Wood Elves – Treekin

Posted on May 20, 2024 by AJ

Treekin are the only Monstrous Infantry unit in Wood Elves (or indeed, any army from Forces of Fantasy!) Inspired the Huorns from Lord of the Rings, they are tough and durable in an army that is mostly pretty squishy.

A unit of Treekin, from the cover of the old Citadal Minis box

Having given my initial thoughts on both Core and Rare choices, it’s time to finally move on to the Special units in the army roster. Special is, I think, where a lot of the best stuff is in the Wood Elf roster, and certainly the units that are seeing a lot of play are in this section. I’m going to start with what used to be a staple in my old 8th ed. army, the Treekin.

Stats and Special Rules

Treekin are the only Monstrous Infantry (MI) in the Wood Elf list (in fact, they are the only Monstrous Infantry in Forces of Fantasy–all the other MI are eeeeeeevil!), and have a pretty standard W3 and A3. They’re a little quicker in combat than most other MI, having I3. They also have WS, BS and S of 4 (although who knows why they have BS, because they have no access to any kind of missile weapon!). WS4 is pretty good for this troop type – Trolls, Ogres, Chaos Spawn and Carrion are all WS3, only Minotaurs and Ushabti get to 4 (not counting Legacy factions) – although S4 is not super exciting (and makes me lament when they used to have S5 back in the 6th ed. book). However, they do have T5 and Ld8, both of which are the key stats for what I think is a key role for them in the Wood Elf army: as an anvil for hammer and anvil tactics.

Looking at their special rules, they are Close Order and are Tree Spirits (obviously!), which mostly means no character can join the unit. (Edit 2024-05-25 – Branchwraith can’t join because of Clumsy rule–thanks Korek). ~~that the only character who can join their unit is a Branchwraith (the Dryad hero-level character), and that they can’t use the Ld of an Elf character. Given that Branchwraiths are only Ld8 also~~. However, they can use a regular Treeman’s Ld of 9 if they are within 18″, which is very thematic. (More and more, I’m leaning towards having a TMA as my general for that 18″ Ld 10 bubble, but keeping her as L2 on Battle Magic so she can just roll into combat, then also taking an L4 on another lore (Illusion most likely) – more on that when I get to the articles on Characters, and when the armies get to 2,500 points!). They are on 50×50 bases, so I really wish I could put a TMA in the unit, but sadly the Lumbering rule on Behemoths means that can’t happen.

Like all Tree Spirits, they are Flammable, Stubborn, have Magical Attacks, can Move Through Cover, cause Fear and are Immune to Psychology. They have a 5+ innate Armour Save, and a 5+ Regeneration save which, when combined with T5, makes them the most survivable rank and file unit in the army. Finally, they have Armour Bane (2) (making up a bit for the S4), and they each get a Tree Whack (same as a Treeman) and a Stomp attack (which will also get that Armour Bane). The Tree Whack is really only useful against other Monstrous things, but it is probably worthwhile in that case.

All of this costs 51 points a model, and for an extra 7 points you can get an Elder (champion) who gets an extra attack and can take Spites up to 25 points. I think the Elder is a reasonable addition if you have the points to spare, but likely any of the Spites you can take would be better off on another character.

So that’s the basics out of the way, now on to how Treekin might be used as part of the army strategy!

Treekin Tactics

First off, let’s talk about Fear. Most of the time, Fear doesn’t do much due to the Unit Strength limitation – if the Fear-causing unit doesn’t have higher Unit Strength, then this rule effectively can be ignored. MI units are a way to get a decently high Unit Strength and be able to overcome this limitation, but they are a bit of a points sink so that really only works at higher points level games (something our local meta is still moving towards). However, for the purposes of this article, I’m going to assume that you’re playing at 2,500 points.

I think Treekin can go toe-to-toe with most other infantry, including other monstrous infantry pretty well, although they do want to avoid stuff with Great Weapons. The larger concern are those pesky Cavalry units who can charge from quite far out and get that +2 S on the charge with lances. However, most Cavalry units seem to be around the 12-16 Unit Strength range, occasionally up at 20 for some Bretonnian Lance formations. If you have a unit of 6 Treekin, they have 18 Unit Strength, forcing those Cavalry to take a Ld test in order to charge. This is not a test that can be re-rolled with the BSB’s Hold Your Ground! rule, so at Ld8 (most Cav) there’s a 28% they can’t charge. It’s not amazing, but it’s certainly better than nothing.

Anvil

As I mentioned earlier, I think the main function for Treekin is as an anvil–taking a charge on the chin, Falling Back in Good Order due to being Stubborn, and trying to enable a countercharge from other Wood Elf units. You’re likely to lose 1 Treekin to charge (e.g. a charge from a Lance of 6 Grail Knights will kill 1.17 Treekin on average, ignoring challenges), but you’ll still get some attacks back and might get lucky to take 1 with you (about a 50/50 chance). The point is, the majority of the unit is still alive, perhaps all of it, and now you’ve got the opportunity to attack back.

In this role, the Treekin really benefit from having good support–ideally, you want some magical support in there too (any of the spells that grant a Ward Save make the Treekin even more survivable, for example, and Plague of Rust can make them very good against Armoured units). Like everything in the Wood Elf army, you want to be able to pick your fights as best you can, and have multiple charges. Having a good close combat unit ready and waiting to flank charge your enemy is Hammer & Anvil 101 (I talk about this a bit in the article on Eternal Guard–btw, I think they got better with the recent FAQ on the Drilled special rule, something I’ll cover in another article). Even just having that tactic set up can be enough to force your opponent to choose a different target, although really you don’t want to have those on offer!

