Song of Drar and Murin: Game 1

Well, I managed to get the tiles from my brother and play the first game in the solo campaign! I'll give a narrative of the game, followed by my thoughts.

The dungeon set up using the random method I devised... OK, I cheated - the first time I rolled, all the tiles were in a straight line, so I re-rolled.

The dwarves enter in formation. You can see the stat cards in the foreground.

The first room is... empty!

Feeling confident, Murin moves into the next room... and is ambushed by goblins!

Things get hairy for Murin, and only one of his followers recovers his senses in time to rush to his rescue.

The dwarves quickly regain their composure, and despatch the goblins.

Murin decides to get everyone organised before they head into the next room, which is a good decision because they find four goblin warriors ready to spring on them.

The Slayer does sterling work with his two-handed axe - I think he had the highest body count for the evening!

All right, boys, two more rooms to go!

Once again, an over-confident Murin nearly gets into trouble.

By the time they tackle the final room, the dwarves have got it more or less organised - warriors to the front, archers to the rear with clear lanes of fire.

I had fun.

Setting up was a breeze with the tiles and the cards made things simple and clear.

For this first scenario I used 5 tiles and removed the goblin commander and troll from the deck. The goblins are rather weak compared to the dwarves, and given that the dwarves tackled them one room at a time, it wasn't really very challenging for me. Well, except for the time Murin nearly got killed. I think a turn limit may be required to make the dwarves move faster.

The "terrain" on the tiles were great. There were narrow doorways which prevented all the dwarves from moving together, and enough obstacles to block line-of-sight and thus line-of-movement; this is important as in SOBH figures may only move in straight lines, so to charge a goblin around a corner a dwarf may have to make two or three successful activation rolls, which makes things riskier for them.

The goblin placement rule worked quite well, and added another element of variability to the game. I think I will add the rule that if a goblin is placed adjacent to a dwarf it counts as an ambush and ends the dwarves' turn.

In terms of tactics, I think I didn't really use Murin's Leadership special rule well. In the next game I will move the warriors in a group move to enter new tiles, and group the archers to perform concentrated fire from behind them. For all his Combat skills, Murin should not always be at the forefront of fighting. The slayer proved to be a real asset with his Lethal v. Goblin skill.

I will be busy for the rest of the week, but I hope to be able to play the next game in the campaign next week. I think I will let the troll make his debut next...