Brewery Bash: A Torch and Shield Solo Battle Report/Playtest

While I’m nearing getting a shared game of Torch and Shield lined up, I couldn’t help but get a Sunday evening game in. I’ve been painting so many darn dwarves and dungeon tiles that I needed to take a break from brushwork and enjoy a bit of dice-work!

     I put together two dwarf warbands and rolled for which I would take into battle. The Copperbrows, led by greyshield Thorsten, would be mine to command as they fought for gold and glory against the Ironthanes, who were surely undeserving dastards one and all!

     As this isn't a campaign game, and is really just a playtest for battle reports on this here blog, I wasn't too worried about the end result. Read on and find out whether the Copperbrows managed to win the day in the dark ruins of their ancestral home. . .

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     “Blasted thing’s already half-rusted through!” Kraggi chuckled, turning the shortbeard’s pistol over in his hands. Sure, he’d seen plenty of poor fire-belchers in his time, but young Ostar has really outdone himself with this purchase: Kraggi wouldn’t even sell such a weapon to his enemies!

     “It’s plenty good!” Ostar pouted, “shoots straight and everything! And the manling merchant who sold it to me said that it doesn’t mind a bit of extra powder. Figured those Ironthanes might have some decent armor, and loading on the hotter side of things—"

     “Extra powder!?” Kraggi baulked, his cheeks reddening with rage, “it’s a gun, you idiot! You’re going to blow your damn hand off!”

     “Enough,” Thorsten said, drawing his sword and letting its weight settle in his hand for a moment before continuing. While Thorsten enjoyed watching Kraggi chew out a shortbeard as much as the next dwarf, it was time to move. “The Ironthanes might already be in there, and I’m not in in the mood to sit around while they take treasures that belonged to our ancestors. Ready yourselves.”

     To be fair, the command was superfluous. Dorn and Haggren were already scouting the entrance to what Thorsten’s map said was once a brewery, and despite their bickering both Kraggi and Ostar has been in their armor for the better part of an hour. Thorsten simply thought it was something he ought to do—issue commands—given the fact that he was the eldest of the group.

     Soon. Soon they would come face-to-face with the Ironthanes and deliver their ultimatum: leave the halls of the Copperbrows, or die in them.

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Deployment complete, we're ready to roll. The objectives are the four square rooms in the center of the dungeon, and each is worth a point at the end of turn 6. Also, don't mind the upsettingly vibrant table cover: it's a cover for the table while I paint! Though. . .perhaps something more neutral for the next battle report. . .  

Turn 1:

     Turn one progressed quietly, with both warbands making their opening moves and nary a shot fired or a sword swung  by its end. While some good card draws allowed my Copperbrows to set up decent lines of fire for the next turn, the AI piloted the Ironthanes very aggressively (you generate the rough behavior of the AI-controlled warband before the game) and put them within spitting distance. I needed to pull some decent initiative draws on turn two, or things were sure to get ugly!

     This scenario doesn’t put any monsters down at the beginning of the game, but that was bound to change. With the event card drawn (lowering the fuel counter to zero right off the bat), it was time to begin the second turn. . .

State of the board, end of turn 1. Looking like those Ironthanes are coming right through that door on the right in a hurry. . .

Turn 2:

     Things got off to a poor start for the Copperbrows. “Sharpeye” Kraggi, the engineer with the firelock arquebus, was engaged by one of the eager Ironthane shortbeards right off the bat. Not to be outdone, my own shortbeard­­—a reckless youth named Ostar—pushed to the front of the Copperbrow group on the right flank and levelled his pistol at the advancing Ironthanes. By the ancestors, he was going to try and shoot their torchbearing shortbeard!

     In the first combat roll of my Torch and Shield career, Ostar pulled the trigger and recoiled in horror as his black-powder pistol came apart in his own hands. When the smoke cleared Ostar was on the ground, only half alive as he vaguely recalled the more senior gunslinger in his party warning him time and time again to make sure his weapons were clean and loaded properly. My shortbeard had nearly killed himself, and was now prone and quire direly wounded!

     The rest of the turn proved to be equally disastrous. The Ironthane leader stepped forward and unceremoniously brought his axe down on Ostar, putting the shortbeard out of his misery. On the left, Sir Haggren (my Knight of the Crown) was left sprawled out on the ground as his opponents (a weaponthane and a clansman who rushed into combat, rather than waiting for a clear shot in all the chaos) pushed into the room. Dorn, the torch-and-hammer bearing clansman near Sir Haggren did manage to push his own opponent back, and on the right flank greyshield Thorsten fended off and wounded the shortbeard the now deceased Ostar has hoped to fell with his fateful pistol shot.