Elves out of charge range, Treekin within charge range

While it may feel unnatural, it’s pretty common for Wood Elves to back up and move away from the enemy to force charges that are more beneficial to us. In this example above, the Heavy Cav can only charge the Treekin, after which they open up their flank to counter charges from Eternal Guard (with a lot of static combat res and Disruption) and War Dancers (with a high damage output). A savvy opponent won’t make that charge, but what will they do instead? This is where having a lot of archers is critical – putting pressure on that Cav unit to charge because you are peppering it with arrows every turn and picking off 1-2 models each time.

My general strategy in 8th ed Warhammer using the 6th ed book was to have Treekin, Dryads and Treemen to handle the fighting, and then lots of Glade Guard to shoot and put pressure on the enemy (they would then flee if charged). This is less doable with the current edition, because the Forest Spirits don’t quite have the damage output they used to have, but the principal remains the same. Avoid combat until units have been whittled down by archers, and then combo charge with everything you have. Treekin give you ways to keep your Elves alive.

Chaff?

If you read my Great Eagle article, you’ll know that Chaff is usually under 100 points. The minimum unit size for Treekin is 2, so for 102 points you can have a chaff unit that is both hard to shoot off (T5, 5+ Armour and Regen) and with Stubborn is likely to survive almost any charge to be able to continue to be chaff for another turn (albeit you’re likely to lose one of the Treekin when they are charged).

I think this is also a reasonable role for Treekin. Units of 2 are Close Order with a starting Unit Strength of 6, so they get +1 close combat resolution, and if they charge in the flank or rear, will Disrupt an enemy unit. Having only two in a unit can actually cause some enemies to underestimate them, but in a group charge scenario, you can actually win combat quite easily.

Treekin taking a charge from heavy cavalry, and then following up with flank charges

In this example, the Treekin in the first unit will likely lose 1 model – it’s hard to do 6 wounds to T5 models with a 5+ regen – and then FBIGO due to Stubborn. Their buddies will then be able to flank charge. No matter what the Cav unit does, it’s only likely to kill 1 more Treekin, which means it’s not going to wipe out either Flanker. In fact, it can only hit the Flankers with 3 attacks each max, and even with horses, that’s unlikely to kill even 1 Treekin, so most likely you will end up with losing the final Treekin from the first unit, and retaining both flank Treekin. The static combat resolution from the two flanked units is +4 – +1 for Close Order for each unit, and +1 for Flank attack for each unit. The Heavy Cav will have only have +2 (banner and close order) which most likely means you will win combat and grind that heavy cav unit down over a few turns (because they will have lost their +2 S for charging).

Obviously these are straightforward examples that I’ve made up to demonstrate possibilites. Being able to apply these examples in an actual battle can only come with experience as you (and I!) develop the skills to visualize the board and see what our opponents are likely to do, and deploy our troops appropriately.

Summary

I think Treekin are very survivable, which is a rare commodity in our army. Putting them in a place where that survivability works for us is key, and that can only really be done by looking at them holistically. Without archers to put pressure on your opponent to move forward and engage, the Treekin don’t have the mobility to really go find fights. If you place them well, and support them with other units to help on the countercharge, they will perform well. They’ll be excellent at holding objectives in scenarios that use them, and they’ll often still be alive at the end of the battle (if taken in larger units) so they’ll keep their points in those scenarios that are purely kill point based.

Have you used Treekin in your army? If so, how have they fared? Do you have any other tactics you’ve used with them?

Originally written for rankandflank.com.

Wood Elves – Great Eagles

Posted on May 14, 2024 by AJ

Great Eagles are the third and final choice in the Rare section of the Wood Elf army roster. I’m going to cover their usage just as a standalone Monstrous Creature, not as a mount because their role is very different in each circumstance (so I’ll take a look at that in a later article).

This is really an article about chaff. (Back in the 8th ed. Dimensional Cascade podcast days, we did a segment about chaff (starts around 1h: 30m, in case you’re interested – most of the info is still relevant to Old World). I’ll try to summarize the relevant bits here). But it’s also an article about the Great Eagle, who has some jobs that it can do better than other potential chaff units in the Wood Elf list. First off though, let’s look at the stats and special rules.

Profile of a Great Eagle

The key stats for the Great Eagle are having a high WS of 5, which means it hits most things it’s fighting on 3s. It has S4 and T4, the former really helping it to wound in combat, and the latter occasionally keeping it alive a bit longer (sadly, no armour save on a great big bird). It has I4, 3 Wounds and 3 Attacks (plus a Stomp), so it’s a bit more dangerous than it might first appear. This is a a high enough amount of damage output to have a good chance of winning a combat where the enemy has no static combat res (i.e. other chaff, war machines, and so forth).

It’s attacks are subdivided into one attack with the Serrated Maw and 2 Claw attacks (plus the Stomp obviously). The Maw is Armour Bane (2), Multiple Wounds (2), vs the Claws which are straight up AP -2. I wish you could opt to have three claw attacks but it’s not an option, so just bring a different colour dice for the beak attack.

In terms of special rules, it’s a Monstrous Creature, with Close Order (but sadly not enough Unit Strength to get the +1 to combat res) and it causes Fear (which is more useful as a way to avoid having to take Fear tests than it is in terms of actually ever making anyone else afraid). But the two primary special rules that make it such a useful unit are the Fly (10) and Swiftstride rules, making it very mobile.

So, now we know the basics of it, all the stuff you could get from reading the army book entry. But what is it about that these Eagles that really does make them Great?

Chaff – Great Eagle job #1

Chaff is:

Under 100 points
Ideally under 50 points
Very mobile
Expected to die

The Great Eagle punches in at 60 points, which is a bit shy of our ideal under #2, but it checks all the other boxes. It is in fact our cheapest unit, aside from having 5 Glade Guard (who are meh at being chaff, in case you’re curious, becuase they aren’t very mobile).

