Warhammer Quest: The Sylvan Epic

[TomB]

LOL This discussion is great, but I'm not going to attempt to parse it and remark the dungeon tiles until I've got some time at home again (should be tonight).

I was going to say that it would have gone a lot faster on a tabletop, but I wanted to make sure that everyone was clear about where their characters were going. I guess the more important part is that if it had been a tabletop, I'd have already pointed out that they're wights, not wraiths.

Oops...

 

[Oversoul]

Alright, I think I follow. Not every proposed idea necessarily works here. Throg and Carrow each have a Move score of 5. Jekaena's is only 3, which isn't a problem in this case. But the rest of you have 4. You definitely have enough movement to get the rows of two Warriors in C3 & C4 and in A5 & B5, which seems to be the consensus here. So let's see...

-Tomas casts Spear of Light at the nearest wight (9/14).
-Ty said something about healing magic to Jekaena, so she dutifully readies her healing magic.
-Kelgar blesses Carrow with Steadfast. Carrow gets +3 Toughness for one whole turn.
-Carrow easily breaks from the wights and moves to C4.
-Revaethan moves to A5, brandishing his twin swords in anticipation of an undead attack.
-Jekaena moves back to D3.
-Dorgath successfully breaks from pinning. It would have been more interesting if he didn't succeed on that roll. Oh well. He moves to C3.
-Throg manages to mostly dislodge the object in the ooze, but before he can finish the job, the fancy boot he's using as a tool falls apart. Throg has 487 remaining pairs of fancy boots and one unmatched boot. I forget if Throg's preference was to destroy the right boot first or the left, so I'll let him decide on that.
-Tomas moves to A6.
-Ty and Kelgar coordinate their movement so that Ty ends up in B5 and Kelgar ends up in B6.
-The wights advance. The first one takes a swing at Revaethan, but isn't in range yet.
-Another wight swipes at Ty, but the pit fighter sees it coming and ducks.
-A wight come at Carrow, but the elf is just as ready as the pit fighter and calmly evades the strike.
-A wight lord lunges at Dorgath. The dwarf pushes the undead monster away.
-Wielding a nasty-looking mace, a wight lord wallops Dorgath (15/25).
-Jekaena casts Heal Wounds on Dorgath (20/25).
-Jekaena casts Finger of Life on Dorgath (19/25).
-Kelgar's Ring of Jade backfires and drains life from Dorgath (17/25).

Next round...

-The Power Phase is 1! An Unexpected Event occurs.
-More undead emerge from the shadows. They surround Throg. Again. It looks like the Chaos Warrior is in a predicament.

 

[Mooseman]

"Throg, you are missing all the fun", yells Carrow as he readies to slice and dice the foul undead.

 

[turgy22]

I forget if Throg's preference was to destroy the right boot first or the left, so I'll let him decide on that.

Left. Duh.

Throg will sigh heavily and destroy the undead. Skeletons or zombies?

 

[Spiderman]

Wait, there’s wights and wight lords? Did we know that?

i think Dorgath is in position, so he attacks the lord or whoever’s in front of him.

 

[Oversoul]

Left. Duh.

Of course. Noted.

Throg will sigh heavily and destroy the undead. Skeletons or zombies?

They're skeletal, but different from the last ones, as though some mysterious entity thought that you went through the previous skeletons too quickly and decided to upgrade the ones generated by the Unexpected Event by scrolling through the a list of undead monsters and picking ones that looked more powerful. Weird that Throg would have a thought like that, but he does get the distinct impression that these are Grave Guards, created from the remains of long-dead warriors.

Wait, there’s wights and wight lords? Did we know that?

I did mention it in Post #1,913. But I didn't emphasize it. Sorry.

 

[Oversoul]

he does get the distinct impression that these are Grave Guards, created from the remains of long-dead warriors.

Slight correction: these are Grave Guards, but they're the upgraded version of that kind of undead, called "Crypt Keepers." Whatever. They're skeletons. They have magic weapons and armor too. So take that.

 

[Spiderman]

Well, still attacking whoever’s in front of Dorgath and hope this boxing in plan works.

 

[turgy22]

Throg will unleash a flurry of attacks against whatever shambling remains happen to be in his vicinity.

