Five Leagues From The Borderlands

Ok, so I played my first game of "Five Leagues From The Borderlands" this morning. It went smoothly. It's got a bit of a "Confrontation" vibe with deployment close to attack range and opposed attack rolls, but the mechanical order feels GW (rolls to hit, wound, save, etc. although not exactly the same.)

Anyway, I rolled up eight nomads without a leader ambushing my warband as the base scenario. I decided that Our Heroes were just finishing up getting themselves ready for the day at their campsite when the nomads emerged from the morning fog.

Combat began on the first turn. Oasasya, my aldryami (elf) archer neatly killed a nomad archer first off. Anasdiazi moved towards the left group of nomads. The nomads made melee contact, fights were fought, an arrow was shot, and then the remainder of Our Heroes moved in as much as possible. Aside from the dead nomad archer, not much happened.

Turn two went about the same. The nomads lost a nomad, and Our Heroes lost their Wily Rogue. The nomads again passed their morale check.

On the third turn, absolutely nothing resulted from any actions. All bowshots missed, all combats were draws. Moving on...

Turn four was disastrous for Our Heroes! Anasdiazi, Puddles, the Outcast Drifter, and the Roving Wanderer all went out of action! On the other side, the nomads lost three more nomads in the melees, and their archer from a lucky shot by the Hired Guide.

Turn five saw the two remaining nomads attack Oasasya, taking her out of action. Quackmore moved their direction, and the Hired Guide killed one more nomad. The remaining nomad passed his morale.

In turn 6, Quackmore connected with the remaining nomad and promptly dispatched him. Our Heroes had held the field, but suffered heavy consequences.

A fun part of this game is the campaign system. The overall story arc is defending a cluster of three villages from a variety of threats, categorized as Outlaws, Border Tensions, and Dark Secrets. Each threat has a numeric rating, and this game lowered the Dark Secrets threat to the village of Garakt from 3 to 2. But Anasdiazi and Oasasya suffered light wounds and would miss two campaign turns; the Outcast Drifter suffered moderate wounds and would miss four campaign turns, the Wily Rogue had moderate wounds and would miss three campaign turns, and the Roving Wanderer was dead! Puddles was merely knocked out and will miss no time. No gear was damaged in the course of the battle. The only loot was an ordinary bastard sword.