Here is a list of uses for chaff in Warhammer: The Old World in general, not just for the Great Eagle, but I’ll use the Great Eagle as the example in each case.

Control opponent’s frenzied troops
Delay or redirect other troops
Another drop during deployment
Meat shield

Controlling frenzied troops

For those of you who haven’t seen #1 in play before, here’s what it looks like. Make sure you’ve read all the rules about arcs and charging before you try to do this (p. 127 TOW). The reason that this works with a Great Eagle is because it is not a skirmisher (it is Close Order). E.g. this tactic would not work the same way with a unit of 5 Dryads. If you play other armies, choose your chaff for this role wisely. Apologies that the screen grabs from the Herald Battle Reporter aren’t all the same size (hmm, maybe I should add that as a feature ….) Anyhoo, where was I? Oh yes, the tactic!

The Great Eagle has flown up 1″ in front of this Minotaur unit (Minotaurs hit really hard, but are Frenzied). It’s flank is facing the unit and the Eagle is turned to look along the front of the enemy. The Eagle is in the front arc by beign placed off-center. As you can see here, 2 of 3 models in the front rank of the Minotaurs are in the front arc of the Eagle (it’s a good idea to tell your opponent what you are trying to do as you do it, so you can agree on positioning to ensure you get the effect you want). So now the Minotaurs must charge the Eagle and that charge will be in the Eagle’s front arc. The Eagle takes the charge, and the Minotaurs are forced to pivot 90° (away from the squishy and expensive Elves!) and, due to Frenzy, they can’t make a restraint test and are forced to overrun 2d6″ in the wrong direction!

Delaying and Redirecting

This is really the generalized case of the frenzy tactic above. Sometimes your enemy has a unit you just don’t want to engage with – with Wood Elves, that’s something with high toughness and wounds (you know, the stuff we want to shoot with Blackbriar Javelins and Habgane Tips) – but that’s too mobile to get a lot of time shooting at it. Or perhaps you’ve realized you’ve deployed wrongly and you need a turn to reposition key units before being able to properly countercharge with your Wild Riders. Sometimes it’s turn 5 and you just need to stop a charge on turn 6 and you need a speed bump. Whatever it is, you need a bit of time, and so you throw your chaff at the problem.

Part of the reason that the Great Eagle excels at this is due to having the Fly (10) rule and a 50mm base. Fly (10) means it can march up to 20″ and remember, you can still wheel while you march. A 90° wheel for 50mm wide unit uses up 3.1″ of movement, so any pivots you make while you’re flying will use up 3.1″ per right angle. Unless you’re really badly placed, that means you should be able to fly 15″ in the right direction and still be able to pivot to present a front flank. Even if you need to fly behind you, a 180 pivot about the corner only costs you 6.2″ so you can still fly 13.8″ – call it 13.5″ which is a pretty useful distance.

Deployment Drops

The only hidden information in most games of Warhammer is how your opponent is going to deploy. One list building strategy is to take plenty of chaff, like half a dozen units or more. By placing your chaff units first, you can force your opponent to start committing to where their forces are going to be deployed before you have to do the same. One reason I think the game is aimed at 2,500 points is to start to allow these kinds of strategies in the meta. Playing at 2,500 points allows up to 6 Great Eagles (my gut says 4 or maybe 5 is the right number), but that’s 4 (or maybe 5) drops where I’ve given pretty much no tactical information away to my opponent. Remember that all war machines drop at the same time, as do all characters. You won’t be able to outchaff every army (our nemeses the Beastmen have very good and much cheaper chaff options for instance).

One of the key advantages for Wood Elves is our mobility. Think of extra chaff units as being our ‘mobility’ in the deployment phase. In fact, one tactic I’ve occasionally used is the Feigned Flank, where the first 4-6 units I deploy are all on one side of the board (let’s use the left side in this example), but all those units are chaff (I include small units of infantry in this category of chaff). I wait to see if my opponent will place something tactically significant to engage on that flank, and they often do. I’ll try to keep them deploying on the left flank by placing the Wild Riders or some other Fast Cavalry unit out on the same flank (but maybe just left of centre). Then I place all the rest of my army on the right flank. All the chaff and fast movers can ‘redeploy’ in turn 1 by using their mobility and the space available to pull back over to the right flank, or they can move forward and act as speed bumps as normal.

Meat Shield

This is not a role that the Great Eagle is good at, but I’m including it for completeness sake. Sometimes your chaff unit exists to prevent your, uh, wheat? unit from being shot at. You literally put the tougher/cheaper/throw-away unit in front of the squishier/more expensive/can-actually-kill-things unit, so that the chaff unit is taking the enemy fire. The Great Eagle isn’t too good at this because it’s one model on a 50mm square base, but Dryads are good at this for shielding infantry, and Glade Riders for cavalry.

#2: War Machine Hunting

Another major role for Great Eagles is to hunt down enemy war machines. Typically, these are high toughness to shoot at, but only T3 in combat (T4 for Dwarfs). With the Great Eagle getting 3 WS5 attacks and a Stomp all at S4, they’ve got excellent chances at being able to take out a war machine in one round of combat. A 20″ march (minus whatever you need to make a the final pivot to put the war machine in charge range) plus a 19″ declarable charge range means you’re usually able to charge a war machine at the start of T2, and potentially survive to then hit the next war machine or perform some other chaff role.

#3: Bunkered Wizard Hunting

This one is a little unusual, but it’s a reasonable third option for your Eagles. Lots of players put their Wizard into a bunker of infantry or cavalry in order to make them harder to target (i.e. not get shot). However, an Eagle can charge the unit and because the Wizard (usually) has to be in the front rank, they can charge into base contact. The point here is that the Eagle will likely die, but you’re hoping to take 1-2 wounds off the Wizard who normally has no Armour Save and a WS of 4 or less, as you’re normally hitting on 3s and wounding on 3s or 4s. If you’re really lucky, the Eagle will survive for a round and prevent the Wizard from casting the following turn, and at the very least you prevent them from dispelling on this turn. Depending on how the enemy unit is configured, you may just want to use the chaff block like in Controlled Frenzied Troops in #1 above and force them to charge you.

