Brisham Wood - Campaign Turn 4

No faffing about this time: I’m taking the fight to the enemy in 5 Leagues From the Borderlands. We’re going to go clear a bandit camp! (Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which don’t cost you anything extra but help me buy even more supplements to use on this blog. I don’t have any other affiliation with these publishers or designers.)

Preparation Stage

The Silver Hawks meet some locals here in Outpost Loren who offer a helping hand (effectively giving us an extra activity this campaign turn). To pay their upkeep, they’ll take a shift on the palisade, which gives the beleaguered troops a bit of extra rest. Maurice spends some time training with the soldiers as well, giving him +1 XP, and the rest of the company socialize with the garrison to gain another Story Point.

As before, the Silver Hawks have little gold or cargo to trade with. They also don’t look for more work, since they have a full list of things to do anyway.

The next adventure will be to explore a brigand camp slightly east of here belonging to The Ruin Within.

Adventure Stage

They set out on their draft horses at dawn one morning. Absolutely nothing happens on the way there to distract them from their mission.

Enemies

To set this up, I’ll use Scenario C (Camp Raid) on an enemy camp. I’m also using the rough escalation in the book by fighting enemies within a faction in the order listed. So the first set for the Ruin Within is a desperate mob:

A cruel world took everything they had and driven to madness by desperation, they are preying on travelers for resources.

In total, they’ll have 6 melee bandits and 2 more armed with slings. They also have a lieutenant, a captain, and a charismatic leader. The presence of these extra leaders gives the bandits the chance for reinforcements as well as increased resilience. However, being mostly a collection of desperadoes, they have a low breaking point: if they reach half casualties, the bandits will flee.

That charismatic leader is trouble: not only is he a bit faster and tougher, his weapons are coated with deadly poison.

Battlefield

The region map already indicates this will be a wooded area, and rolling on a table in the 5 Leagues book gives me the idea this should be on the edge of the woods. So I grabbed Gabriel Pickard’s Critical Trails: Modular Forest 2 pack and chose Forest Edge Map 4. Then I added a few tents, logs, and (as instructed for the scenario) a central camp fire with an extra piece of loot that can even be grabbed and used during the battle. Having a good set of hero tokens from Devin Night, I just needed to pick up the Brigands token pack.

Enemy camp before the battle. Map assets by Gabriel Pickard, tokens by Devin Night.

The battlefield is (in game terms) 30” square. The trees count as Cover terrain that can be entered but do not block Line of Sight (LoS). Logs are linear terrain, using the regular rules in terms of Cover and LoS, at 0.5” high, and the tents will count as non-enterable, non-climbable block terrain. (Even if I get the details slightly wrong, in my mind the real keys are consistency and verisimilitude.) Finaly, the embankments are also linear terrain with a 1” verticality.

Deployment

The bandits are split into two roughly equal groups: both groups have 3 brigands armed with short swords and another individual with a sling. One group has the leader and lieutenant, clustered around the central camp fire. The other has the captain and they are deployed roughly linearly on the western edge of the map.

The warband will enter on the very eastern edge of the map in a 1” deployment zone. They can sneak up quietly, though; as they get closer or move out of cover, the bandits have better chance to detect them, and they get a total of eight moves (no more than 4” each) before finally a brigand notices Carves-The-Dark, our fey-blooded hero!

And the fight is on: the Silver Hawks intend to scatter the enemies and hold the field.

Turn 1

Due to the scenario rules, one initiative die in this first turn is set to 1, while the others are rolled normally. As a result, three heroes will get to act before the enemy.

Quick Phase 1

As soon as the cry goes up from the brigand on their side of the camp fire, Daisy draws the string on her longbow and takes careful aim at that leader. Her shot hits, wounding the enemy, but not taking him down.

Maurice hears the twang of her bow and lines up a crossbow shot on the same enemy leader, but he misses. Chert dashes under the tree where Carves-The-Dark stands, having been scouting ahead when they were detected.

Enemy Phase 1

In 5 Leagues, ranged enemies always act first, and we have a couple of those here. Both of them move into cover, although they have fairly limited range with their slings. Several of the melee brigands move into cover as well, although the bandit leader moves up next to Chert, supported by several of his minions.

Slow Phase 1

Carves-The-Dark wants to take out the leader with their big-ass bastard sword, and with the leader already sporting an arrow in him, it doesn’t take the fey-blood long to take him down. Danticus, the travelling follower, moves up to support Chert, while Tiffany and Drog support Maurice in case anyone comes toward him.

Tracking Phase 1

The enemy has lost only 1 of their 11 members, so no morale issues yet. While they have the ability to “regenerate” wounds due to the captain’s presence, none of them have any. And since the leader is down, there’s no need for the rest of this fight to roll for reinforcements.

Turn 2

The initiative roll doesn’t favor us, only allowing one warband member to go in the quick phase. Carves-The-Dark’s foresight doesn’t help them move into the that phase.

Quick Phase 2

One of the log blocks the enemy captain from Maurice’s sight, so instead he takes a shot on a brigand near Chert. That misses, though. (It does help me realize a rule flub, which is that no figures should end in melee, so the dash should have pulled up a bit short before.)

Enemy Phase 2

One of the brigands slings a rock and Danticus and misses, while the other slinger continues to advance because he doesn’t have any targets in range.

