Skip to main content

The Homeless Fire Giants


New pal Zach came over Saturday night to skirmish across the dining room table. I've known Zach's wife Kerry for a few years now, as she and I are working on a Lost Art Books volume together. Saturday was the first time Zach and I got to hang out, despite corresponding for a while now, usually about cool bands (Superchunk, Guided by Voices) or the excellent scholarly work he produces on his blog devoted to Holmes-era (1977-80) Dungeons & Dragons, Zenopus Archives. I gave him a quick run through on the basic rules for our game of Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes, and then we dove into the scenario I prepared (below).

The battlefield. The fire giants start on the far side of the field from the stronghold's gate.

The Homeless Fire Giants
(scenario)

A mysterious earthquake leveled the fire giants' keep at the base of the stony spine of the Barrier Peaks, killing all inside its halls except for Frinn, his mistress Brina, and three of their pet dire wolves. These newly homeless fire giants have been forced to tramp across the mountains to seek shelter in the stronghold of the giantess’s brother-in-law.

A nearby dwarven colony had been debating for months over ways to drive these fire giants from the area, and when they heard from a returning scouting party that the recent earthquake had decimated the giants' keep, the dwarves leapt at the opportunity to rid the land of their hereditary enemy. Correctly deducing that the fire giants would make for their kin’s stronghold on the other side of the Barrier Peaks, the dwarves—led by Klanin, a veteran giant fighter from the Thunder Hills campaign—set out to intercept the refugees while they were vulnerable in the open wilds. Unfortunately, the mountain routes the dwarves hoped to travel by had themselves been choked by rockslides set in motion by the earthquake. By the time the dwarves finally catch up to their quarry, the sun’s light is waning and the fire giants have almost made it to the south gate of their in-laws' stronghold. The dwarves hurriedly set an ambush to prevent the fire giants from making it through the gate and to the refuge that awaits within.

(Note: The following is not a fully fleshed out battle report, but rather a broad-stroke impression of the game. My wife enjoys popping into our games and snapping some pics of the miniatures, terrain, and us having a general good time. This can happen at any point in the proceedings, so the following photos aren't meant to be a blow-by-blow reconstruction of the game's skirmish, as might be expected from a more traditional "After-Action Report." Hopefully you enjoy the glimpse they provide into our game regardless!)

Brina, Fire Giant Mistress

Frinn, fire giant refugee on the run...


These dwarf crossbowmen hiding in the woods managed to kill a dire wold early on, but its siblings race forward for revenge.
If the fire giants could just make it to the stronghold's gate...


"So, that's +1 for the giant's 'Huge' trait, but disregard that because your leader has the 'Giant Slayer' trait...however I've got you outnumbered, so that's a -1 on your Combat roll...." Okay, okay...you get the idea.
It was probably thematic to stand their ground and try to kill off all of the dwarves, but if I had been thinking, I would have just kept running with the giants for the gate and safety/victory.





Brina was the first of the fire giants felled by the dwarven hunting party.

Zach deciding how many activation dice to throw.
It took too long for these dire wolves to finally start mauling the dwarf sneaks taking pot shots from the woods.

Alas, Brina doesn't get back up...

With Brina gone, dwarves start hurling themselves at Frinn.

If the giants could have eliminated this dwarven "giant slayer," the battle would have likely swung the other way. His "Leader" trait ensured a lot of activations and group movements for the dwarves.









Why won't this dwarf just die?!? 


Homeless giants become dead giants.




Thrush's eye view of the action.



This is the bastard I needed to kill!






With their owners' demise, the wolves will now break for the woods and make their way in the world without masters.

Warband Profiles

The Fleeing Fire Giants

Frinn, Fire Giant Master (pts. 110)
Quality: 3+  / Combat: 5
Traits: • Heavily Armored • Huge • Huge Weapon • Leader • Lumbering

Brina, Fire Giant Mistress (pts. 76)
Quality: 3+ / Combat: 5
Traits: • Heavily Armored • Huge • Long Reach • Piercing Weapon • Lumbering

Dire Wolves (pts. 32 each) x3
Quality: 4+  /  Combat: 3
Traits: • Animal• Bonded • Danger Sense • Dashing



The Dwarven Giant Hunters

Klanin, Dwarven Giant Slayer (pts. 84)
Quality: 3+  / Combat: 4
Traits: • Giant slayer • Heavily Armored • Leader • Melee Block • Short Move
Dwarf Warriors (pts. 32) x3
Quality: 4+  / Combat: 3
Traits: • Block • Bludgeon • Short Move

Dwarf Crossbowmen (pts. 29) x4
Quality: 4+  /  Combat: 3
Traits: • Crossbow • Short Move

Special Rules for the Scenario

(1) Starting Positions
Dwarves: Anywhere in the middle third of the map, including within the woods.
Fire Giants and Dire Wolves: Anywhere within 1x Long of the map edge on the far side from the brother-in-law’s stronghold.
(2) Dire Wolves
Will flee the battlefield if both of their masters die or flee the scene.
(3) Surprise
As long as all of the dwarves start out of the Line of Sight of the beleaguered fire giants, they will receive the benefit of Surprise on their first attack. As per usual, though, if a unit cannot make an attack within the same turn in which it reveals itself (i.e., enters LoS), then it loses the surprise bonus.
(4) The Stronghold
The dwarves will not risk entering the stronghold or scaling its walls out of fear of drawing the attention and wrath of its inhabitants. This dwarven party was sent to try to pick off the vulnerable two fire giants, not engage in an assault against an entire stronghold of giant folk and their servants.
(5) Optional
If the dwarves cannot kill or drive off the fire giants within eight (8) turns, the stronghold’s guards take notice of some commotion in the dark and loosen three more dire wolves out the front gate to investigate and drive off any trespassers (the fire giant player gets to control these new units).