Lots of folks like to put the Wizard in the corner of the unit, to minimize contact when charged in the front by another unit, but this can work to our advantage. In this example, there’s a Bray Shaman in the corner of the unit of Bestigor. By parking right in front of the Shaman, you are blocking line of sight for spells. “Ah, but the Bestigor unit can just shuffle sideways rather than charge,” I hear you say. They can, at which point you are most likely able to flank charge the Wizard and accomplish the same thing likely without dying (although the Eagle will need to be more at an angle like in the second picture to pull that off). And you’ve stopped that unit from moving for a turn.

Summary

So, now that I’ve gone through all three Rare options (Treemen, Waywatchers and now Great Eagles), I think it’s possible to justify each of these in the army, but in reality the role played by Waywatchers can also be played by other units, whereas nothing else can really be the Great Eagle or the Treeman. And with such tight points constraints on Rare, it’ll depend a lot on how many points the game is as to whether you bring a Treeman or not. Not all army styles will want a Treeman along as they are slow (compared with cavalry, scouts, etc.)

I think at 2,000 points (with 500 Rare points to play with), I’d want to bring a minimum of 3 Great Eagles, because I feel like I need to protect my squishy elves from uncomfortable charges. That only leaves enough to bring one Treeman. You can squeeze two Treemen in at 2,500 points and still have 3 Great Eagles, but I suspect I might want 4 at that many points. Will have to playtest some more and see.

If you’re gung ho for your Waywatchers, then leave your Treeman at home because the Great Eagle is perhaps one of the best units for supporting the Wood Elf play style–avoiding your enemy until the odds favour you the best, while peppering with plenty of arrows (and javelins!).

Originally written for rankandflank.com.

Wood Elves – Waywatchers

Posted on April 23, 2024 by AJ

Wood Elf Waywatcher, from Warhammer Quest, art by Ilacha (c) Fantasy Flight Games

I remember when Waywatchers first came out for 4th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I was working for GW at the time, in one of their retail stores. Nothing captured the imagination of a potential Wood Elf player quite like the idea of super stealthy sniper archers, impossible to see, impossible to target, but will kill you from a distance if you just walk close enough to their little patch of forest.

Over the years, that vibe has really stayed with the unit. If you’re reading this, I’m willing to bet that you’re nodding and saying “hell yeah, Waywatchers are what got me into Wood Elves” or if not you, then it’s that other Wood Elf player you know. They are so core to the identity of the Asrai as we know them today that it’s hard to imagine the game without them.

So, how are they in the Old World? Sadly, they have been overburdened by the powers that be with enforced leadership: they can no longer be fielded without taking a Waystalker, an 85 point hero-level character. That means I really have to view them in the context of how they are actually fielded in a list, and including the Waystalker in my overall thoughts on the unit.

My initial impression is: Waywatchers are cool and can do a lot, but the Waystalker makes them a real points sink and you’re probably better off using your models to count as Deepwood Scouts instead. Let’s see if I can convince myself that I’m wrong 🙂

Waywatchers

Let’s start with the troops themselves, and I’ll really base this as a comparison with Deepwood Scouts because these troops play a very similar role in army composition. Both units are likely to be deployed in cover, in the enemy half of the board, with a goal of shooting off chaff, war machines, or possibly heavily armoured units or foolish lone characters.

For 16 points a model, they are BS5 and I5, and otherwise have the same stats as the Deepwood Scouts (who cost 13 points base). They share a bunch of the same special rules–Elven Reflexes, Evasive, Fire & Flee, Move Through Cover, Scouts and Skirmishers–and I go over how those are used in the Deepwood Scouts article. However, you do get two extra special rules which are very thematic and an improvement over their Deepwood brethren: Feigned Flight and Ignores Cover. With Feigned Flight, you automatically rally after you Fire & Flee, which is a huge benefit for a unit that will typically be deployed away from the main body of troops (and thus out of range of either your General’s Inspiring Presence or your BSB’s Hold Your Ground special rules). Ignores Cover does exactly what it says on the tin: no modifiers to shooting at targets behind cover–it’s half of the benefit of Trueflight arrows, although you’ll still suffer penalties for moving & shooting and long range.

So, for an extra 3 points a model, it’s definitely a tempting upgrade to choose Waywatchers, even though they don’t have any rules relating to their lore about being epic at concealing themselves (which is right there in the description in Forces of Fantasy!) I’m guessing the optional ability to give them Ambushers special rule (+1 pt per model) is meant to represent that, but Ambushers is a terrible rule and you should never use it–a 50/50 chance each turn of being able to deploy is really annoying and actually kind of giving an advantage to your opponent: just stick with their Scout ability. Likewise I wouldn’t bother paying the extra 1 pt per model for Vanguard, just deploy them as best you can with Scouts and save the points. The other final optional upgrade is Veteran, which doesn’t seem that useful to me: you don’t want these troops in combat unless it’s late game and they are coming in to help mop up or provide some last gasp combat support (they are expensive troops with T3 and no armour!), and they automatically rally from a Fire & Flee roll (you pretty much always want to Fire & Flee when charged!). However, if you’re facing a lot of Terror causing enemies, or lots of chaff and you need fight out a combat or two, then maybe? Again, doesn’t seem worth the points to me.

