Monday 18 June 2012

Ailech Harbour - Narrative

This scenario didn't go as well for the heroes!
Properly rolled PEF's (rather than the discretion I'd been using), PEF's set up appropriate distances from the good guy deployment (i.e. even though the table was set up as 6' x 4', I deployed the PEF's properly in a 3' x 3' grid).
There was more on the table than there should have been (I deployed more Black Moon Incarnate demons than I would in a three thousand point Warhammer game), but the heroes warbands together totalled 39 CV!
It didn't help that they effectively activated all the PEF's at once, rather than getting into the enemy and trying to eliminate one PEF before any others got the chance. It also didn't help that their reinforcements didn't turn up, but I got two (which I rolled at 20 CV, i.e. 50% effect rather than rolling). In retrospect I should have brought them on as PEF's and then rolled them up properly, rather than just put them on the table.
In all honesty, it was partly my fault for letting the parties get so powerful (i.e. not kicking ass and taking names earlier) so creating a situation where 130 CV of bad guys was randomly generated and partly the heroes' fault for not getting stuck in quickly enough to eliminate opposition before it got unmanageable.
Even in the aftermath, it's still likely that four or five players are still going to generate around 30 CV without including their stars (which is another 30 CV). I suppose we need to come up with a solution.
We could split the campaign again, but that would mean that scheduling games is harder. That said, if the Northern Group made capturing Menglad their aim, while the Southern Group maintained the objective of retaking Ailech. Anyone could run a Quest campaign, following the rules in the book exactly, and as the stats for the object of each quest are already made up...
We could reboot the campaign, with the current crop of heroes being lost in the Western Mountains and their warbands captured or killed in the city and a new crop of heroes created from the refugees in Fluchtdorf. Even with a reboot though, with 5 or 6 players, even though it is fun, the bad guys rapidly become unmanageable for the referee.
We could just carry on. If I enforce the rules about advancement and on table death properly and generate forces that match the good guy CV, warband and star attrition is going to cut into numbers eventually.
Finally, I could remove Free Will. Without Free Will, bad guys get the charge more often and good guys can't force bad guys to rout so easily. If I removed free will then I wouldn't roll for size of PEF. Each PEF would be 100%. That would mean that the heroes wouldn't be facing down 150% worth of PEF on occasion but also wouldn't be meeting 600% of PEF! As a guide, Sokol Keep (the first game I properly rolled PEF's) had a 200% - 1 CV PEF roll and the Harbour had a 250% PEF roll (both before reinforcements).
I suppose it's over to the other players...

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