Legends of the Water Margin #1 The Celestial Knights

Saturday afternoon and blimey everyone is out... perhaps the first time in months, so a chance to road test a couple of skirmish ideas and the first encounter in the Water Margin 'Zoom' Campaign.

Hu San Naing (3rd Sister) and Shih Chin (The Tattooed Dragon) with a group of banner man had set off on a mission to the temple of the half moon just outside of Siewku. Their mission to convince the guardians of the temple to join the heroes of the Water Margin.

Meanwhile attachment of militia had been ordered by Gao Qiu Governor of the region to order the knights to side with the government and supress the rebels.

I have been adapting the Too Fat Lardies Infamy Rules for Ancient China and adapted each 'hero' to be a unit and big man all in one unit, figures in a typical unit, become life points, and the close order rules become parry rules when fighting as individuals. The rebels have two heroes and a band of barbarians, whilst the government forces have a lesser hero and two half skirmish units and a missile unit and spear unit.

Both sides rush towards the shrine which is guarded by three Celestial Knights, if a character can contact a knight and roll under their force moral on 2D6 then the knight will join their party fighting as an Elite Unit with a Status II big man.

The bannermen rush forward with Hu San Naing skirting the wood whilst Shih Chin instils fervour in his followers. The three knight remain at the shrine of the half moon unmoved.

The rebels are first out, with Hu San Naing rushing across the bridge to contact the first knight. Meanwhile the governors troops took a more cautious route flanking the shrine and firing crossbow bolts and arrows into the bannermen.

Hu San Naing uses her womanly charms to convince the Red Knight to join the cause, while the militia close in on the knights defending the temple.

The Red Knight wastes no time in joining the fray and charges into the oncoming militia, driving them backwards with the volume of shock.

The leader of the militia being a low level hero had limited command choices and was forced to waste his flags on activating the small spear unit to stop Hu San Naing speaking to the Green Knight, whilst they inflicted a few points of shock, they were dispatched to man and the militia morale fell backwards.

Things were going badly for the government Shih Chin was over the bridge with his banner men, the Red Knight had chased of the spearmen and the Green Knight had come over to the rebels and set about attacking the captain of the guard.

In a last desperate attempt the skirmishers rushed to pour fire into the rebels but were driven off by the bannermen.

Left on his own the Captain and his standard stood their ground as the Green Knight charged home, by a miracle they defended all his blows and forced him backwards.

However the exhausted captain could not stop the Red Knight who charged in striking him several times, his morale gave way and he ran from the table.

A clear victory for the rebels and three new heroes have joined the outlaws of the marshes.

A fun solo encounter, as usual with Lardy rules the chits breakup the regimented approach to the turn sequence, turning big men into units seems to work ok and the defence rules creates a challenge to second guess your opponent, in this encounter I tossed a coin to decide if characters would carry out an all out attack or hold back half their dice to defend.

I might just have accidently ordered a few extra from Scotia Grendel to top up the hero count.