An extra 6 points gets you a Sentinel, the champion, who has BS 6 (same as the Glade Captain!) and can take 25 points of magic items. You might think Asyendi’s Bane is worth taking, but I’d say probably not–you’re getting Quick Shot for 10 points and a 50/50 chance to kill yourself if you miss. Likewise, the Wailing Arrow is a waste of points (you have to hit and you have to wound and all it does is cause a Panic Test for 20 points), so I’d only take the champion if I happened to have 6 extra points at the end of list building as I don’t think it significantly improves the unit’s performance.

And so we get to the only really important decision you’re making, which is what arrows the Waywatchers will have. I’m going to ignore Moonfire Shot because getting Magical and Flaming Attacks is very situational, and if your situation calls for it, you’re probably better putting them on Glade Guard. Trueflight Arrows seem a bit wasteful at first glance, because you already have Ignores Cover. It also grants Quick Shot, which means two things: no penalty for moving and shooting, and you can Stand & Shoot (or Fire & Flee) from any distance. However, I don’t think you want to let anything get close enough to you that you can’t Fire & Flee (remember that Fire & Flee has a flee distance of 2d6 drop lowest, not 2d6 like a regular Flee), so I wouldn’t recommend Trueflight, as much as I love them. So this leaves Hagbane Tips (for Poison), Swiftshiver Shards (for Multiple Shots (2)) or Arcane Bodkins for AP -2. I think Hagbane is actually a better choice for Deepwood Scouts, because you’re hoping to roll 6s anyway, and it doesn’t take advantage of the better BS of the Waywatchers. Giving them Shards for +2 points is kind of like giving you the shooting equivalent of two Deepwood Scouts when you think about it: you get two shots at -1. I think this is probably a fine choice if your main job is chaff hunting, as chaff tends to be lightly armoured and lower toughness. Bodkins are also a good choice, as the Waywatchers’ higher BS means they are more likely to hit those armoured targets, meaning you’re hoping for a 4+ or 5+ to wound, and they’re only likely getting a 5+ or 6+ armour save. However, all of these are dependent on the number of Waywatchers you’re taking and what their role is … and that comes back to how many points you’re spending, which brings me back to the Waystalker.

Waystalker

The first time you read the Waystalker’s Hawk-Eyed Archer special rule you think “Cool, this guy can snipe enemy characters in units!” but as the recent FAQ has shown us, the enemy characters are all going to get a Look Out Sir! save (on a 2+ the hit goes on the unit). That being said, there are still plenty of opportunities to shoot Lone Characters who aren’t in units, or late game when units have been whittled down to fewer than 5 rank and file models. It’s currently pretty popular to have a fighty character on a Monstrous Cavalry mount because they get the 360° charge arc (due to being Skirmishers), and then keep them within 3″ of a Cavalry unit in order for them not to be targeted–Bretonnians especially like this build with their Royal Pegasus. A Waystalker can still target those characters without any Look Out Sir! concerns. However, they really won’t do much damage to those characters, who tend to be T4 or T5 and have 3+ or 2+ Armour Saves. Even if you give them the Bow of Loren so that they get two shots, the FAQ states that they’ll only shoot one enchanted arrow with the Bow, and then switch to normal arrows to shoot the second shot (why? no-one knows–the idea that they have two different quivers with different arrows in them seems absurd). So, realistically they might plink a wound off a character if you’re lucky. Other than that, they are a shooting-focused hero character with all the same special rules as Waywatchers, and BS7, for 85 points. Realistically, this means they are going to help Waywatchers in the same battlefield role they are already playing: chaff/warmachine hunting, or targeting armour and occasionally getting some extra hits on a lone character.

The Math of It All

So, is it worth it? I want to look at the actual math of shooting with Waywatchers + Waystalker versus a Deepwood Scout unit costing the same number of points. Obviously the more Waywatchers you’re taking, the lower the ‘Waystalker tax’ is in terms of percentages, but to reiterate what I said in my article about Treemen, the Waywatcher points are coming out of the Rare slot and so have to compete with other units that are very solid. Working backwards, I’m going to assume that in a 2,000 point list, you’d want to take 1 Treeman and 1 Great Eagle, and in a 2,500 point list you’d want 2 Great Eagles. That leaves 225 and 285 points available respectively for Waywatchers, so I’ll test out both values of unit.

225 points of Waywatchers at 18 points a model (16 + 2 for arrows) gives me 12 Waywatchers and an extra few points for a Sentinel. 285 gives me 15 + Sentinel. We’ll keep the arrow choices the same per unit when doing the calculations. For Deepwood Scouts, at 225 points I get 15 Scouts (no champion) and 19 at 285 (again, no champion). However, the Waystalker with special arrows is 88 points, which translates as 5 extra Scouts + a champion, so I’ll be calculating the odds using these totals.

Army Size	Waywatchers	Deepwood Scouts
2000 (225)	12 w/Champion + Waystalker	20 w/Champion
2500 (285)	15 w/Champion + Waystalker	24 w/Champion

Vs War Machines

For target, let’s choose my perennial “favourite” the Dwarf Cannon. It’s T7 with 3 wounds, and likes to kill Treemen, so it has to die first. I’m going to assume we are at long range or have moved into short range, which is pretty common, and that we’re using Hagbane because our primary mission is eliminating war machines (again, my most common use case). Most war machines have a similar profile, so it’s a good sample.

Not counting the re-roll for the Waystalker/Sentinal, the Waywatchers on average will do 2.89 wounds (and I’ve just realized that the Mathhammer app we wrote needs to have BS re-rolls added to it!), but a quick back of the envelope calculation tells me that the rerolls should inch the result up to that 3 Wound mark. For the Scouts, they are averaging 3.95 wounds, so let’s call it 1 Wound more. For the larger units, the disparity is greater (about 1.1 wounds).

(Maybe the units need to be smaller? Minimum size is 5, which would put the points cost at 178 including Waystalker … if I give them a champion, that’s 184, which allows me to get 12 Scouts. The wounds disparity is still in the Scouts favour, by about 0.88 wounds or so.)

