Brushing Up On Battlesworn

I'm playing Battlesworn on Thursday, so I thought I'd better brush up on the rules before then, since it's an odd game that takes a couple of goes to get your head around.

I set up a simple terrain, with lots of rock outcrops that blocked movement and line of sight. I was worried that they would restrict the game too much, but they actually worked well and made for some interesting tactical choices. I'm aware that most of the are unpainted. They came from the same $5 bag of goodies I got the Derpy Dinosaurs from, and I haven't quite decided what I want to do with them yet.

The first game was an all 3D-print action, with Dwarves fighting the Night Parade of the Yokai. The Yokai moved their stronger characters forward first, and the Dwarves countered them.

In this picture you can see that the giant Oni has already gone. The Tengu was next.

The fight in the centre sucked in more and more figures, but the Japanese demons got the wort of it.

The came back strongly at the end, as many of the Dwarves were quite badly wounded, and were attacked and quickly dispatched by a second wave of demons. But when the turn limit was reached the Yokai had taken more casualties and were close to their warband breakig altogether.

In the second game the Yokai faced the Agents of SAVE. Josephine Carfax (in the far distance there) started things off well for SAVE by seriously wounding the Tengu as it flew across the board. She's a crack-shot with the pistol is Miss Carfax.

She did less well when faced with the giant Oni.

The Baron moved to save her when it charged, and became locked in a fight with the monster that was to last all game.

This was mostly because  the Baron was cursed by the Yokai's witch, so he couldn't hit anything, whilst the Oni was frustrated by the Baron's wounds being healed by Lakshmi Montague, a new addition from the warband, and another character from the days when we played the Chill RPG. In the RPG she was a psychic; in this game I ran her as a Healer. The shotgun-wielding Ranjit Singh, who has featured in other reports, is her bodyguard.

Anyway, this action ended in a draw, with both sides losing roughly the same number of figures. Miss Carfax fell to a Kappa.

In the final game the Dwarves fought some Elves. I ran the Dwarves, with the Elves being run by the solo system. They were quite a deadly warband to face; with six Shooters they quickly got into a good position and proceeded to dominate the battleground with archery. By bidding low for initiative they could avoid being charged by not moving anything, and always winning initiative themselves. A tough opponent, although in a senario-based game such tactics might not work so well.

Anyway, this game ended in a draw, but the Elves probably had the best of it.

As I said, I used the solo system, which you can find in Knights and Knaves, although I used common sense rather than the action priorities for a lot of the decisions. In the first game I played the Yokai, in teh second SAVE and in the third the Dwarves, so I didn't beat it in any of them.