Battle Report: Campaign Testing

So for the third time my play group has been play testing the missions for the Confrontation Campaign I have been working on. The campaign document itself is about 80% done. Its nearly all written, fluff being about the only part not having gone through at least one completed draft. I had posted the document up for the other Sentinels for Rackham’s Confrontation to look through and make comments on. I’ve only had one response. So taking those comments in stride looks like I will have to work this one out on my own.
My gaming group has been very good at helping me to test out the missions though. We have a discussion about how they went and what could/should be changed why they feel that way and how that would affect the feel of the mission. The comments from my fellow Sentinel demonstrated I needed to put a lot more clarification on certain new rules elements that I take for granted as my group has been using them for a number of months, why they are set this way for the campaign.

So this week we play tested a mission called elemental portal. Fluff wise this area holds a number of stable elemental portals to the various elemental plains, a crew from Cadwallion discovered it and had been collecting mana gems from the portals before all out war broke out accost Pernicus. The map basically features three chests filled with mana gems radiating from the center of the map on three points of walls spreading out from the center. Surrounded by six elemental portals, one for each element. The portals work like Nexus of Mana but only for armies who’s mages work with the particular element. Part of the campaign document has an appendix with print out for the cards representing the elemental portals, including icons for the armies who have affinity for ease of reference during play. The key element of the scenario though is that once controlled the chests can be carried off by the unit controlling it so long as a member of the unit is in contact with it. So once the second round begins, the first chance to control happening during the first round control phase, the play becomes very mobile as the objectives get carted away from the center.

We played a three way game, I played the Ram, and my opponents played wolfen and lion each. For pretty much the whole game Lion was winning authority, I took it for one round, but the wolfen’s scouts and high mobility proved to be a clincher this game even though I and the lion player nearly ignored each other trying to stop him. I knew it would be a scenario in the wolfen’s favor, I also don’t think it was exceedingly in his favor. The end result was pretty close and he did a very stoic job of sacrificing his fighters to allow controllers of the chest to get away. I played a summon heavy ram company and deployed my summons in a type of undead wall formation to try and pen in the wolfen. Sadly aside from a slight delay at one point the wolfen player would assault and wipe the unit out with a non-objective carrying unit to allow the objective holders a chance to run for it. Still I had a great time and I think it was a good scenario.