Clearly, just for war machine hunting, Scouts seem better. If the target is behind partial cover, the Waywatchers will ignore that, but the Scouts will drop down to doing 3.34W, and if behind full cover, it drops to 2.81W … so shooting at stuff behind full cover (-2 penalty to hit) is where Waywatchers start to shine here.

Vs Chaff

What if we want to clear out chaff? Let’s give them all Swiftshiver Shards and see how good we are killing stuff with no armour save. For target practice, we’re using Chaos Warhounds–cheap, fast, and T3 chaff that are pretty common in the otherwise elite Warriors of Chaos army. For this calculation, I’m going to assume that the chaff unit is coming at us, to try and engage the unit in combat, and thus has moved within charge range (i.e. short range).

At the 225 point mark, the Waywatchers will get 26 attacks at -1 for multiple shots, so hitting on 3s (with the Waystalker getting 2 rerolls hitting on 5s, and the Sentinel getting 2 rerolls that hit on 6s) – I’m calculating around 9.2W on average, which will delete pretty much any Warhounds unit, or at least reduce it to unusability. The Scouts will get 40 attacks hitting on 4s (3s for the champ) which I’m calculating out around 10.2W. For the higher points value, again the wound spread increases in favour of the scouts.

However, as soon as the chaff is behind cover, the math swings dramatically in favour of the Waywatchers–at the 225pt mark, the Scouts drop to ~6.9W for partial cover, and a measly ~3.5W if behind full cover. I’m starting to see a pattern here …

Vs Armour

As a final check, let’s see if giving them Bodkins will change the odds in the Waywatchers favour. We’ll shoot at a unit of Knights of the Realm, who are T3 with a 3+ armour save–whittling these guys down is a good use of Bodkins, because T3 is going to result in more wounds than trying to shoot the T4 models such as Grail Knights.

Let’s have them be at short range (arrogant knights!), and we’ll vary the cover just as we have done in the previous iterations. The Waywatchers will all be hitting on 2s, I calculate ~3.4W to the Knights for the 225pt unit, and ~4.2 for the bigger unit. Meanwhile, the Scouts are doing ~4.1W and ~4.9W respectively. Again, without cover, the superior number of the Scouts does more for the attack than the superior BS of the Waywatcher cohort. However, as soon as cover is introduced, the Waywatchers shine: the Scouts drop to ~3.1W and ~3.7W respectively for partial cover, or ~2.1W and ~2.5W when the Knights are behind full cover.

Conclusion

You know, it turns out I have actually talked myself around somewhat on Waywatchers. If you don’t give the Waystalker any magic items (probably a good plan) and just run him as if he’s a super-champion in the unit of Waywatchers, then it turns out there is a specific use for the unit above and beyond what Deepwood Scouts can bring, which is either Chaff or Armour Hunting when those units are behind some type of cover (although it doesn’t matter much if you’re hunting high toughness war machines, because you’re rolling for 6s to trigger that Poison). Cover is pretty common, even if it’s just other models, and there are also a number of spells that provide it, so it’s definitely going to be something that comes up in games.

I also think there’s a psychological aspect to the Waywatchers, and Waystalker in particular, that is hard to put into math. When your opponent knows that you can snipe at things, it can make them think and play differently, even if the math is actually not that great. The risk of losing wounds to a sniper, particularly if you managed to get a wound with your Arrow of Kurnous shot, can really rattle an opponent and make them play sub-optimally.

So, Waywatchers, you’ve earned your spot back in the army. Plus you look cool as hell 🙂

What do you think? Do you play with Waywatchers? How have they performed for you in your battles?

Originally written for rankandflank.com.

Wood Elves – Stag Night!

Posted on April 15, 2024 by AJ

In 8th edition, I was a big fan of the Great Stag, I think partially because I’m Irish and we literally used to have the enormous elk walking around on our island (albeit 15,000 years ago).

Seeing the Stag back in our army roster made me want to think of ways to build characters for a really hard hitting and fun unit to play with. With all the various rules about characters joining units, I was a bit worried about not being able to make anything work, especially because the Stag is on a 50×50 base, and Wild Riders are on 30×60. However, Monstrous Cavalry units can join cavalry or infantry no problem, just not the other way around. However, there’s also a rule that says you can’t have more characters in the fighting rank than you have rank and file troops, so this was another restriction to work into my thinking. In the end, I’ve settled on a unit of 9 Wild Riders, in 3×3, with two Stag Riders, one on either side. This seems like it will work well enough, as it’s only 190mm frontage, which isn’t too bad in terms of being able to fit into places, and it meets the requirement to have the command group in front, while also only having 2 models out of 5 being characters. It’s also likely that both characters will get to attack the enemy, as the Wild Riders themselves are only 90mm wide – most units are at least 120mm wide when in Combat Order. It means not getting any rank bonus, but the highest bonus I could get is +1, so that’s not a huge deal.

Here’s a visual to get an idea of unit sizes. The dashed square is 12″ per side.

Building the Stag

The Great Stag is pretty cheap at +50pts, it gets two attacks, plus an impact hit and a stomp, all at S5, and everything but the Stomp gets AP -1 and Armour Bane (1). It also grants the rider +1 T and +1 W, which is a nice bonus for our T3 Elves. Finally, and critically, it has Armoured Hide (2) which means that your Armour Save goes up by 2. This is one of the few ways we can get a 2+ Armour Save in the army, starting with Light Armour and Shield, and using magic items to get the final +1. There are several choices for that last +1:

Armour of Destiny: 70 points, but swaps out the Light Armour for heavy, AND grants a 4++ ward save. Glade Lord only, obviously.
Bedazzling Helm: 60 points, gives a +1 Armour Save and puts opponents at -1 to hit the wearer. Still Glade Lord only.
Helm of the Hunt: 50 points (so can go on a Glade Captain), gives +1 Armour Save, as well as +1 A and +1 WS on the charge.

