Kobolds Ate Milady

I gave the Kobolds another run yesterday evening, against the SAVE Envoys.

This time the Kobolds fielded: 4 x Fighters (including the Leader), 4 x Rabble, 2 x Chaos Warriors, 1 x Rogue/Shooter and 1 x Rogue/Assassin

SAVE had 4 x Fighters, 2 x Shooters, 1 x Arquebusier/Tank (Ranjit Singh), 1 x Rogue/Sniper (Josephine Carfax) and 1 x Brute/Chaos Warrior (The Baron)

The scenario was The Burden, with SAVE being given an extra non-combatant figure to protect - Lady Faversham. She counts as three figures, so makes the force harder to break, but a big loss if she is killed.

This was the deployment.

Lady Faversham was tucked away on the baseline, covered by a hired gun and Josephine Carfax.

The majority of both sides faced off in the gap between a hill and some rocky ground. The Kobolds rushed forward, hoping to slip through SAVE's line and make a run for Lady Faversham.

Which they did; you can just see a lone kobold at the top left of the picture.

Lady Faversham moved to the cover of some ruins, whilst a gunman moved out to protect her.

The two sides slogged it out in the middle, although the kobolds warily kept clear of engaging The Baron.

The lone kobold sneaked into the ruins, evading the gunman.

A second shot winged him as he ran through the buildings, but he reached Lady Faversham.

And killed her.

Both sides were taking casualties in the centre.

A kobold warrior attempted to rush The Baron, but Miss Carfax shot him down.

Other warriors now engaged The Baron, including the sneaky assassin. I really left it too late to use him though; his ability to poison people relies on using reactions in subsequent turns, so is best used early on.

As it was it wasn't poison that did for The Baron anyway, but a good, old-fashioned, spear in the back.

The kobold Kaptain engaged Ranjit Singh, who simply shrugged off most attacks.

The kobolds were fighting hard now. They were taking casualties, but most of them were rabble. And SAVE were close to breaking. The kobold archer and a gunman exchanged fire from cover, and the gunman was seriously wounded.

Into the last turn, and another of SAVE's hired muscle fell. But it wasn't enough; they were on exactly half losses, and the kobolds needed losses to exceed living figures for a win.

Technically the fight was a draw, but SAVE had suffered more losses, so the kobolds got the winning side of it.

In both this game and the previous one I tried a rule change Victor and I have been discussing where the number of dice rolled by the losing bidder in a melee is reduced by the number of hits they receive from the winning (lowest) bidder. This gives more incentive for an early low-value strike, and worked in that respect. But it does extend the length of melees and, I felt, made the Tank class a little to good, since a powerful attack against one was easily countered by the Tank bidding low. I think we might ditch the idea.