a bit, before a second wolf leaps upon him and takes down the former soldier. Tiffany and CTD each take a charge as well and fight off the wolves in a draw.

Rather than face those same two wolves by himself, Chert runs back towards Tiffany. She moves up and fires a few arrows back towards the wolves following him, but without effect. Daisy stuns another wolf with a poorly-aimed shot from her longbow, but that gives CTD enough of an advantage to kill it with a bastard sword.

It is at this point that the feral wolfman and his trio of wolves flank the Silver Hawks from the east.

Turn 4

With the outflankers arriving, Maurice calls for retreat; they won’t be able to get to the objective on this patrol. Chert and Tiffany run to the edge of the map; she successfully fully retreats.

The wolves sense they have their prey on the run and move in for the kill. One of them takes CTD down, while Daisy wounds one of the beasts that has attacked her and drives back the other before running back away from them. Maurice retreats safely.

I forgot to roll morale in the previous turn but it turns out not to matter, as none of the enemies are daunted by the loss of their pack members.

Turn 5

Daisy completes her retreat, and Chert fights off a wolf attack before doing the same.

Resolution Stage

This patrol is effectively a failure, so no AP, gold, or loot is earned.

CTD turns out to have survived, albeit with a damaged shield. Drog has very serious wounds, and despite Chert administering a dose of silvertree leaf, he will be out of action for a while (6 turns).

All the heroes get 1 XP, though none advance from this. Tiffany, however, gets a Flash of Insight and is promoted to full hero! At this point, only Danticus is still a “follower”, although that fits his role as a Roving Traveler, I think.

The group settles back in at Outpost Loren. Unfortunately, they receive word from Colonel Keymon, the garrison commander, that the Whispers From Beyond (a necromantic cult) have been sponsoring caravan raids, and many goods are unavailable. The Silver Hawks will need to carry out several patrols to tamp this down, or else just eliminate the threat.

Wrap-Up

That “Outflanking” trait is a serious matter! Between that and my choice to ensure the objective would not be near the warband’s edge, the Silver Hawks never really had a chance. Maybe I should not put my thumb on the scale like that–or perhaps this is just the flip side of a few nearly-trivial scenarios before this. I also did not think to use any Story Points during the game, which might have helped. Although, forgetting that Maurice had run out of ammunition leaned back the other way.

Also, I bought a few miniatures to represent this warband and hope to paint them up later this week! At some point soon, I hope to play one of these scenarios with a physical map and minis.