Brisham Wood - Campaign Turn 5

After clearing out an enemy camp, the Silver Hawks need to choose their next move in trying to bring some peace to Brisham Wood in my 5 Leagues From the Borderlands campaign.

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Preparation Stage

As the campaign turn begins, my warband is camped out in the wilderness. Chert has some tough nights sleeping in the wilderness and doesn’t actually get his recovery. Perhaps he’s older than we realized?

Oddly, somehow warbands are expected to spend upkeep costs in gold when in the wilderness. I don’t know where it goes, but in any case this time they’ll take the time and effort to live off the land, offsetting those costs this time. Maurice tries to do some extra hunting as well, but the beast he’s tracking evades him and he returns to camp empty-handed. No extra rations or pelts this time.

Before the sun sets, he sits with Daisy and his other companions to discuss their options. Sometime in the next few weeks, they need to return to Woodcross with these updated maps for Deegon. That’s also the location of the wraith lair they’ve been asked to clear. But again, they have a few weeks until that opportunity goes away.

Otherwise, they could return these supplies (stolen by the brigands of The Ruin Within) to the Priory of the Blessed Pines. That would earn them a bit of favor locally and they can still head to Woodcross afterwards.

Maurice listens carefully to the rest of the warband and agrees that they should head to the Priory.

Adventure Stage

Again, the Brisham Wood is quiet as they journey forth. The monks in the monastery are grateful for the returned supplies; the Silver Hawks will not need to pay upkeep costs in the next campaign turn (and they gain 2 Adventure Points).

Before they continue on to Woodcross, they’ll ride patrol. The night before they leave, though, Danticus hears tell in the tavern of a payoff to a local robber baron. Apparently a nearby noble collects a few extra taxes on the side with his guard, “shaking down whoever can’t resist”. The payoff will be left near a crossroads the next day. Maurice thinks this could be an opportunity to do some good again for this community if they can recover it for them.

Enemies

These unsavory types will have two crossbowmen, three swordsmen, and a sergeant. In addition, they’ll have an unknown squad on the field; if it gets close enough to the warband, I’ll make a roll to see how many additional sword arms they have brought. If the Silver Hawks run off the robber baron’s men completely, they’ll gain an extra gold mark. And the enemy’s morale isn’t great: once they’re reduced to one or two fighters, they’ll flee on their own.

The sergeant has some increased toughness and can parry but is otherwise the same as the swordsmen. In general, these are tough and well-armored foes; if they catch up with the warband, that could be trouble.

I’ll divide the enemy in three roughly equal-size groups: two sets, each consisting of a crossbowman and a swordsman, plus a third with a swordsman and sergeant. The Unknown Enemy marker is randomly assigned to the south edge at 6” in.

As before, I’ll use some of Devin Night’s Brigands tokens for these folks.

Battlefield

Again, the rolled theme is “edge of the woods,” which fits the local terrain pretty well. I decided to use the Forest Crossroads map (as alluded to earlier) from Gabriel Pickard, which defaults to 35”x35”. The trees (shaded) will count as Area terrain, providing cover but only the trunks block line of sight. Rocks and bushes act as Individual terrain features. The objective is in the small bush just on top of the northwest embankment (rolled randomly among all terrain features).

For deployment, I randomly roll that the warband will enter on the west edge of the map. This is a huge boon, since the Silver Hawks will start off not terribly far from their objective. The rules for Scenario A (Meeting Engagement) and this objective specify that I need to set up two forward points (in this case, randomly determined to be 18” apart) which define the lines behind which both sides must deploy.

I have 5 characters to bring to this fight: Maurice and Daisy are the “heroes”, with all three followers (Drog, Danticus, and Tiffany) accompanying. To keep things relatively interesting, they will set up more or less on the edge of the map. This means the two closest figures to the objective, Maurice and Drog, are about 9” away. Otherwise, they could have just seize it and leave before the enemy even could see them. Even so, if they choose not to fight, this will likely go very quickly and smoothly. (Spoiler, that’s my plan.)

Forest crossroads with the payoff objective and deployed sides

Round 1

Even with Maurice’s improved grasp of tactics, the Silver Hawks are unable to seize the initiative before the battle starts properly. All of the warband will go after the enemy.

The robber baron’s men (brigands) dash forward, although not simply heading east so that they can stay in cover.

Then Drog and Maurice dash towards the objective, staying in cover. Daisy takes careful aim with her longbow and drops one of the enemy crossbowmen from quite a ways off. Danticus and Tiffany carefully advance to screen any particularly fast movers that might approach them.

Despite their loss, none of the brigands turn and run.

Round 2

Again, my warband just is not agile enough to move before the brigands.

One of the crossbowmen puts a shot on Maurice, but his armor absorbs it and he’s only stunned momentarily. Another one fires at Daisy, who’s a bit in the open, but at this range his bolt goes wide. All the swordsmen (including their leader) run towards the objective, some even leaving themselves in the open a bit.

After this, Drog does in fact reach the bag and is able to grab it. Maurice can just barely make out the head and shoulders of the enemy sergeant, so he takes the opportunity to fire. It doesn’t hit, though. Daisy doesn’t have any good targets, so she, Danticus, and Tiffany converge a bit in cover.

Round 3

Finally, one of the warband can go before the enemy. Drog dashes back the way they came, but he cannot reach the edge this turn.

One of the brigand crossbowmen still has line of sight to Maurice, although now his sergeant is standing along that line. Given the vertical difference (Maurice is up on the embankment), I decide to let the shot happen (Maurice is already in cover). However, he misses, and that uses up the last of his ammunition. The others all dash towards the warband.

The Silver Hawks mostly converge to give Drog cover, and otherwise they have no interest in engaging in melee. Daisy looses the last of her arrows in the direction of the enemy leader, but she doesn’t hit anything.

Round 4

I get one activation before the enemy, and naturally I choose Drog. He moves off the battlefield, securing the bag (quite literally).

An enemy crossbowman shoots Tiffany, wounding her. But she doesn’t go down and can keep fighting! With Daisy out of ammunition and isolated, plus the objective already out of play, the remainder of the brigands dash in her direction.

And with that, all the remaining Silver Hawks take the opportunity to leave the battlefield.

Resolution Phase

For a successful patrol, the warband gets 1 Adventure Point, which gets them back to 5 AP total. There are no injuries to resolve, despite Tiffany getting shot:

Wounds never carry over to future battles, and unless the figure was removed as a casualty, they do not have to roll for post-battle injuries.

Both Maurice and Daisy gain 2 XP for surviving the encounter and achieving the objective. While Danticus doesn’t gain any additional benefits, Drog and Tiffany each gain a skill: Expertise and Pathwise, respectively, which are used in different situations to avoid some kinds of hazards and obstacles. The group picked up some loot (a war spear) as well.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the robber baron has enough influence still at the Priory that he’s acting against them, subverting their relationship. During the next campaign turn, the Silver Hawks won’t be able to undertake any campaign activities.

Wrap-up

I really enjoyed working through the fictional explanations for some of the rolls this time. Some of them didn’t immediately make sense to me, but I wanted to work through it all and figure out a way to turn it into a coherent narrative.