Not a fan of the Bedazzling Helm, just given how expensive it is. So that leaves me with the other two as choices. I’d also rather be able to take two Glade Captains and save the points, but that would mean only have a 3+ AS 🙁

But before we get into building the characters, I have to decide if one of them is the BSB or not. Wild Riders can take a magic banner already, but taking the BSB gives me at least +1 combat res, and potentially more depending on the banners I take. I like the idea of the equivalent of 1 (or more!) free “wounds,” so I think I’ll put the BSB on one of the Stags and give him the War Banner. I could give him the slightly cheaper Banner of the Eternal Queen, but it requires being close to a forest, so for the extra 5 points, I think the War Banner is the sensible choice. So, what banner do I give the Wild Riders themselves? I think there are three options: Razor Banner (giving +2 Armour Bane to everyone), Banner of the Hunter King (now the unit can Vanguard, all the better for getting into combat ASAP) or the Wildwood Banner (making the unit cause Terror). There are pros and cons to each, but I think I’ll take the Hunter King banner, because I don’t want this unit being shot at a lot, I just want them to smash hard and they already have a good amount of AP built in. So, for 50 points, I get +2 combat res, and get re-rolls on my break tests. I’m hoping I never have to roll any of those! I’m not 100% sold on it yet, but let’s try it out …

In terms of build, what do I want this unit to do? It’s really for wrecking my opponents combat blocks, so I’m going to focus on trying to optimize for that. I’m mostly concerned about annoying blocks of high armour/toughness infantry blocks like Dwarfs and Warriors of Chaos. So, on the Lord then, let’s start with Armour of Destiny for that very sweet 2+/4++, and now I’m T4/W4. I only have 30 points left to spend on the remaining magic items. However, I’m also pretty happy to just give the Lord a Great Weapon to make him S6. He has Strike First, which will cancel out the Strike Last, putting him on flat I6, which goes to I9 on the charge. Only something else with Strike First will hit him first in that case. Looking around, there’s not much else worth taking for 30 points, so I’ll leave it at that. For the BSB, I’ll give her the Helm of the Hunt, and also a Great Weapon, and see how that goes.

OK, let’s roll some dice and see how we do!

Mathhammer

Assuming the unit gets to charge, I’m going to work out how well it hits against a unit of Warriors. Obviously we should expect the Stag Night to do well given that it has a lot more points in it. I’m assuming the Warriors have T4 and a 3+ Armour Save.

We get two Impact Hits at S5, which is 0.72 wounds. Then the Lord will hit with 4 attacks at WS7 S6, resulting in 1.47 wounds. Then the BSB will hit also with 4 attacks (+1 from the Helm), also at WS7 S6, so another 1.47 wounds. Then the Wild Riders will go, 10 attacks (1 each, +1 for the champ, +3 for Furious charge, +3 for Frenzy) at WS 5 and S5 with AP -2 AB (1), resulting in another 2.37 wounds. Then the mounts go, starting with Stags: 4 attacks at WS 4, S5, AP -1 AB (1) gives another 0.72 wounds, then the Steeds of Kurnous will add another 0.25 wounds. Before Stomps happen, we’ve done 7.72 wounds … this is significantly over 5, which is the normal width of a unit of infantry, so I feel pretty good that there will usually be no attacks back. Then the final two stomps happen, to get another 0.44 wounds on average. With a static combat res of +3, that’s averaging a 11 combat res (vs say 4 from the rank bonus, close order and a banner).

I think for this to be worthwhile, it would need to be able to justify the points versus just having a similar width of Wild Riders. So, a unit of 12 Wild Riders in 6×2, running with the War Banner would do an average of 5.0 wounds on the charge … much more likely to be attacked back and then lose a model.

Cost for 12 Wild Riders with the War Banner and FC: 382pts with shields

Cost for the Stag Night: 785!

It’s really hard to justify spending that much to get such a small incremental benefit, especially as the 2+ AS on the stags only counts for shooting, if I give the characters great weapons. If I only give them cavalry spears they do fewer wounds. I do think there’s a good build of a Lord as a solo rider, with the Helm of the Hunt, but I’m not 100% sure what it would be and it’s going to pale in comparison to the fighting power of putting the same Lord on a Dragon instead.

I think we will get some special rules in the Arcane Journal which will allow us to build a Wild Hunt-style list (probably with Orion, would be my guess), so this is kind of in preparation for that. Maybe we’ll get some more rules that will make this a bit more viable (e.g. maybe our characters will be able to take the
Hunting Spears that the Wild Riders have) but for now I think this one sits firmly in the category of “very cool, but not very competitive” camp 🙂

Have you used the Great Stag? If so, what was your build and how did it go? Let me know in the comments!

Originally written for rankandflank.com.

A Hopeful Ending and a New Beginning

Posted on April 10, 2024 by AJ

We played our final session of The 23rd Letter play test this week, and wrapped up the story of Poppy and her baby.

After recuperating overnight (under Joy’s watchful care, and a handy saline drip), Poppy recovered enough from her ordeal to tell the group about what had happened, which really just confirmed all their suspicions from the previous sessions.

She was a telepath, recruited to be part of The Third Project, a government organisation that worked to keep the public safe from Espers. At first she had thought she was doing the right thing and using her talent for the good of her fellow countryment, but she came to realise that the folks running the Project (or at least her field office in Topeka) were actually working against the best interests of Espers in general, and about a year prior she had started working with a couple of Cells in the Network to supply them with Psilence so that they could avoid capture or detection by the Project.

