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Casual Battle Report: Trying out Rangers of Shadow Deep

 As usual, I didn't get as many pictures as I would like, but that probably just means I was really enjoying the game. I'll give you a brief synopsis here, punctuated by a handful of pictures of the action.


While we wered playing Rangers of Shadow Deep (ROSD), we were playing for my friend's birthday, and he really loves Oldhammer. I wrote up a ROSD scenario, but used The Old World as our setting.

Our heroes and sidekicks were the remains of an Empire (and ally) army that was destroyed in the north wastes by a great host of chaos. Fleeing to the nearest city for refuge (Gibbelheim, as we called it), our heroes found that the city had already been sacked by the forces of chaos, who were now roaming the streets, searching for those in hiding. Unfortunately, the way we came in was blocked as a regiment of chaos warriors marched up behind us an made camp in the breach, now the only way out was through the main city gate. While in the city, we also found that several dwarfs were being held captive. Our objectives were to free the dwarfs, find a key, and get through the main gate.

The Scenario:


I set up the table as a T junction, with the exit gate at the top-center of the T. Each turn, chaos soldiers would enter the map randomly from one of the 3 directions. The number and type of troops would be rolled on a table. (I used templates for gnoll fighters and gnoll archers because we were all level 1, but I used beastmen and skaven miniatures, and a chaos warrior if we rolled max).

There were two buildings that each had two dwarfs held inside. When a character spent an action rescuing them, the would have a 50/50 chance of fleeing to the nearest table edge and charging at the nearest chaos unit (the dwarfs also had gnoll fighter stats).

There were also four treasure piles on the table. To find the key to the main gate, we would need to roll a 6 on the treasure pile. If all piles were exhausted, the last one would contain the key. Once we freed the dwarfs and had the key, it was time to go.

There were also a few buildings that were 'locked', and could be opened for a chance to find +1 weapon, +1 armour, another dwarf, or another chaos warrior.


We chose to start on the opposite side of the table from the gate and immediately split into two groups of three. Each group contained two Empire soldiers, and one elf. We made really good time finding the key and freeing the dwarfs. Some of the dwarfs attempted to flee, but they were spotted by chaos troops and had to fighter their way out anyway (some of them dying). One old dwarf longbeard fought his way through 4 beastmen, but was slain by an arrow near the end of the game (RIP to a legend). 

After our main objectives were completed, we charged the gate, but were confronted by 2 gangs of troops that had spawned in the alleys we had not taken, led by a chaos warrior. We valiantly fought our way through, but all of the Empire soldiers were killed in the struggle, leaving only the elf apprentice to escape through the main gate. I doubt he fares much better on the outside, in chaos controlled territory, but it's got to be better than Gibbelheim.







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