Victory Conditions

Fire Giants: If they make it through the front gate of the stronghold, they survive and win.
Dwarves: If they manage to kill or drive off the fire giants, they win. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Well-thumbed posts

Take the High Road: Making Cheap and Easy Dirt Roads

I have wanted some good roads to add to my games for a while now. My first attempt was a couple of years ago when my standards were a bit lower and I wasn't sure how much I was interested in investing in this new hobby. I bought some PDFs of cobblestone roads that I sized, printed, and glued to felt. The result was okay, but the way my laser printer  produced the roads ended up being quite reflective to the point of almost being glossy looking. The combination of glue, paper, and felt also meant the roads had a wavy consistency and almost always curled at the edges. I used them once or twice but was never happy with them. My sub-par first attempt at making roads for my games using felt strips, glue, and printed designs. You can see how shiny and how wavy and curled at the edges they turned out. I never felt good about putting them on the table for our games and eventually stopped altogether. I've been meaning to take another crack at making some roads now that I have...
17 comments
Read more

Playing with Yourself: 'Rangers of Shadow Deep' vs. 'Sellswords & Spellslingers'

As the year crawls to an end, I'm looking through this blog and noticing a couple of posts I started and never finished. This is one of them. Back in July 2019, I placed the photos on the page, jotted down a few bullet-point placeholder notes, and then never actually went back and wrote anything to post.   The post was meant to be my informal review of Rangers of Shadow Deep after my first game of it with Josh O'Conner, who set it up for us to try in his basement. I think I never finished this post because I was not very impressed with the game but I knew Josh was, and we hadn't been gaming together long enough for me to be sure my candor about the game wouldn't hurt his feelings and sour a budding gaming friendship. I consider Josh more than a gaming friend these days, and so I'll go ahead and post this with some very short notes fleshing out the bullet points I had left as a reminder for myself back in 2019 (at least the one's I can still decipher the ...
2 comments
Read more

Candid Photos From "Conan the Barbarian" (1982)

This post is barely gaming adjacent, but the Conan stories have informed much of my fantasy gaming since my first forays into the hobby. I've seen the John Milius adaptation more times than any other movie (probably over 50 times, though most of those viewings were on VHS or HBO as a teenager). The 1982 Conan  film was the first R rated movie I saw in a movie theater (age 12). The first convention game I ever played in was one in which I played the barbarian himself. The first convention game I ever ran as game master was an adaptation of Howard's "Beyond the Black River." For good or ill, I've spent a lot of time in that fantasy world. When I stumbled on an online trove of about 400 candid photos from various sets of Conan the Barbarian shot by somebody on the crew, it was oddly visceral for me. It generated a warm feeling getting to see these actors and sets from new angles, both in character and out, in situ and behind the scenes. Seeing Sandahl Bergman, Ge...
1 comment
Read more

Lost Art of D&D No. 2: Games Workshop's Holmes Basic (1977)

After Games Workshop attained the license to print a co-branded edition of TSR's 1977 Dungeons & Dragons basic rules book, they set about putting their own stamp on it, designing a new cover and replacing a number of the illustrations they deemed too crudely drawn for their U.K. market.  The cover art was by John Blanche at the very start of his career as a fantasy illustrator. Blanche went on to be a mainstay at Games Workshop, producing countless illustrations for them. His fannish enthusiasm for the material--as an artist as well as a lifelong gamer--has deservedly made him a favorite over the decades. I first encountered Blanche's work in the David Day compendium, A Tolkien Bestiary (1978), to which he contributed five illustrations that sit comfortably alongside the book's chief illustrator, Ian Miller. I have a special fondness for this book, having coveted it as a child during my incipient Middle Earth fixation. My parent's procured an out-of-print copy of t...
4 comments
Read more

Scrum Con IV: In Your Face!

The Second Saturday Scrum Club rejoined the fray on April 8, organizing and hosting Scrum Con IV in Silver Spring, Maryland. Although we ran a surprisingly successful virtual convention in 2021 that took advantage of its online format to invite all sorts of participants we couldn't have otherwise (Dirk the Dice of Grognard Files  in the UK ran a game, and I interviewed wargame/RPG historian Jon Peterson via livestream ), Scrum Con IV marked our return to an in-person format. Because  Scrum Con 2020 ducked right under the pandemic lockdown on the last weekend of February that year, we were anxious to see if anybody would remember us. Turns out any fears were misplaced...because Scrum Con sold out again this year! In fact, every in-person convention we've organized has sold out, but this year's Scrum Con IV was almost 70% sold out of its 225 badges in the very first week, a pace that frankly caught us off-guard. About a week before the show, we had sold enough badges that...
5 comments
Read more

Chainmail: Battle of Emridy Meadows

In my imagination, Chainmail has always been that shadowy precursor to Dungeons & Dragons that I was both intrigued by yet leery of. I loved the idea of a game involving mass battles in a fantasy setting akin to those depicted in the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , but I also had a sense that Chainmail , released in 1971 a mere year after I was born, was likely a clunky wargame that would be too frustrating to bother mastering. It also didn't help that my first inkling of its existence was around 1980 or so when I could never dream of amassing the miniature armies needed to play out these massive conflicts. No, back then I was pretty sure Chainmail was the province of grizzled old grognards who had started wargaming before I was even born. Even after my gaming rebirth decades later in 2016, I was fine with letting the dim past remain so, and was more than content during my first couple of years back in the hobby exploring rules of a more recent vintage and managea...
9 comments
Read more