Battle Report – Multiplayer
With no rest for the wicked after Salute we were excited to start working on expanding ideas for multiplayer games that we want to roll out with a War of the Roses expansion. So we gathered what left of the cards we had left after Salute and decided on a scenario.
The idea was a clash between a Swiss and Condottieri Papal Force and a Hispano-German Hapsburg force. A convoy had stopped for a rest leaving a canon and a load of supplies by the road, a banker had wandered off from the convoy to find himself some refreshments on the left flank and the duchess had retreated to the convoy’s camp for the afternoon. All three represented valuable political or military assets for the two parties. We also wanted to try the Tweak of the Week. Each player also rolled a personal hidden objective that they would keep secret and represented their commanders agenda.
Tweak of the Week: Changing the Audacity Fight and Shoot crits, so that the defender must roll above the attackers Faith and if they fail they must burn a virtue. The idea was to make high Faith models more “scary”.
I was running my Lion of Lucerne warband as a condottieri warband with 6 sword and shield armed skirmishers, 3 veteran mercenaries with guns and the Lion himself with a sword and dagger and a few cards up his sleeve. My secret Agenda was “Keep em Safe” I got an extra Victory Point beyond the standard for preserving more than 50% of my forces
My team mate AJ was running some Swiss, 3 veteran pikemen, 3 halberdiers and a banner with a card of light armour to give both a little better armour saves. However he gave the banner two cards of virtue, Grim Advance and Throwing Rocks. His secrete Agenda was “Be on the Winning Team”
Fintan chose to take a Spanish warband and wanted to see how much he could take advantage of the Tweak of the Week that we were trying out. To this end he took Bells Broken from the Peels of Victory twice. As his force he took 2 cards of Escaladores, 3 pikemen, 3 halberdiers and a knight. He rolled the same objective as me.
Paul wanted to try out Landsknecht and started with a tricked out Doppelsoldner with Web of Steel and Death’s Dance some pikemen in support and 3 veterans with guns. He also rolled the self preservation agenda.
The Swiss Condottieri force set up the board and the Spanish Landsknechts chose the sides. Fintan quickly used his 2 veteran escaladores to nab the duchess. The mass of the Spanish troops proceeded up the road towards the canon
The Landsknecht troops managed to move forward and get the Banker but the Swiss Veterans powered ahead to challenge them, the Reislaufer card giving them an extra action to give them the needed movement.
The Doppelsoldner who took the banker used his Zweihander to hold them off till the Landsknecht pikemen came in aid
(we used a longswordsman as I haven’t painted the Doppelsoldner yet)
Meanwhile the Spanish and Condottieri forces had clashed in the road. They make an audacious charge, shaking the confidence of the Condottieri. Fintan ended the movement of the main group with his knight far in front of his main body, a tempting target for the my veteran gunners! My gunners were out of position to shoot at the shiny golden man so I made a move with speed to get them in position, hoping to pass early and get a shot off at the beginning of the next Round. Alas I miscalculated and Fintan immediately passed. At the Beginning of the next Round the Spanish make yet another audacious charge engaging the gunners who had gotten too far ahead before they could fire. My other troops piled in immediately after resulting soon after in a mass Fight Action. Fintan’s troops had a whopping 5 faith due to the 2 cards of Bells broken from Peels of Victory active due to being within 6 inches of the cannon. Fintan made a 5 dice action and put 3 audacity dice in attack and 2 in defence. His clever tactics were combined with good rolls and some bad ones on my part. Despite me using 3 defence dice, without even dropping a single one of my valiant skirmishers he managed to use the Audacity crits to burn all but one of my commanders virtue in a single action! Dire straights indeed! We afterwords realised I had forgot to count my 5s on my defence dice as crits due to the arming swords on my skirmishers, which might have helped (even designers forget things).
Meanwhile on the left flank the Doppelsoldner had used Death’s Dance to remove a Swiss veteran. The banker presumable cowering on the floor or using Figuero’s “hold the belt and hunker” technique to avoid the whirling Zweihander. The other Landsknecht pikemen eventually joined the fight removing another pikeman.
Things were looking especially dire in the centre as I spent my last virtue to do a one dice attack with my knight. I used “Only Pursuit of Princes” and “That Their Vengence May not Be Feared” on him. The Lion lived up to his reputation, he rolled a crit to hit against a halberdier, the crit generating another attack due to “Only Pursuit of Princes”, he killed his first opponent and then used the second attack dice generated by the card to butcher another hapless Spanish halberdier close to him. But his men were close to breaking and he couldn’t rally as he was still in combat, as too often happens with the Lion he was happily murdering heedless of his men’s increasing unease.
Just as I was almost resigned to fleeing AJ made a daring move getting his banner within 6 inches of the Lion and therefor able to rally for him! Appearing on the top of the bank above the road swinging the banner of Uri the Swiss banner bearer against the blue of the sky! His rally action restored 2 of the Lion’s Virtue. I was back in business! But would the diversion in AJ’s troops cost us the banker.
During the next action it became clear that it probably did. Despite Aj’s use of Grim Advance and throwing rocks to good effect (yes they are oddly good against armour, big bricks do well even against helmets), it was too little and the Swiss were pushed back by their German rivals, the banker stolen out from under them.
Seeing the game clearly up I decided to call the retreat, as did AJ. Fintan won with 4 Victory Points scored, Paul came second with three, I took 2 and AJ unfortunately only got one as his commanders Agenda was to be on the winning side.
If you have anything you would like to see in multiplayer or any comments feel free to join the discussion on our Discord!