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This month I published a tournament report for Legions Imperialis, the Malice IV event. I need to stay in the habit of going to events and writing about them.

I also published the Solar Auxilia Guide for Imperialis. These are a fair bit of work but I like doing them and it’s illuminating for me. Going profile by profile you really have to make a lot of hard comparisons, and I’m sometimes surprised by the results that go against my gut.

What I Ran

The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford (Dolmenwood)

First I’d refer you to last month’s report on this. For our final session we picked up outside the tomb with the party waking from a well-earned night’s rest. I was a little worried we’d blitz through this session but they decided to visit the faun’s grove, and stop back in town.

Getting to town ended up being something of a comedy of errors. They needed to cross a river and I had them each roll a d6 to swim across, failing on a 1. This led to a chain of failures and slapstick antics that culminated in the party’s priest crossing the river holding onto a river troll that was busy impersonating a log.

This encounter proved the value of a tank as the troll was physically separated from the rest of the party, as the priest used his high AC to not take any damage as the rest of the party pelted it with slings and arrows. The troll eventually failed a morale check and fled, gravely wounded, I was impressed and happy that the party let it go.

Shortly after the encounter with the troll they encountered the Wyrm. I forget the series of events here, but on a strong survival roll I let them spot the Wyrm across the river from them, tramping through the woods. This let them get a physical description of it, but they avoided it.

Not much was to be found in town, though in a bit that we returned to several times the players were able to confirm that the dragon they’d been asked to kill was in fact a wyrm. The townsfolk were none too receptive to being corrected on that fact, but I enjoyed that the players had this extra knowledge, even if the town wouldn’t believe them, and would think them greater heroes than they were.

When they visited the faun’s grove they were presented with a pre-written bargain from the module. The fauns will give the party their potent sleeping potion (magical tree sap) in exchange for an item of immense sentimental value. The module makes a few recommendations for items within the module, but one of my players offered their fur-lined cloak. This was great, as the module had once again effortlessly let players go off-script, and I was happy to see this player sacrifice a treasured piece of clothing. He seems to think it won’t be hard to get back, but that’s a story for another time.

With the sap secured the players finally made their way toward the wyrm’s lair. They hunted a deer to use as bait. They’d obtained an explosive gem in the first session and put it in the deer’s belly, then soaked the deer with the sleeping sap. Outside the wyrm’s lair they laid the deer as bait. And the wyrm did take the bait, it came out, ate the deer, and collapsed, asleep, halfway into its lair.

And this led to a pretty great moment where the party all realized that an explosive, volatile gem, inside a deer carcass, inside a wyrm, isn’t necessarily going to just blow up. So a plan was concocted. The party’s Grimalkin (fae cat-person) would take a rope soaked in oil, crawl down the sleeping wyrm’s gullet, and cram the makeshift fuse into the deer. After leaving back through the wyrm’s mouth the fuse would be lit and…

And it worked. I had the Grimalkin take some damage rolls from the wyrm’s acidic stomach, but I loved the plan and it went great. The wyrm blew sky-high, scattering chunks of burning wyrm meat. I was really going for the video of the whale being exploded (content warning: whale being exploded), but don’t think I quite pulled it off. After the wyrm died it shrank to a small dwarf skeleton. This was something of a mystery to the players, they’d missed the clues and hints about this, so they didn’t really know why that happened.

The fact that they didn’t have a trophy of the kill (or at least one that made sense) was going to be the last problem to solve. However, on returning to town the party’s Woodgrue (fae bat person) bard succeeded so well on her charisma check that she convinced the town reeve right away. She was so successful that she became known as the hero who slew the mighty black dragon and the day was declared Whipsy’s Day henceforth.

I thought this was a fun note to end on, so we did. I really enjoyed this party, and this module.

As for things that I don’t think worked well, the party had hirelings which we both constantly forgot. I think a more combat-heavy adventure could have helped here, but I don’t have much experience GMing hirelings so it’s something I need to work on.

What I Played

Brindlewood Bay

I’d read Brindlewood a while back but had not played it. It’s a Powered by the Apocalypse game that has now inspired a number of Carved from Brindlewood games. Brindlewood Bay itself is set in a sleepy New England town where the players play retired women who moonlight from their book club as detectives. It’s very Murder She Wrote and it’s fantastic.

We played Dad Overboard, an adventure about the death of a very rich man after he fell off the side of his very expensive boat. Brindlewood plays fast and is mostly about making rolls to get clues.

And clues are where the system shows its real ambition. The adventures in this game have no set solution. Players get clues, use those clues to form an explanation of the mystery at hand, and dice, not the GM or adventure, decide if they were right. And it’s great. There is a lot of fun in players being able to shape their investigation to pursue any lead that strikes their fancy, and if they get enough evidence to support it, they’re right.

I enjoyed this a lot, we just did a one-shot. The campaign is based around the idea there is something darker and more sinister going on in town and I think I’d enjoy that, though I doubt this game would stand up to a particularly long campaign.

Legions Imperialis

I only got one game in but it was a good one. Had to reschedule it due to a root canal, which I don’t recommend (the root canal, not the rescheduling). Played against my friend Ben’s Solar Auxilia, taking my Solar Aux and some Blood Angels. We played with the rules to bring forces on one detachment at a time, which I had liked so much in Malice IV. He brought 2 formations, I brought three. Because I had more activations overall this meant I was behind on turn 2, but pulled ahead on activations after. With both of us bringing a number of planes this was pretty important.

