Nightwatch: The Airom Reconquista

Oh, those lovable, roly-poly weirdo beardo dwarves.  Always delving too deep.  That's what the ladies say about them, anyway.  Over on The Channel we kicked off a second campaign of Patrick Todoroff's "Nightwatch" with an easy mission to cleanse the desert of the plague of nasties that have been, er plaguing it.

Our four heroes have sworn a vow to retake the homeland or die trying, and even pledged the first 60 sp worth of loot to finance the economic rebuilding of the old place once they clear out the squatters.  The names of our heroes (Jonal, Gav, Arthru, and Bob) were swiped from the commentors, and all fit the theme of slow and steady.  They are heavily armored, but a bit plodding as they trudge their way to glory. 

Yeah, we use dollar store plastics for monsters in our games.  We are old-school, and tend to sneer at those who think spending money is the same thing as playing the game. There are more people out there with that mentality than you think.

Two bucks for fifteen miniatures that work great in scale isn't just frugal, it's smart.  Bright and cheery, these reptiles are still fearsome and menacing once you put them into the proper context.

In "Nightwatch" your AI-driven enemies spawn every turn from one of four randomly chosen points.  In my first campaign, I struggled to remember which point was which, so for this go-round, I made it easy.  I whipped up some quick stone circles with ruined tiles that have the spawn number right there on the board.  When you're running solo, every little reminder like this frees up processing power for the rules of the game, and I think the little tiles look smashing on the table, too.

 

Shots From the Long Hunt

Four heroes wade into the stinking mire of the great swamp.

Follow the full action here.  This was the fourth mission in a "Nightwatch" campaign, a solo wargame that uses tower-defense style design to keep the player on his toes.  Waves of enemies every round force some difficult choices as each mission requires the player to accomplish a few tasks.  In this case three relics must be destroyed, but in others the characters must search four points for an item and escape, or even defend three points from the hordes.  It makes for a complex tangle of challenges.

With two new hirelings manning the oars, our dauntless heroes venture to find and destroy the remains of three unholy abominations whose power lingers over this dank land.  Here, our intrepid wizard takes a moment to scatter the bones of one of the dead nightmares.

Jumped by two giant frog men - literally - the wizard skeedaddles, leaving the hired help to clean up the frog mess.  

In this scenario, the terrain items are the only dry ground.  Movement between them requires pushing through the shallows at half speed for our heroes.  Not so for the frog men, who leap across the gaps, nor for the tentacled thing which pursues them through the mire.  They never got a clear look at the watcher in the muck, but they did get an all too close look at the thing's giant pseudopods.

They also got a first look at the most dangerous of the Crimson Wyrm's minions - scaly lizard men toting assault rifles who loved to hang back and unload from a distance.  Here, our brave wizard cuts them off with a wall of fire that obscures line of sight, and forces the lizards to take the long way around.  That detour means wading through the waters, and buys our heroes time to deal with the hordes of smaller and weaker lizard men that have them surrounded.

Nightwatch - Revised Character Sheet

 After playing through four games of "Nightwatch: Terror and Treasure in the Dark Corners of the World", I've found the character sheets needed a little tweaking.

This should be enough to carry your Guildsmen through the full Long Hunt.  It has more room for the notes that you most often refer to in the game.  That means more room for class abilities and spells, and less space for those rare artifacts.