More Fantastic Scuffles

I roped June into a game of Fantastic Scuffles last night, and she was very patient as I looked up stuff I had no idea about or things that simply didn't seem very clear. That's the fun of playtesting!

Anyway, she took the Elves and, strangely, got the same mission as Catherine had got the previous day - deliver a message from one corner of the board to the other. I went with a force of Dwarves, with a couple of axemen, an axe-armed leader and a mechanical rock-thrower. They rolled the ambush mission; they had to kill the enemy leader and got to start deployed pretty much anywhere on the board.

Since all of the terrain ended up along one edge, and June chose that as her entry point I ended up deploying close to her force. So most of the fight took place in one corner.

I moved the rock-thrower in front of the Elf force and lobbed a rock at one of the archers. It missed. It was the only one I threw all game.

The rest of my force was hiding in the woods (to avoid the Elves' archery), but Temu Elrond went in after them. He really is rather good in this game, being a hero and having both magic armour and a magic sword. I mean he costs a lot of points, but they're well invested.

The situation at the end of the first turn. June had charged into melee early, leaving her archers nothing to do. Two of her swordsmen were having a crack at the rock-thrower, whilst the one with the message was looking to make a run for the opposite corner. In the woods the Dwarf and Elf leaders were fighting whilst the Dwarf axemen tried to help.

Temu Elrond hacked away at everyone around him, leaving the Dwarves looking pretty sorry.

Meanwhile June had the messenger make a break for it. This is a slightly risky strategy as if you split up minion groups it limits which figures can actually activate.

But the Dwarves wouldn't be chasing anyone - Temu Elrond finished off the two axemen and then the Dwarf leader.

With little they could do the Elf archers climbed onto a rock, just to force me to look up the rules for climbing onto a rock.

The rock-thrower squished the two Elf swordsmen fighting it. A quick turn and it could lob a rock at the fleeing Elf messenger.

But not when Temu Elrond is hacking and slashing at you.

A big win for the Elves, who wiped out the Dwarves and got the message off the table.

I found by the end of the game that we were tracking the factors and modifiers pretty quickly, but we were still having to look up stuff. And the game generated a nice pile of questions and comments that I will be passing back to Nic.