My apologies for the lack of posts of late, I had high hopes for December in terms of hobby time, but a combination of things has meant little or time to myself, still with less than a week before Christmas I can see light at the end of the tunnel and it's no someone bringing me more work.
I mean't post this a few weeks ago, I have been itching to try the Black Scorpion rule set - Cutlass! for some time and whilst the figures queue up behind the French (more on them in a future post) a recent club night saw the first outing and a small encounter pitting Atlantian Guardians against the Borites a reptilian type creature which inhabits the swamps of Atlantis.
Background
Atlantis was dying of the seven cities the first two have been
"lost beneath the waters of the outer limits forever" and the third one,
Troya, is now deserted and empty. Elsewhere the swamp lands are slowly rising and Mogdaan, Zaarg and Borite attacks on the fourth city of Vaar are increasing in frequency and ferocity.
Atmir has been ordered to take a Guardian Patrol and a handful of trusted slaves into the Outer limits to gather intelligence on Borites numbers and their intentions.
The swamp lands of Atlantis.
Atlanians and human slaves land on the beach looking to see signs of the Borites.
Guardians deploy on the flanks looking to protect the poorer Humans from an sneaky lizard attack.
The reptiles lie in wait.
It starts to go wrong from the start, a Borite is spotted and shot at, he reacts and charges into contact with the lead scout.
The Prisoner soldier is injured in the first round of combat - ouch.
Meanwhile as the Guardians struggle to contain two Borites to their front even though they out number them 3:1, a far larger war party looks to flank the patrol - Gulp.
With many of the Atlantian patrol, spooked, injured, stunned or unloaded, the reptiles start to move in for the kill.
Caught on both fronts the patrol struggles to hold back the attackers, the occasion blow is parried but Guardians and slaves start to fall.
A poor action total for the Atlantians sees them swamped by the swamped dwellers (sorry....). Who with a much better Action roll are able to bring a number of extra attacks to bear.
Atmir and his two surviving Guardians flee the beach. He will be able to report back that they are a credible threat and bloody tough....
On reflection I probably over equiped the Lizardmen or gave them to many bumped up stats or did the Atlantians just suffer from the curse of freshly painted figures?
The rules worked really well and the action points make for an interesting encounter, perhaps the first game for many a year where a single character who has the drop on several can run a mock before the defenders can get into any order.
The Atlantians well armed wasted several orders trying to react to a single ambusher and the close terrain meant they had difficultly get any aimed shots off before the guys with swords and pointy sticks arrived charging in and over coming most of the the defenders.
It will be interesting to play through with the generic offerings in the book to see if the out come was much different. But this scenario for me had a real early colonial feel to - Last of the Mochians anyone?
On a slightly disappointing note and a learn for the Black Scorpion guys is the bind quality of the rules, I really don't expect to have several pages come loose from the binding and drop out after only one game, to the point where I am now considering having to put all the pages in a plastic ring binder, an expense I should not need to carry after only 3 hours of use.
I hope they choose a better printer for the forthcoming Western Version.
Until next time.