 

[Oversoul]

-Dorgath's Lifestone of Ashraz heals him (19/25).
-Dorgath's axe also heals him slightly (20/25).
-Tomas draws 2 points of Power from his Chalice of Sorcery.
-Tomas casts Ogre Strength on Carrow three times (+6 Strength this turn).
-Kelgar blesses Carrow and Throg with Vanquish. They get +1 Attacks this turn.
-Jekaena heals Dorgath (23/25).
-Carrow stabs a wight in the head (8/14).
-Carrow cleaves right through a wight.
-Carrow's deathblow strikes a wight lord (26/35).
-Carrow swings his sword, but in his inattention, his own magically augmented strength causes him to lose his balance.
-Carrow continues to fumble.
-Recovering, Carrow drives a sword right through a wight lord's heart. It's undead, so the blow isn't really lethal, but it still looks cool (17/35).
-Carrow yanks his sword out and hacks off a piece of the wight lord. The undead monster keeps moving (10/35).
-Revaethan uses Woven Mist (2).
-Revaethan accidentally drops one of his swords.
-Revaethan grazes a damaged wight (7/14).
-Dorgath hops toward a wight lord and lands a Great Axe Attack (7/35).
-Dorgath hobbles a wight lord by hacking at its legs (3/35).
-Dorgath kicks a wight lord in the face (1/35).
-As the wight lord rises and seizes Dorgath in its cold hands, the dwarf crushes the undead monster with a gauntlet-punch.
-Throg hypnotizes a crypt keeper, causing it to lose 2 Attacks. Can you hypnotize undead? Apparently!
-Throg casually lobs an Ice Missile while using his Khorne Statue to correct his sloppy aim. He freezes one of the undead surrounding him.
-Throg loses his balance as he hefts his axe.
-Throg slips on some of the gross ooze that dripped off his fancy boot.
-Throg falls down.
-Throg slashes wildly at a crypt keeper. The undead fighter blocks it.
-Throg thinks that his opponent is laughing at him, even though it isn't. He gets mad and throws a perfect kick at the crypt keeper's head. Although it connects solidly, this undead fighter has some kind of stupid magic armor that just absorbs all the damage.
-Throg lunges to bite this undead fighter that he can't seem to hit. It catches him and shoves him back. He almost falls into the ooze!
-As Throg recovers his footing, he swipes a crypt keeper with his claws, finally managing to damage it (16/20).
-The rest of the wights move in. A wight lord draws an icy blade and thrusts it at Ty. The pit fighter quickly evades the attack.
-A wight lord throws a quick strike that should hit, but Ty is decked out in gear that makes him almost impossible to hit.
-A wight lord slashes at Ty again, but Ty parries it.
-A wight lord lashes out again with its rapidly slicing blade, this time connecting (11/20).
-A wight lord runs Ty through (6/20).
-A wight charges Ty in an attempt to finish him off. The pit fighter is accustomed to pain and nimbly evades the slow-moving undead creature.
-A wight tries to stab Carrow. The elf sidesteps it.
-Crypt Keeper #1 is hypnotized.
-Crypt Keeper #2 draws what seems to be a red-hot sword, plunging it right into Throg. This sword seems to bypass his armor completely (22/29).
-Crypt Keeper #2 cuts a deep gash across Throg's torso (13/29).
-Crypt Keeper #3 moves to attack, but Throg recovers quickly and parries.
-Crypt Keeper #3 stabs at Throg, but the Chaos Warrior leans out of the way.
-Crypt Keeper #4 is frozen solid.
-Kelgar's Ring of Jade heals Throg (19/29).

 

[Oversoul]

Next round...

-The Power Phase is 6 for this turn.
-Throg's head fills with arcane knowledge. His Initiative score is 10 for this turn and he may cast the Iron Skin spell (target Warrior gets +2 Toughness this turn).

 

[turgy22]

Crypt Keepers are lame.
Throg will Iron Skin himself and continue his attacks.
Priority: 1) Hypnotize 2) Freeze 3) Smash the weakest thing that has not been hypnotized or frozen.

 

[Spiderman]

Wow. Throg is a one man army.

“Jekaena, heal Ty!”

Hopefully the wight lords are still boxed in so we can press the attack.

 

[TomB]

Ty takes a hit off of a Heal-Itt potion and wonders to himself why he didn't get to hit anything last round, especially since he got hit and so was apparently in range of an enemy, but w/e...

He will continue attacking until the undead are re-dead, or he's dead, whichever occurs first...

 

[Oversoul]

Ty takes a hit off of a Heal-Itt potion and wonders to himself why he didn't get to hit anything last round, especially since he got hit and so was apparently in range of an enemy, but w/e...

That's because the turn structure is like this...