Nice shot, shortbeard. Bet that dwarf with a huge axe in the distance isn't going to totally kill you while you're down.

     Unsurprisingly, Kraggi the engineer was beaten and wounded quite badly by the shortbeard he was brawling with. What was surprising, however, was the cave-in that their battle caused: the event phase saw part of the roof come down on the both of them (the AI got to “choose” where the cave-in landed, I played it intelligently: of course it would try to crush my own dwarf too!), killing Kraggi and pinning the shortbeard beneath stones he would never emerge from.

     A bloody turn, to be sure, made all the worse by the fact that the Ironthane’s shortbeard watched in horror as his torch went out. The right side of the board was officially shrouded in darkness. . .

The moment right before things got funny. That shortbeard and my engineer at the bottom must have shaken something loose in their brawl!

Turn 3:

     While things were going poorly for my Copperbrow crew thus far, turn three proved to be marginally less unfortunate. Nothing really came of the darkness (yet) on the right side of the board, which was a much-needed bit of respite. So too was the fact that my leader’s lavish display of gold was sufficient to leave the enemy greyshield utterly entranced: he simply watched on in jealous awe as Thorsten continued to fight against the now torchless shortbeard before him. That, coupled with the fact that the other shortbeard was being crushed by rubble, meant that my leader (who should have been outnumbered thee-to-one) was somehow able to keep fighting on. He was one lucky dwarf indeed!

Thorsten fights a shortbeard, while the one behind him suffocates under rubble and the Ironthane leader admires the Copperbrow's wealth.

     On the left flank, Dorn continued to hammer the clansman before him while Sir Haggren held on desperately against the two Ironthanes before him. Even with a point of valor, the enemy weaponthane couldn’t seal the deal! 

     To add insult to injury, the dwarf Dorn was beating relentlessly let his torch go out, leaving the hammer-swinging clansdwarf as the only light source on the map. Yikes!

     With no monsters joining the fray yet, it was time to move on to turn 4.

The end of turn 3. On the right, things remain very uncertain. On the left? Almost equally uncertain.

Turn 4:

     Dorn continued to hammer the dwarf before him, not managing to strike a deathblow quite yet but also refusing to lose a round of combat. Fine work, Dorn!

     Yet, Dorn’s achievements were utterly eclipsed by Sir Haggren, who stood his ground and refused to be pushed back any further. With a swing of his great axe, the knight of the crown sent the enemy weaponthane careening backwards, leaving him barely alive and prone. Only the Ironthane’s breastplate kept him alive, and just barely!

 

Against all the odds, the Copperbrow left stabilizes. The Ironthane hero is sent reeling by Sir Haggren, and Dorn finally slays the dwarf he's been bullying all game.

     The debacle on the right side continued in earnest, with my own greyshield being wounded severely enough that he had to burn his fortune (a heroic stat that lets you convert hits into “flesh wounds,” light blows which do not leave you too worse for wear) to avoid death at the hands of his opposite. On top of that, the Ironthane shortbeard rolled a “sinkhole” result on the shrouded table (something dwarves in the dark must do) and became immobilized. Spoilers: he would never manage to escape said sinkhole.

     Finally, a monster came out to play, and not a wimpy one either! The event phase saw a big ol’ beastie spawning on the right side of the board, and I elected to open my cabinet and yank our a grick alpha for the purpose. The thing’s an absolute unit!

Finally, the beasties come out to play! And that poor Ironthane shortbeard near the doorway is stuck in place thanks to a sinkhole: easy prey for a big ol' grick, surely?

Turn 5:

     Sir Haggren’s axe claimed the life of the clansman who fighting him with a single blow, proving once and for all that you can never count out a dwarf who is also a knight. Dorn followed suit, hammering the Ironthane clandswarf before him until the poor lad stopped moving: his grim work was at last done, and the left flank secured when the wounded weaponthane rushed back towards his own entrance to claim the room. The room! How could I forget? Capturing rooms was the whole damn goal of this scenario, and at the end of turn six the whole bloody affair was guaranteed to be over!  

     On the right flank, the grick slithered towards the archway and reached through to attack the shortbeard stuck in the sinkhole on the other side. Faced with the decision to either help his social subordinate or step into the ring with Thorsten—my graybeard and leader of the Copperbrow force—the proper choice was obvious. The Ironthane greybeard took a bold step forward and. . .

. . .thought Thorsten’s bling was really, really cool. He really thought the rings complimented his armor quite well, and the gold chain with an ancestor icon hanging from it? A timeless classic.

