Ice Dragon scenario
By Eoghan
A large chunk of ice falls from the sky, nothing new in Felstad - only it is a hungry dragon, and its appearance has been foretold by a certain cult. While it has an egg with it, it’s hunger is greater - and the denizens of Felstad are either drawn to it or scared off, and of course Wizards are homing in on it!
Set-Up
Set up 3 treasures per player as normal. Place a Dragon figure in the middle of the table w/egg.
Special Rules
Dragon is inactive at start of game; it will activate if enemy warbands are within 10” and LOS on a roll of 14+ with 1 taken away for each treasure collected, for a max of 5+. Roll at start of creature phase. It will always activate and immediately attack if its egg is picked up or otherwise affected. It will immediately activate if attacked directly or at range.
Ice Dragon has following stats:
M 5
F +4
S +0
A 16
W +8
HP 20
Notes
Large, Flight,Ice Breath, Smart, Eat
Large target/weapon: -2 to hit on Shoot, +2 to damage in Hand to Hand
Flight: Can make a 10’’ move ignoring terrain if no targets in sight or ‘Smart’ activated (roll scatter dice)
Ice breath: free +3 shoot attack with a cone effect per round, not available if engaged in combat, creates difficult terrain where targets stand 1’’ diameter
Smart: the dragon will not fight to the death, if wounded (by even 1 HP) it make use of the 1 inch push rule if it wins subsequent combats and must make use of its Flight to escape in a random direction, if it fails a W roll it must stay and fight!
Eat: a defeated member of a warband is consumed for 2 HP (does not exceed max HP). The same of Acolytes who are immediately defeated and consumed if they are within 1 inch and reduced to wounded status. If they are still carrying their potion the dragon gains +1 Fight and +1 HP on top of its current stats, for a possible total of +13 Fight and 29 HP!
Cult of the Dragon - a certain special warband has been put together just for this scenario! They are scattered in their search for the Dragon so they arrive on random table edges in place of all Animals except those with ice-related names. If multiples, they appear alongside them eg. 2x Ice Toads is instead 1 Ice Toad and 1 Acolyte. The Cult Leader appears when Ice Dragon active. Constructs, Undead and Demons appear as usual, either sensing an opportunity to kill mortals, ice-aspected or awed by the dragon. Each Treasure picked up +1 chance so 9 treasures is +5 chance of monsters appearing on edge. Limit of 9 Acolytes and 1 Cult Leader. If the Cult Leader is within LOS of Ice Dragon, it gains +1 F, +1 W and +1 HP to its total.
Dragon Acolytes: M6 F2 S0 A10 W1 HP 11 Dagger, 1x Ice Breath Potion (+0 Shoot, Cone, Dif Terrain)
Cult Leader has M7 F4 S0 A11 W3 HP 14 Staff, Ring of Protection +1; Ice Breath Spell casts at 7 proficiency, may empower if within 1-5, will not reduce HP below 5. (+0 Shoot, Cone, Dif Terrain)
Treasure & Rewards
The warband that defeats the Ice Dragon receives 150 experience. Slain Acolytes are worth 20 each and the Cult Leader is worth 50 if slain by Wizards, half for Captains (10 and 25 respectively). If a Captain lands the finishing blow he gets 50 XP for kill resolution.
Optional: Wizards that engaged Dragon get 25 experience and 25 for surviving scenario with >0HP.
Any member of Warband may spend an action collecting the Dragon’s Egg, worth 200 gold +50XP. Treat as treasure in that the carrier can be killed and drop the loot.
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I took our entry picture at a weird angle. I might have been trying to be artistic? I'm entering at the short end on the right, Eoghan advanced in from the long side on the left and Ger was coming in from the far long side. There seems little point in too many pictures unless I diagram what's happening, so I'll just stick with a brief overview and some thoughts like last time.
Who has the time?
I like to keep it tight, tight, tight. My guys are never allowed wander outside activation range much. The guys work their crews more like a cloud, with warband members wandering away from leaders and joining other activation groups ad hoc. I don't know which approach is better, although it always feels better to keep the initiative gripped and act earlier in the turn. There were one or two turns where most of Ger's warband was activating at the end of the turn in the "un-led" section which gave him a lot of flexibility in reacting to how the turn had worked itself out. When you have Dragons and other objectives just bleeding their last because the rest of us have hit them hard and you can move in for the kill, it's pretty handy. Still, I prefer to act early.
We all kind of adopted a "get our treasures out early, then tackle the Dragon" strategy. So there was a lot of hiding behind terrain and creeping around, dropping LOS-blocking spells like Fog and Elemental Wall. For the first time ever, I got to use the Necromantic counter-spell, Spell Eater, which is actually pretty baller and will see a lot more outings in the future. For a straight, uncontested and pretty low roll, you get to cancel an ongoing spell - although you do take a point of damage in the process. I spell ate? one of Ger's Fogs and got to shoot his Captain and his activation group to pieces on Turn One. I was trying to spell eat my way through Eoghan's Elemental Walls to expose him to that damn Dragon but never quite got there. We've all gotten on point on our LOS-blocking spell effects.
Mobility is soooooooooo effective in Frostgrave. Ger Leaped this Archer to the top of Pringles tower to capture "my" third treasure. Luckily, spells that extend your range are also soooooooooo effective in Frostgrave, so the Wizard Eye I had stuck up there let me Telekinesis it off the edge before that jerk Archer could escape with it.
As for the Dragon, the guys piled in with a willingness to attack that put me to shame. I was trying to manoeuvre my Apprentice/Archery base around to engage it with Missile fire only, but apart from peppering Ger's Captain in Turn One, Archery remained pretty ineffective. The guys hacked and hacked and then Eoghan finally Elemental Bolt-ed the Dragon into its (Frost) grave. So Eoghan got the Kill the Dragon bonus. The stats Eoghan gave the Dragon were just right to make him a challenge, I think the Armour Value being 16 was key. Ger managed to roll the Egg off the board after some very sharp action between himself and Eoghan's warband. If wandering far infield is unusual in Frostgrave, one of Eoghan's Treasure Hunters must have come within inches of Ger's table edge, fighting for the egg all the way.
So we each managed to get three regular treasures, Ger got the egg and Eoghan made use of the Soothsayer Spell Reveal Secret for the first time to get to place an extra treasure (which he also escaped with). He also has picked up and got to use Absorb Knowledge, which gives you a chance to get 50 more XP after the game. When you consider the 50 XP for the extra chest as well, that's a lot of extra XP to pick up. As our wizards level up and become more like Swiss Army Knives, levelling up accelerates every game.
We'll probably squeeze in another game of Frostgrave next week (here's hoping). We also have our fingers in the Rogue Stars Nickstarter which is looking awesome, so we may move onto some Sci-Fi in the mix in the next few months!
Edit: I also meant to say that Forgotten Pacts is out as of today. I got it as an ebook, which represents good value. There's a mix of alright stuff in it, it's worth a look if someone is playing a Summoner, like Ger does. Demons get traits now depending on much you pass the summoning roll by. Our spell casting luck held up from last game, so he didn't get many trait-ed demons this time around, except for one two headed demon, but we'll keep these rules for the future. The scenarios in the book are pretty good, but multiple linked scenarios like there and in Thaw of the Lich Lord don't really suit our play style. Although the monster-Demons in it are the kind of challenge that we might enjoy facing.
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