1. Power Phase
2. Exploration Phase
3. Warriors Phase
4. Monsters Phase
5. End Phase

By the time it was Ty's chance to move and attack in the initiative order, all of the monsters adjacent to him had been wiped out. In order to attack, he'd have needed to move in on the monsters, and my understanding was that the plan here was to hold lines on two sides of the T-junction, boxing the wights in. Unfortunately, that meant forgoing Ty's attacks. A couple of things I should clarify here...

1. If you are choosing to let the monsters come to you, there is a "fight defensively" option to give up your attacks and make yourself harder to hit. I did apply that earlier to Dorgath, but I actually forgot to do that for Ty. Oops. But it didn't matter this time because both attacks that actually hit Ty were ones where the wight lord rolled 6 to-hit. Still, it's worth keeping in mind that this is an option.
2. If you go back through some of the old forum posts here, you can easily spot combat posts in which every model on the board gets to move and fight in Initiative order, rather than going with this system of a Warriors Phase followed by a Monsters Phase. This was because I made the decision 15+ years ago to try to run Warhammer Quest combat differently from the way the rulebook said, making it more like D&D. I did this for a long time, so I did think that there were advantages to it (the Initiative stat becomes more balanced when it comes to monster threat levels, and it's no longer as easy for a party of Warriors to take down half of the strong monsters in a room before those monsters have gotten a chance to strike back). But one of the biggest effects is that it slows things down, and we have too much of that already. So I forget if I ever even said anything announcing this in the forum, but I did revert to using the official rules (or a version of them) for the turn structure. The upside to this is that, aside from ambushes, Ty gets to move and attack before all monsters on every turn of combat. The downside is that Ty can no longer bank his attacks while defending a chokepoint, waiting for monsters to get in range and then attacking them once they do on the same turn.

 

[Mooseman]

"Destroy these foul creatures.... ", Carrow shouts as he continues to plague them with his amazing sword skills.

 

[TomB]

Ahhh...I see. Oh well, I guess that's the price for being all tactical and all...lol

Assuming the ravening undead are ravening again, we'll hold our positions and let them come to us, but Ty WILL strike whenever a wight/wight lord gets close enough to be impaled on a fist spike...

 

[Spiderman]

Lol. I never noticef a change, as these games stretched out over years and I just trust you running the combat. Any weird things I probably just chalked up to new abilities that let the Hero do it

 

[Oversoul]

I've decided that once I get the unsorted Magic cards put away, I'm going to take one of the tables I've cleared off and set it up for a Warhammer Quest board I can just snap pictures of and upload them to the Discord. The way we're going now, I keep forgetting to make updated board displays when I'm at home, which slows things down when I get a chance to go through combat posts at work. Anyway, let's proceed...

