So "The Silent Tower" is three interconnected towers in the middle of the field. They are totally anti-magic. You can't magic onto it, such as by Leap or Teleport and you can't cast magic while in contact with it either. So you have to ascend it the old fashioned way, a long, hard climb to the top. A huge fat treasure (3 treasure rolls worth!) sits atop the roof, and that was the issue that led my opponents to kick ten kinds of tar and as many varieties of shit as they could manage out of each other. There was 6 other normal treasures available, we managed to get two of these each in our race for the loot. Ger made this rather spiffy tower, so it got pressed into action for the occasion.
The scenario special rules didn't cover it, but seeing as it is an anti-magic structure that cancels all spells that touch it, we also ruled that Demons, Constructs and the Undead couldn't make contact with it, so only Warband members could join the scramble up the tower. Another weird twist to the rules that came up - it says "figures are allowed to climb blah blah blah"... so can Warhounds climb? The rules seem to indicate they can. Eoghan's swarm of Warhounds may have been the reason this question came up - and they took advantage of the fact that we agreed they could a little, swarming up one story of the tower after Ger's heroic Barbarian... but more of that later.
Here's how we started out - that's me coming in from this edge, with Eoghan to the left of the M&M's box there and Ger on the right. We drew some patches of difficult ground on the battlemat with a dry erase marker as "Ice". It's a half movement speed obstacle in Frostgrave, so we just drew a few square inches of it here and there. It could get very game-slowing to throw down too much.
From l-r, this is how I came on the board - My Apprentice and her usual friends, a pair of Archers and my Ranger. In the middle, my fast moving group which consists of my Captain, my Barbarian and my Warhound. And then on the far end my Necromancer, his usual bodyguards of a Thug and Infantryman and the Thief hanging out nearby.
Eoghan's Wizard was in a tight knot with his base of Archery fire and 5 (!!) warhounds hanging around behind. His Apprentice is in there somewhere. His Captain and a Construct are toward the top of the picture. Also, the cursed dice of the game. We had so many failures this time around! I don't know how close to the grave from spell failures the guys got, but it was close.
Ger went on a bit of a broader base then us, his Wizard closest to us in this picture. His Captain is in the middle and his apprentice around the corner there. Or maybe the spellcasters are the other way around. I keep mixing up his Wizard and his Apprentice for some reason.
Early on, I hubristically Jumped to the top of an outlying tower. I had a "plan" to drop a Fog between my guys and Eoghans, then fight off his Warhound pack while his Archers couldn't cover them. I failed to cast the damn Fog every damn time. So my Wizard was soon shot off the top of the tower by these guys -
Eoghan's pesky Archers, completely not obscured by Fog. It was the wounding I got here that made me decide not to contest the special treasure up on the top of the Tower. Things were hotting up, and it was time to cut my losses.
Meanwhile, Ger's Barbarian went on a heroic, one-man climb up the damn tower. He made it the whole way up and almost the whole way back to the ground again when Eoghan shot him off the wall.
That's the contested treasure sitting on the right, just past Eoghan's Warhound Warband. When I said it was a bloodbath over there...
My guys slipped off the side of the board just as I caused the only random monster to appear - 3 Armoured Skeletons. We almost never get the random encounters, for some reason. The worst one we ever got was the Bear that mauled Ger's archer in the first game we played. These skeletons were too slow to catch my guys and never got a glimpse of the other Warbands, so they just wandered about for turns and turns and turns.
The guys then had a back and forth for the half dozen turns or so that I mentioned. It had crazy highs and lows. One of Eoghan's Archers picked up the special treasure and finally got it out of there, mostly from a last turn Leap from his Wizard, which was fortuitous because the turn before a failed Leap spell had nearly killed the same Wizard. I don't know what fraction of both their warbands were KO'ed and injured, but it must have been around the 2/3 mark each! Every turn, I was sure a different warband would make it out with the special chest. Drama had, spells cast, blood shed. I was both glad I was away from the carnage and sad to not have benefited from the rich pool of spell casting XP the guys picked up, especially Ger, as the dice roll luck turned and successful spells were a-plenty.
Another great game of Frostgrave! Ger has made the effort to paint his terrain, which I must do for mine - or at least spraypaint them black, which covers a multitude of sins. I have an idea for a slightly different game next time, but we'll see if that pans out. It may use some of the special rules from Into the Breeding Pits, the most recent expansion.... again, if it pans out.
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