Strandhogg Fantasy Game 1: Village Raid

We were supposed to play the second game of the FPW campaign this afternoon, but as wahj couldn't make it, Martin and I decided to play something else. I offered him a choice between 15mm Dark Age battles (Dux Bellorum) and Dark Age skirmish (Strandhogg), and he chose the latter... and was surprised when I revealed that I was using goblins vs dwarves! I asked Martin to set up a village while I sorted out the figures and revised the rules. He placed a few buildings in the centre of the table, a fence on two sides and an orchard on the other, and I added a hill, some rocky outcrops, a pond and a pig pen to complete the picture. I gave Martin three goblin warbands, and gave myself two levy warbands to defend the village, and a warriors warband to come in as reinforcements. The goblin objective was to grab as many farm animals as they can before the reinfocrements arrive. We used standard stats except for -1 Courage for the goblins and -1 Agility for the dwarves.

The goblins came on in three columns...



The dwarven defenders formed behind the fence, but as the goblins rushed forward the archers had to drop their bows and prepare for melee.



Immediately it became clear that despite the advantage of defending a linear obstacle, the levy were no match for the seasoned goblin warriors.

One goblin warband tried to slip past the village to get at the pigs, but two alert archers spotted them and sniped at them.

The reinforcements from the local lord arrived belatedly at the village.



Martin pushed his warbands forward quickly, choosing speed over missile power, and two warbands quickly despatched my weak defenders and were soon helping themselves to the goats.

The warband that slipped past the village had to content themselves with grabbing only one pig as the lord's warriors closed in...

but laden with his loot, the goblin warrior lagged behind and was shot!

The warband leader ran away, his men scattered and his hands empty. A bad day for the guy!

The two other warbands had better luck, and made off with several goats.

It was a fun and short game - we took around 2 hours from set-up to completion. This was Martin's first 'fantasy' game, but as there was no overt fantasy element to the game, it wasn't a culture shock to him.

As it turns out Martin has several LOTR figures painted, comprising of some Uruk-hai, Rohirrim and Gondorian. We can certainly look forward to larger multi-player battles in the future.