-Dorgath's Lifestone of Ashraz heals him a bit (24/25).
-Dorgath's Rune of Restoration on his axe completes the healing process (25/25).
-Throg casts Iron Skin on himself.
-Tomas draws 3 power from the Chalice of Sorcery and takes 2 damage from it (19/21).
-Tomas casts Glory!
-Tomas casts Glory!
-Jekaena casts Finger of Life. It fizzles.
-Jekaena casts Finger of Life. It fizzles.
-Jekaena casts Finger of Life, healing Ty (10/20).
-Kelgar blesses Ty with Scourge of Chaos. Ty's attacks get +1 to hit this turn.
-Ty takes a hit off a Heal-Itt Potion (14/20).
-Ty is still thirsty and downs some more potion (17/20).
-Ty takes one more sip before striking with his weapons (19/20).
-Throg fails to hypnotize anything.
-Throg re-freezes Crypt Keeper #4 before it can do anything.
-Throg lands a glancing blow with his axe against Crypt Keeper #2 (15/20).
-Throg's axe steals 1 Wound and heals him slightly (20/29).
-Throg bites Crypt Keeper #2 on the wrist, ripping off a hand and part of an arm (10/20).
-Throg slams his axe into Crypt Keeper #2. That stupid magic armor absorbs the blow again.
-Throg brings his axe down on Crypt Keeper #2. Once again, the magic armor negates the attack completely.
-Throg swings his axe again, breaking some ribs (7/20).
-Throg hits Crypt Keeper #2 a fifth time, and the undead monster's magic armor blocks it.
-Throg kicks Crypt Keeper #2 gracefully across the chest. Magic armor absorbed that one too.
-Throg bites Crypt Keeper #2 on the neck (5/20).
-Throg swipes with his claws, breaking off more bits of bone (3/20).
-Carrow slashes a wight (11/14).
-Carrow swings at a wight. As the creature parries his blow, Carrow slips past the parry and drives his blade into the wight's torso (8/14).
-Carrow slashes again, but the wight ducks in time to avoid being hit.
-Carrow cuts thin air.
-Carrow cuts upward and opens up a big gash in the wight (5/14).
-Carrow clips the wight with the edge of his sword, but its armor prevents most of the damage (4/14).
-Moving to finish the wight, Carrow thrusts, but the wight's armor catches the sword just right and protects the monster.
-Revaethan uses Woven Mist (6).
-Revaethan lashes out hacks into the wight he's been fighting, opening it up (1/14).
-Revaethan pivots and catches a wight's legs with his sword, tossing the wight in a spinning motion that causes it to tumble to the floor. The wight breaks apart, too badly damaged to maintain its undead state.
-Revaethan's deathblow lands squarely on the wight lord's chest and neck (29/35).
-Lightning courses from the wight lord's armor through Revaethan's sword, zapping the elf (15/18).
-Enraged, Revaethan cuts wildly. The wight lord parries with its own icy blade.
-Revaethan thrusts. The wight lord parries again.
-Revaethan impales the wight lord (25/35).
-The wight lord's armor zaps Revaethan again (13/18).
-Revaethan yanks his sword out while swinging with his other sword, but the wight lord blocks it.
-Revaethan throws both arms out to see if he can catch the wight lord with one sword or the other. The monster is too quick and lunges back, evading both blades.
-Revaethan, still affected by the lightning that has run through his body, staggers back and can't manage to make an effective attack.
-Seeing that the wight lord is distracted by the wardancer, Ty bring his morningstar into the fray. The wight lord slips in beneath the blow.
-Ty punishes the wight lord's effort to close the distance by plunging his fist spike into its body (22/35).
-The wight lord's armor punishes Ty with arcing bolts of electricity (16/20).
-Ty stabs the wight lord again. This time the monster's wicked armor stops the fist spike entirely.
-More lightning zaps Ty (14/20).
-Ty leans back, then stabs the wight lord again (17/35).
-Ty gets zapped yet again (12/20).
-As Ty pulls his fist spike free, he bashes the wight lord with his morningstar (12/35).
-To no one's surprise, the wight lord's armor zaps Ty (11/20).
-To the wight lord's surprise, mystical emanates from Ty's weapon and the wight's magic sword shatters, the pieces clattering uselessly on the floor.
-Ty smacks the wight with his morningstar again, this time following up with his knuckle-dusters (7/35).
-Ty takes another bolt of arcing electricity through his arm (10/20).
-Ty loses his grip on his morningstar. Flexing his electrified arm in pain, he snags the wight lord, pulls the monster toward his body, and drives a knee spike into its groin (2/35).
-Ty gets zapped again (8/20).
-Ty and the wight lord fall to the floor together. Ty finishes the wight lord off with a flurry of blows that crack through the electricity-spewing armor and pulverize the undead flesh within.
-Ty takes one last jolt from the now-broken armor of the wight lord (7/20).
-Crypt Keeper #1 draws a blade that hums with the energy of some dark magic. It strikes, but deftly evades it.
-Crypt Keeper #1 stabs Throg in the gut. It hurts a lot (13/29).
-Crypt Keeper #2 cuts Throg with its red-hot sword (7/29).
-Crypt Keeper #2 pull back for another attack, but Throg throws an arm out and shoves the undead fighter back.
-Crypt Keeper #3 slashes at Throg, but the Chaos Warrior parries it.
-Crypt Keeper #3 throws a big attack, but Throg barely manages to avoid it. He notices that this one's weapon seems to have supernaturally sharp edge as it cuts through the air near his head.
-Crypt Keeper #4 is frozen solid.
-Kelgar's Ring of Jade heals Throg (15/29).
-Kelgar collects 40 gold for his healing efforts! Praise Sigmar.

 

[Oversoul]

Next round...

-The Power Phase is 6 for this turn. The Winds of Magic coalesce eerily around Throg, as arcane knowledge rushes into his mind again. It's as though he rolled so super-well on this that something unusual is happening. Throg feels as though some deranged intelligence in another world is guiding his hand.

Not only was the Power Phase roll 6 again, but Throg rolled 6 on his Arcane Knowledge roll again. I don't have my spell cards with me right now. So I'm just deciding, on a whim, that Turgy can decide what kind of spell he wants Throg to be able to cast this turn. I'll try my best to find a spell in the books that matches it, except for maybe super high-level spells. Go for it. What kind of magic do you want Throg to do? Let me know and I'll see what I can find...