SAVE vs The Yokai

There was a very strong possibility that I would have to work for some, if not all, of the Easter long-weekend. I wasn't impressed by this idea at all, as I rather like my four-day weekend. So I decided that, since I didn't really care when I had an Easter long-weekend (since to me it's just simply a few days off work), I'd book the Friday and Monday after Easter as leave for my own personal pseudo-Easter.

As it was I didn't end up working over Easter at all, and, as you will have seen in this blog, managed to fit in an epic game of History of the World, plus a visit to Canberra to see the only surviving A7V. I also had lunch bought for me in Sydney by my wage-earning son, which was a first. However I digress ...

The best thing about having your own personal Easter long-weekend is that no-one else has it. So Mrs Kobold and I thought that it would be a great chance to go camping, with little chance of there being too many other people around - they would have had their camping trips over the real Easter weekend. With four days to play with we felt we weren't limited to somewhere local, since we could spend a good chunk of the Friday getting there, and as much of the Monday as we needed to get back. So we went to the Weddin Mountain National Park in West Central NSW, about 350km west of Sydney and about five hours drive from where we live. It's kind of in the middle of the area we drove around on our two-week roadtrip last year, so was unexplored territory for us.

And thus it was that this was the backdrop for the debut Battlesworn game of both the Envoys of SAVE and The Night Parade of the Yokai:

You didn't think I'd go camping without packing a game of some sort did you? Shame on you!

I played Catherine, of course. She took the Envoys of SAVE and I took the Yokai. It would be an epic fight between 1980s Citadel miniatures and 21st century 3D printing technology!

This was the board. With hindsight that terrain was a little dense even for Battlesworn, with lots of impassable rocks. The rocks in the corners were there to stop the cloth blowing away in the breeze. A welcome breeze, it has to be said, given that we were playing in temperatures of about 28-30 degrees C. The bright sunlight also explains the poor quality of the photos.

We played a straight head-to-head fight with no turn or time-limit aside from 'we really must finish so that I can light the fire so we can cook our tea'. First side to lose half of its characters would lose the fight.

We set up, then I took the initiative, as my Tengu flew over to engage Josephine Carfax. The Yokai are weak in ranged abilities, with only their Witch having anything of the sort, whereas SAVE have two Shooters and a Sniper, plus whatever spell the Reverend Philips chooses. I thought that by taking out Miss Carfax I could get rid of their most dangerous shooter (she's not limited to shooting at the closest target, so is more useful).

Anyway, the Tengu seriously wounded her.

However as my Jorogumo moved into position to cast a paralysis spell on Josephine Carfax in order to prevent her fighting back, one of the SAVE hired guns got in a shot which seriously injured her. And broke the spell.

The Tengu took a hit and backed off, only to fly back in again. The Reverend Philips moved up and healed Josephine Carfax ...

... but the Tengu's next blow was so mighty that he slew he with a single stroke of his sword. He backed off from engaging the Reverend Philips as he had cast a psychic armour spell, thus making him, for game purposes, a Tank.

On another part of the field the giant Oni engaged The Baron.

Meanwhile the one of the SAVE hired muscle found himself fighting the ghostly Dorotabo. Another eyed the sneaky Kappa warily across a fence.

The Baron fell to the Oni after the Tengu dropped in behind him to stop the Reverend Philips moving close enough to use his healing ability.

The fighting intensified across the field as the Kappa moved to support the Dorotabo, killing one of the hired muscle, and a small Oni fought another.

This was the end. The Dorotabo and Kappa teamed u again , to take out another Fighter, whilst two Oni killed a third. With over half of their characters dead, SAVE was defeated. The Yokai had two characters on red, but had lost nothing.

Catherine managed to lose pretty much every initiative bid, leaving her stuck with reaction moves only. This allowed me to control when and where the fighting took place and gang up on her characters to pick them off one at a time. The game was slow to start, though, because the terrain severely restricted movement, meaning that it took ages for either of us to move characters into a useful position. To some extent this favoured her Shooters, but they were stuck with a nearest target (the Tengu) which wasn't moving, meaning that she couldn't use reaction shots against it and, because she rarely got initiative, she couldn't engage by choice.

The next day saw a refight, of sorts. But that's for another post.