More Battlesworn

Hillary Ekim 22, 2022

I played a couple of games of Battlesworn last night, at what was a particularly well-attended club meeting. It's a while since I've played, and we were all a bit rusty, but once we got going the games rattled along very nicely. Victor put in a guest appearance from Sydney, and brought the new supplement, Knights and Knaves, which he was involved in developing. This has new rules, several new classes and a solo system, and looks worth getting if only for dipping into.

For my first game I used Goblins (Four Fighters, four Rogues two Shooters and a Brute/Tank) against Caesar, who was using Vikings (Four fighters, a Leader, two Shooters, a Bard and two Brute/Berserkers). Bard and Beserker are types from the new supplement, which Caesar boldly decided to try.

Here we can see one of my Rogues surrounded by Viking warriors, whilst some of his friends prepare to come to his aid. In fact the Rogue killed the Viking leader on a later turn.

My troll (Brute/Tank) tried to finish off one of the Viking Berserkers, but couldn't manage it. Berserkers get extra combat dice the more wounded they are, so it's best to try to take them down quickly. By combining them with the Brute trait, Caesar had a couple of dangerous warriors. Their downside is that they have situations where they must enter close-combat, using up some of the player's initiative actions.

In the end the Goblins lost. Against all odds the Berserkers survived, and the Bard never got into action, stuck near the Viking baseline for most of the game, unable even to see the rest of the warriors.

I then played Victor, who used some old Citadel Orcs (Four Fighters, a Shooter, two Brute/Tanks and a Brute/Cavalry) against my Eves (Four Fighters, six Shooters and a Warmage/Leader). This was the first time I'd tried magic, which always reads in a slightly confusing fashion, but was simpler to use than it looked.

Owing to our partial implementation of the Escalation rule for draws (also from the new supplement), one of my Shooters found himself attacking two Orcs in hand-to-hand, alone and unaided. He lasted surprisingly well, after being in combat for eight full turns before finally being cut down.

Victor used his much smaller warband cautiously, working onto the flank of my force.

This led to my Leader, Elrond, launching into an attack, which subsequently got him killed, with dire effects for the rest of my warband. Deprived of his talents, both in leadership and protective magic, we were quickly cut down, although it was a close game with the Orcs only being one kill away from defeat themselves.

It was good to get in some more games of Battlesworn, which has an interesting system and which I don't think we play enough.

Other games last night included Full Thrust ...