I managed to get all the terrain painted up in time for the scenario! It may have been a little frantic to get it finished off and roll up some Rangers by the end. That said, I’m still really happy with how useful the 3d printer is – getting those barricades printed and painted took less than a day. If I print some more, I’ll probably flip a couple in Chitubox to add some variation. I’ll also probably not bother trying to maintain the damn arrows stuck in them!
And then we had the scenario andddddd…. I think I may have fluffed it. And it’s my fault.
My plan was to modify a scenario from the Star of Allandore zine by making it match my Chaos Warriors. However, ended up replacing the Men-at-Arms and Archers the scenario demands with the equal RP values of Knights. This was a mistake and ended up causing a much less interesting mission – not having archers forcing you to take cover meant combat just turned into “everyone fight on the single bridge crossing the River”. We also got to enjoy just how swingy the D20 system can be with some horrifying first turn results that almost caused a player to be KO’d. It also took me a moment or two to turn on my maths brain (but I’ll blame the day spent painting). I also think I didn’t do my best rolling up the characters – creating the skills especially (due to the multiple skills for single build points) – I’m going to sit down and look at this before Wednesday’s game.
On the other hand, lets talk the good stuff – I’m a really big fan of playing co-op. Despite being the one running the scenario, I didn’t really feel like I was playing the bad guys. Passing the dice rolls around, it felt a lot less GM vs Players. I also quite liked the events deck at the end of each turn, throwing wrenches into your cunning plans such as spawning additional enemies or adding an overall effect. There is also a feel to the game’s mechanics I quite like, with a real sense of danger when against the Knights (even when we dropped some caltrops on the central bridge).
I really think that Rangers is going to be a system I end up playing a fair amount – aside from the panic of running the game, it was starting to trigger the bits of my that shows some excitement towards the game. I think I should have included some extra elements of the game that wasn’t just “apply sword to enemy”. Definitely going to have a little think before Wednesday.
In the mean time, I’m going to get some more fantasy figures painted up – with the variety of companions, it will be handy to get some more lined up.