Bandits! Bandits! Bandits!
by Donal
A bunch of bandits are trying to profit from Felstad the same way our Wizards are - by grabbing treasure! They didn’t reckon on a pack of warbands turning up while they were trying to slip away with the loot. They hole up and try and sit the fight out, not realising that greedy Wizards will happily sacrifice soldiers to root out a nest of Bandits.
Set-Up
There are 1 bandit Archer and 1 bandit Thug (stats as per normal Warband members) per player, plus a bandit Knight as a “leader”. They’ve already collected one third of the treasure chests (1 per player) and have established a fort somewhere near the middle of the board. This should be a square about 10” per side with some high ground for the Archers to stand on. The Thugs should be grouped with the Treasures behind some barriers, walls or other 1”+ high obstacles.
Special Rules
The bandit Archers shoot at the closest visible Warband member every turn in the Monster Phase. The Knight and Thugs do nothing until a Warband member crosses the barricade. Once that happens, they move to attack the closest Warband member within their area. If a Monster Phase starts with only bandits in the area after they've been engaged in combat, the surviving Thugs each pick up a chest and attempt to make it off a random board edge, escorted by the Archers. The Thugs move directly towards the edge, only fighting if engaged (although they will force combat within 1” of a Warband member), using both actions to move. The Archers move first and then will either use their second action to shoot the closest Warband member within LOS or move again. They will stay within 6” of the Thugs. They continue until they are dead or off the edge of the board.
Treasure & Rewards
Each bandit a Warband kills (regardless of which member of the warband kills them) nets the Wizard killing them 10 extra XP.
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This scenario worked fairly well, in that the 3 treasures gathered by the bandits drew us all into conflict for the "pot" of treasures that they were guarding. It made for a bit of a snafu in the middle where no model I sent in came out alive! Eoghan picked the side facing the bandit's compound on set up, so as myself and Ger tried to come around at them and into his LOS, he punished us for it. And he ended up having the shortest escape distance (only by inches, but still). In the end, the bandit Archers were the most dangerous part of the equation, so we obviously wiped them out as soon as we could. The others didn't do so well, but more on that in a second.
Set-up time! Eoghan is coming in on the long edge on the bottom of this pic. Ger is at the top. I'm on the short edge on the right of the picture. The bandits are that little gathering just outside the round-topped building in the middle.
Look how tightly packed my set-up was! Close, tight, professional. There's no way a group this good looking could leave the game with 66% casualties, is there? Yes. Yes there is. 4 miniatures walked off the board under their own power, everyone else was broken somewhere.
Eoghan gathered under cover just outside the bandit's LOS. One of the bandit Archers on the roof one-shot no-scope killed one of Ger's Archers with a Critical Hit in the first turn, but then after that they didn't have a massive impact, except making us wary of ranged attacks as usual. Eoghan made devastating use of a spell he hasn't unleashed before - Scattershot, which makes a low-power attack against every enemy figure within 12". He hit my guys and the bandits again and again and again until all those low-power attacks added up and we were on our knees.
Ger came in behind the building and had to work around the long way for the pot of treasures. He definitely got in the mix though, and certainly caused me a whole mess of trouble during the game. In fact, myself and Ger ground up against each other so hard that Eoghan would have had an easy game - if not for wandering monsters!
Our love of wandering monsters destroyed Eoghan this game - a White Gorilla came in an single-handedly flattened 2 or 3 of his dudes and wounded his Sellsword. His left flank was decimated by one big monster wandering on field. Brutal. This left him without the reserve he would have needed to drive Ger away and really win all the marbles.
Ger had acquired a new Construct, so he made this charming home-made model with a creepy, creepy face on the front. It got killed this game though, so there's no need to worry about seeing this nightmare smiling at us again. At least until he gets another one.
The carnage rolled on and on in the middle of the board, but as I said no-one I sent in came out in one piece. Eoghan came out with 4 treasures in the end, I got 2 and Ger got 3. A slight imbalance in treasure return, but still close enough that the scenario seems kind of balanced. The bandits might need some kind of AI behaviour to make them do something. The poor Thugs and Knight got ripped apart without achieving anything except delay.
We might be able to get another game in next week? Who knows with the way schedules align. We can but hope!
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