7 – The Keep

After our battle in a deadly ice storm, this weekend’s Frostgrave game was The Keep. In this scenario, our warbands set out to explore the ruins of a fortified home that features four unreliable teleportation circles. Whenever a figure moves on to one of the circles, it has a random chance to teleport to one of the other circles on the board.

We decided to start using the spell casting critical success and failure rules from Spellcaster #4 in this game. We needed to house rule the extra effects for a couple of spells because the original rules were written for first edition, but we thought they sounded like a fun addition to the game.

Before the game, I managed to craft an Elixir of the Beastcrafter using the Book of the Beastcrafter that I had recovered from our battle in the breeding pits beneath Felstad. This special potion would allow my spellcasters to start becoming beastcrafters. My wife’s wizard botched her casting roll for Awareness, but her apprentice succeeded.

My wife won initiative and decided to play aggressive. She double moved with a lot of her figures in order to get to the teleportation circles. One of her thieves teleported to my side of the board and started running from there towards the central treasure. Her wizard and assassin ended up together at the circle on my left. I decided to take a more cautious approach and only had my man-at-arms teleport early in the game, and he ended up appearing on my wife’s side of the board dangerously surrounded by a couple of her soldiers. My demon hunter got a lucky shot and managed to score a critical hit with her crossbow to stop my wife’s thief that was moving towards the central treasure. I also got our first critical failure with a spell in the first round when my apprentice tried to cast Strength on her snow leopard companion and instead left the poor beast feeling weak for the rest of the battle.

In the second round, my wife got our first critical success on a spell. Her wizard cast Fleet Feet which gave her assassin a bonus action in addition to a speed bonus and allowed her to hurry off the board with a treasure token. My wizard stepped into a teleportation circle and was transported to the same circle that her wizard was standing near, but then I failed in my attempt to cast Blinding Light on her. On the other flank of the battle though, my archer got a critical hit with his bow to take out another one of my wife’s thieves. Then my tracker got a third critical hit! This time it was against her wizard, and it was just shy of taking her out.

On my wife’s side of the table, it was now my man-at-arms and barbarian in a brawl with her two rangers and her man-at-arms for control of a treasure token. It was a rough fight with my barbarian going down first, then one of her rangers being dropped. My man-at-arms probably would have gone down soon outnumbered two-to-one, but luckily when my demon hunter stepped on a teleportation circle, she appeared where she was needed and took out my wife’s other ranger.

As I started picking up treasure tokens, a few monsters wandered onto the battlefield. A skeleton appeared on one flank and was shot by my archer. An ice toad entered from the other flank, but my tracker was able to safely take out the slow amphibian with two shoots.

After another couple of rounds, my figures had most of the remaining treasure tokens in hand. My wizard defeated a boar in melee to protect himself. My wife’s apprentice, at this point her last remaining figure, used Fool’s Gold to steal a treasure from my thief. My thief was able to catch up and stab her before she escaped though, and that ended the battle.

With my lucky rolls for shooting, this ended up being a very lopsided battle. My barbarian was the only figure in my warband that went down while my wife’s assassin was the only one from her warband that walked off the board. I feel like it was a good thing we were playing on my birthday so that I could write it off to birthday luck and have her not get too upset with how the dice were rolling.

With eight recovery rolls to make, bad things were bound to happen to my wife’s warband. Her wizard made a full recovery, but her apprentice gained a smashed leg to go with her missing eye. Her two rangers were both left badly wounded and will need to sit out a battle. Then one of her thieves died from her wounds. The rest of her soldiers and my barbarian made full recoveries.

I claimed a good mix of treasure from the four tokens my warband recovered. I got a second two-handed weapon with +1 Fight, a wand of light, gloves of strength, and scrolls of Imp and Elemental Bolt. My wife found a scroll of Wizard Eye. I decided to sell the gloves of strength, but the rest of the treasure was kept.

Neither of us found anything in the black market that we wanted to purchase. My wife is still trying to decide whether she wants to pay to replace her injured rangers who will miss next game and which type of soldier to hire to replace her dead thief. One she makes her decisions, I’ll post an update with the current state of her warband.

The Druid’s Warband

• Audric Silverbeard the Druid (+4 levels: +1 Health, improved Spell Eater, learned Petrify, gained Beastcrafter I trait from the elixir)
• Roslin the Apprentice
• Jormund the Barbarian
• Nils the Tracker
• Dimitri the Archer
• Red the Demon Hunter
• Magnus the Man-at-Arms
• Rhane the Thief
• Jarl the Bear
• Jaeger the Snow Leopard

The Trickster’s Warband

• Freya the Trickster (+2 levels: +1 Health, improved Strength)
• Ophelia the Apprentice (smashed leg)
• Kate the Knight (now recovered)
• Emilia the Ranger (badly wounded)
• Ronald the Ranger (badly wounded)
• Jamie the Archer
• Draco the Man-at-Arms
• Scarlet the Assassin
• Annabelle the Thief
• Eponine the Thief (dead)
• Dany the Woman-at-Arms (new hire)