I’d taken a Pioneer Company and he had not. I really liked the Rapiers I took here, I took a max-size squad of 12 quad launchers and they did a ton of work. It was basically a point and click infantry-in-the-open delete key, which is incredible. Thanks to them I soon gained a pretty big edge in the important “do you have infantry left alive?” question. The other thing that was really helpful was getting a squad of Rhinos to shoot up the board on turn 3, taking an objective, and also having deep striking Terminators to threaten another.

We ended up splitting the objectives on turns 2 and 5, but on 3 and 4 I held the majority to come out with the win. The staggered deployment really is a good way to play the game and helps the first turn go faster, while also not losing half your army by turn 2. At the end of the game both armies were hurting but still had 6+ units on the table.

I still really enjoy this game, but there are a few parts of the Solar Auxilia mirror I don’t love. The first is the plane situation, they’re so good, and so important that you really have to play turns around them, and whoever gets the first plane-on-plane shot has a big edge. The other thing I don’t love is the Shadowsword duel. Shadowswords can delete 100+ points a turn in this mirror, but if you both have one or more of them it’s a very initiative-based question of who can get the first shot. I tried something very cute on turn 2, I hid my Shadowsword behind my Stormhammer that his Shadowsword could see. The thought was he shoots my Stormhammer, I can then take him out with my Shadowsword. This was a very bad plan as he had me out-activated on turn 2 and my Shadowsword had to take its shot (and miss) at a bomber flying overhead.

What I Hobbied

I’m trying to really polish off my Solar Auxilia, which is a big project as I have a lot of it, but things move so fast with Imperialis painting. I painted up this set of tanks and walkers, and later in the month got down a number of Ogryn and some Malcadors. I have a lot of Reapers almost done as well.

I’ve also started on some other projects that I’ll talk about more next month.

What I Bought

Various OSR PoDs - Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, Fly Me to the Moon, Mike’s Dungeons

I needed to order something off of DriveThruRPG so I added a couple of books that had been in my cart to the order. The first two of these seem like great settings and I’m excited to read them, both very much in the weird space for OSR. Mike’s Dungeons is a very cool product, it reminds me of The Habitition of the Stone Giant Lord in that they’re both products that aim to reflect the reality of RPG play several decades ago. I’ve not read any of Geoffrey McKinney’s work but he seems to put out really interesting stuff.

Rangers of Shadow Deep: Run Down the Racklan

This was the book I “needed” to buy on DTRPG. Some friends and I are planning an event for later in the year and part of it will be run with Rangers of Shadow Deep. RoSD is a skirmish game designed for co-op or solo play, and we’re going to use it as part of a narrative event. This book is an adventure/supplement for RoSD that adds a set of RPG rules on top. With this and the normal rules we think we’ll have a good setup for a miniatures-focused event.

Dying Hard on Hardlight Station Kickstarter Bundle

I got the Hardlight Trinity Collection which includes three slipcases for Dying Hard, Nirvana on Fire, and Awaiting the Burning Gods. And I’ll be honest, I got this bundle half for Awaiting the Burning Gods, which was crowdfunded last year. And I think it actually highlights a crowdfunding problem. I’d never seen Awaiting the Burning Gods (okay, it’s AtBG now), it was part of Mothership Month, a trend in crowdfunding of putting out a lot of related projects at the same time. And this does have some good cross-pollination benefits, but it’s also kind of overwhelming. I don’t think I’ve backed a ____ Month crowdfunding campaign, it’s too much stuff to look through, and backing 1 of 10 projects somehow feels like a waste to me. Why was this part of a group of projects? And backing 10 of 10 makes no sense. Anyway, just something I noticed. Back to this actual project, I’m very excited to be playing some more Mothership this year and a short campaign next year would be a lot of fun. Now to figure out what to do with all my various patches.

Rillem & E.V.I.L. - Every Villain is a Loser

One thing I really like is that a lot of game stores now have a selection of indie RPGs. I was in Labyrinth in DC and spent some time browsing their selection of indie books and picked up these two cheap ones I’d not heard of. Rillem is a solo journaling RPG, which is something I’ve been wanting to go back to, and EVIL is a fun looking GM-optional game about being henchmen. The book is gorgeous, laid out like a comic book, and it seems like it could be a good fit for a lighthearted game about goofy henchmen.

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting

This is the 3rd edition version of the book, and I sold my copy within the past decade which I really regret. I have fond memories of 3E but don’t really feel the need to go back to it. That said, this is one of the best setting books ever put out by WotC/TSR, and I have a lot of fondness for the Realms. It also goes for $200+ in nice condition so when I saw a “Good” copy on Amazon for $45 shipped I jumped on it and it came and yeah, it’s in okay condition. I’d like a nicer copy but that can be a down the road thing.

Coming Up Next Month

I have a good bit of stuff lined up, I’m going to run 3 or 4 games, and maybe play in another. I want to keep my playing Legions Imperialis momentum going so may look to line up a game. Then I have a lot of hobby to finish over the next few months and I think May is going to be when I really start to dig in.