     Yes, despite having a nerve of four and needing ONE 5+ on four dice to engage with my leader, the Ironthane leader couldn’t overcome his wonderment at seeing such a righteously dwarven display of wealth. I don’t care if it’s six points, making your leader cause fear with a lavish display of gold is awesome. It could be sixty points: Thorsten is always packing his lavish display of gold.

Look at him, turning away all bashful-like; we all know he wants nothing more than to lay his hands on your gold! (I was so stunned at this point I figured I might as well just turn the model around: he's not going to fight Thorsten, it seems!)

     While his leader shamed himself by muttering about how he would really, really like to get his hands on some new bling instead of fighting, the Ironthane shortbeard who was: A. In a hole, B. shrouded in darkness and C. grievously wounded (resulting in him having a melee value of one) somehow managed to fend of the grick alpha. Who rolled six times as many combat dice as him. Impossible! Improbable! Hilarious!

     Oh yeah, and a lone monster decided to join the fun on the left side of the map. I elected to use goblins for these lesser brood monsters, because goblins rule.

End of turn 5. The right remains a mess, but the left is pretty much in the bag. What a turn of events, eh?

Turn 6:

     In the home stretch, I made some bold (read: necessary) moves to try and win the game. Dorn retreated to the room near the Copperbrow entrance, and Sir Haggren elected to chase after the weaponthane. My thinking was that the goblin coming down the hall would possibly survive a round with the knight, leaving the room contested and worth no points. If Sir Haggren managed to survive against the weaponthane he would at least contest the room near the Ironthane entrance.

     Back in the room where everything goofy was happening all at once, the Ironthane ONCE AGAIN failed a check on four dice to engage with Thorsten. That’s right: he failed three checks to resist the glittering gold adorning my glorious leader in a single game.

     Yet, my laughter was cut short by a wave of surprises. The monster phase saw a metric ton of goblins swarm into the dungeon, engaging way, way too many dwarves. Sir Haggren shrugged as a goblin decided to tussle with the weaponthane, a decision that resulted in one very dead goblin and the two quarreling dwarves shrugging as they decided to call it a day.

Like, look at this mess! The last turn, and a whole whack of goblins show up to break up dwarf-on-dwarf combats and generally make a mess of things. In the end, the only uncontested room is the one Dorn is in on the bottom-left. Guess it's a 1-0 victory for the Copperbrows!

     In the room, Thorsten crossed blades with an especially big goblin, perhaps a leader of some sort. While my gold-bedecked greyshield won their scrap, he failed to land a wounding blow on his cornered opponent. Meanwhile, the shortbeard was finally eaten by the grick (even heroes can only do so much), and the enemy leader was snapped out of his daydreaming by a goblin attack that he ended with a swing of his axe.

     And that’s a wrap! Two contested rooms, one goblinated room, and one room held by the Copperbrows: a narrow victory after a bloody, chaotic brawl. Now that’s some good dwarfin’. While I found myself having the check the rulebook from time to time, particularly when it came to remember the special activations and what suit of cards they were tied to, the whole affair was good fun and, apparently, a rebuttal to those who think statistics and averages are anything more than elf trickery.

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     Thorsten dared not look behind him as he ran towards the stairs, knowing that to hesitate now was to invite certain death. They had come, the things which squatted in the ruins of his ancestors’ home, and while Thorsten swore to himself that there would be a day where his kin would drive them away with fire and steel, today was not that day. Today, he needed to survive, and to lead the ragged remains of his party back to the surface.

     “Thorsten!” Dorn shouted as the greyshield approached the stairs he was guarding, “where’s Kraggi? And the shortbeard?”

     “Gone,” Thorsten replied, noting that Haggren was already hauling himself up the stairs behind Dorn, “and so are the Ironthanes. Now it’s just­—”

     The sounds of cackling, shrieking goblins was approaching, but it was the low growl of something far larger than a goblin which cut Thorsten off. “Up, then, go!” Dorn bellowed, holding his torch before him as the first of the goblins approached the stairs. Thorsten pushed past the other dwarf without hesitation, knowing Dorn was better suited to act as the group’s rearguard than he. Dorn had light, after all, and that was worth more than the finest blade in a moment like this.

     “Back! By my ancestors, back with you!” Thorsten heard Dorn cry as he climbed the stairs, wincing with each step as the wound the Ironthane’s own leader had given him finally made itself apparent. Still, he climbed on, smiling to himself as he heard a sizzle, a shriek, and a sickening crunch behind him. Some foolish goblin had just learned that Dorn was no shortbeard who would turn tail and run just because he was outnumbered.

     They would survive today at least, and they would return.

I might have won, but there were so many monsters on the board that I imagine a fighting retreat was the order of the day. Besides, there was no damn gold on the map, and for a Copperbrow that means it's time to head home and get a-drinkin'.