Snarling at Chert, one of these vicious criminals hits him with a short sword hard enough to put him down!

Another tries to do the same with Carves-The-Dark, whose Aura of Winter prevents the other bandits from providing support. Carves-The-Dark quickly gains the upper hand and dispatches their erstwhile attacker.

The other bandits continue to advance, some getting quite close to the warband but not quite in melee. In fact, the bandit lieutenant ends up having to dash out of cover, because there just aren’t any good options. The others are able to use the terrain to their advantage.

Slow Phase 2

Carves-The-Dark pivots to another brigand with Danticus in support. After exchanging a few blows, the bandit takes a wound but is still up. Daisy sees this as an opportunity and carefully shoots her longbow, taking that bandit down as well.

Danticus, despite not being one of the more heroic members of the Silver Hawks, engages in melee with the enemy lieutenant. He seems a bit outclassed, but fortune favors the bold and he drives back the lieutenant before eventually sweeping his legs with a staff and putting him down hard.

Tiffany and Drog dash to the next tree, trying to intercept one of the brigand squads before they get to Maurice.

Tracking Phase 2

The enemy has lost 4 of 11 members, so they are approaching their breaking point.

Turn 3

None of the Silver Hawks are quick enough to go before the enemies this time.

Enemy Phase 3

One of the slingers manages to hit Danticus, but this only stuns him momentarily.

Another brigand moves to attack Carves-The-Dark, and in a brutal set of exchanges, eventually smashes the fey-blood in the face so hard that the hero goes down as a casualty.

The rest of the bandits, including their captain, dash towards the warband while staying in cover from Daisy and Maurice’s ranged attacks.

Slow Phase 3

Maurice sees Chert and Carves-The-Dark down, but he needs to keep firing. One of the slingers, crouching behind a log, is slightly exposed, and he takes a crossbow bolt for his trouble, removing him from the fight.

Daisy stows her bow, draws her war spear, and advances up to one of the enemy fighters near Danticus. Whirling it about, she demonstrates clearly superior combat skills and eviscerates her opponent. Danticus pulls back to stand near her for support.

Drog gets into an exchange with one of the bandits, driving the enemy back slightly but not actually inflicting any wound. Tiffany, though, leaps to his side and cleaves through that enemy.

Tracking Phase 3

The Ruin Within, having lost 7 of their 11 members, has reached their breaking point. They turn and flee. The Silver Hawks have held the field and achieve their objective!

Resolution Stage

For a victorious raid on an enemy camp, plus defeating a unique foe and a captain and a lieutenant, I get 8 Adventure Points! These are a sort of currency that I can spend on various campaign objectives. Reducing the threat level from an enemy faction is an adventure milestone, so I spend 4 AP and roll a d6, looking for a 4 or lower, and I roll a 4 exactly, so The Ruin Within is reduced from 6 to 5, on par with the other threats in Brisham Wood. This leaves me at 5 AP total.

Time to check on our casualties. Chert has only suffered light injuries, so he will need 3 weeks (campaign turns) to recover before he can fight again. When Maurice goes to check Carves-The-Dark, to his sorrow he finds that his comrade has been killed. Tiffany, however, grabs some of the silvertree leaf from their packs. Applying a dose of that, Maurice checks again: no, the fey was only knocked out. They’ll need a couple of weeks of rest, though.

Each hero gets 1 XP for surviving, and the two who made it all the way to the end of the fight get an additional 1 XP for holding the field. As the warrior who slew the enemy leader, Carves-The-Dark is awarded 1 more XP. Maurice gets his first advancement roll and ends up with a proficiency in Battlewise. This skill is used for “achieving some battlefield objectives” as well as seizing the initiative in certain types of engagements. Danticus has a flash of insight which gives him a skill proficiency as well. Since his background originally was roving traveller I decide that skill should be Traveling (“overcoming hazards and challenges in the wilderness”).

This scenario has an additional piece of loot. The Silver Hawks find an unused longbow in one of the tents; it’s a good thing none of the bandits had that to hand during the fight! More intriguingly, they discover that the charismatic leader was specifically hunting them! (This is worth an additional 2 adventure points.) The leader had a satchel of gold ingots worth 4 gold marks total as well.

Finally, they find some correspondence indicating that the bandits had recently stolen supplies from the Priory of the Blessed Oak. The monastery finds itself in need of supplies. That gives the warband an opportunity: if they travel there in the next couple of campaign turns, they’ll gain some benefits.

After the fight, they settle in at their own camp site nearby and enjoy companionship after having survived a potentially deadly confrontation.

Wrap-Up

During the fight, I got a few rules wrong, mostly to my own detriment. In particular, besides the above-mentioned movement mistake, it turns out that Carves-The-Dark had a few abilities available that might have prevented them from becoming a casualty in the first place.

That said, I really enjoyed getting to the actual fighting part of it. As much as I am enjoying spinning out the framing story of exploration in Brisham Wood, the battle certainly comprises the core of this game. Melee is much more dangerous in this game than in 5 Parsecs From Home, and ranged combat is not the default. I liked that aspect of 5PH, but at the same time I find it much easier to put together the battlefield and such in a fantasy milieu.

Next time, I will need to make some hard choices about which adventure opportunity to take.