While pregnant, Poppy realised that the double agent thing really was too much for her to handle along with a baby, so she decided to get out of the Project altogether and slip away into the Network. Her last act was to grab the entire stockpile of Psilence that her office had and bring it with her, but before she could get away, she went into labour. She had the baby, whose name is Anna, but the missing Psilence was noticed and questions started being asked. As soon as she was able, she slipped away. Leaving the Psilence where she’d stashed it, she traveled to St Louis where she was supposed to drop the drugs. Instead, she tried to meet up with the Cell, but the Third Project tracked her down and snatched her. She was able to hide the baby, knowing that help was on the way (and wanting to keep her obviously psychic child out of government hands).

The media was filled with accounts of the ‘Terror Attack’ on the highway from the day before, and Jenny had a meeting arranged for her with Internal Affairs the next week. However, at this point I asked the group if we could go into Downtime to test out those rules, which we did. I’ll handle the open plot points narratively at the start of next session (i.e. what happened in the Internal Affairs meeting, any developments on the location of Clark, etc.)

During Downtime, everyone has the opportunity to spend the Experiences they earned during play, adding new Qualities or Talents, or improving existing Skills, Talents or Attributes. Each member of the group got 12 XP (2 for each session, which is the middle of the road for our guidelines of 1-3). This led to some interesting discussions and changes in how we structure both XP and character creation, so I’m really glad we got a chance to do this part. For example, we discovered that the two very powerful Espers in the group had no real way to improve their Talents, which felt a little disappointing. Both players said they’d rather start a bit less powerful and become better through play. We also discovered that the costs of things was off, so glad we got to address that too.

The Cell used their downtime to shore up their Hideout, choosing to make it large enough for four people to rest in (it starts only large enough for 1, but luckily Bryce has the Builder Quality, allowing him to make an extra upgrade during Downtime). Stress and Heat were reduced for the group (another mechanics discussion and improvement resulted from that!).

A big thank you to my five players and their characters:

Stefan – the precog hippie and Cell namesake Richard Moonglow
Ellie – the nurse (and Cell mom) Joy Mary Smith
Fintan – the pyrokinetic cook/builder Bryce Collins
Eve – the mind-reading ‘medium’ and con-artist Vonbella Alexander
Sarah – the overworked and overlooked Detective Jenny Blake

The Moonglow Cell will continue to function after a couple weeks break (giving me time to write some more story hooks!) and now has a channel on our Discord to help track actual play.

Originally written for lategaming.com.

FASERIP generator

Posted on April 6, 2024 by AJ

Back when I was running the Watchtower New England game using Marvel Super Heroes’ FASERIP system, I wrote a simple character generator. I found it recently, and thought I’d pop into GitHub in case other folks might find it useful. It generates random characters using the Ultimate Powers rules, which can then be tailored using the rules found in those books. I’ve found that generating a few characters helped inspire some neat NPC and PC ideas, without having to do a ton of dice-rolling and table look up.

Hope you get some use out of it! Here’s a character it just spat out. This guy has some great stats, but a pretty big weakness in Intuition. I’m thinking he’s kinda gullible? As agile as Spiderman, and good at fighting, and smart! He can turn himself into an animal and has danger sense … seems like a fun start 🙂

Form: Mutant

Fighting: RM
Agility: AM
Strength: EX
Endurance: TY
Reason: IN
Intuition: FE
Psyche: IN

Animal Transformation S4: GD
Elemental Conversion* MCo4: EX
Danger Sense M8: EX

FASERIP generator

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Wood Elves: Treemen

Posted on April 6, 2024 by AJ

Yes, despite everyone asking me for articles on Special units, I’m going to start with Rare. Why? For a few reasons:

There are only three of them
Special has a huge amount of units
Rare points are way more restricted
What you use from Rare potentially changes your build a lot
I love Treemen

First off, I’m gonna include Treeman Ancient (which I may shorten to TMA at times) in this discussion and I’ll often use she/her pronouns in this article when referring to the Ancient, which may seem weird. The reason is that my main Treeman model is the old Ultraforge Treewoman, who is very feminine looking, and I’m just in the habit of referring to her with those pronouns. I’m not excluding any other Treefolk 🙂 Her name, btw, is Ioreth.

Ioreth with her first paint job. She’s been repainted since, but I haven’t photographed her.

In the rare slot you have 3 choices. Waywatchers, Great Eagles and Treemen. Each of these comes with some restrictions: Waywatchers require a Waystalker (an additional 85 points minimum), Great Eagles can be up to 3 per 1,000 points, and Treemen are just expensive points-wise at 215. Given that you can have max 25% of your army in Rare, this means you have to be careful what you spend your points on. You’ve got a limit of 500/625 in 2000/2500 point armies, so you have no way to take three Treemen without also taking an Ancient. At 2000 points, you can only have 1 Great Eagle if you take 2 Treemen, which likely means you are only taking 1. At 2500, it’s easier to fit in both, and still have enough for either a decent Waywatcher unit or 2-3 Eagles, but not both. Figuring out which, if any, of these combinations you will take is something to think about up front, because it’s where you are most restricted. Special and Characters can both take 50% so usually that’s not an issue, however running 2 Treemen plus a TMA is a big points commitment – 695 minimum, and likely more like 800 after customizations – so there’s a lot to think about when building an army with that many Big Trees.

Two Treemen?! I hear you exclaim, or three?!! Well, before you jump to the conclusion that I’m crazy (I probably am), let’s go through the Treeman stats and special abilities and talk about why they are good, their weaknesses, and what unique properties they bring to the army. Then we can talk about the correct number to take (which, as we’ve now determined, is somewhere between 0 and 2, plus somewhere between 0 and 1 TMAs (yes, I hear you heckling that you can take 2 TMAs, but I’m guessing you won’t after reading this article because of other limitations … ))

Special Rules

First I’ll go through what’s common between Treemen and their Ancient friends, and then I’ll talk about the differences (there aren’t many, but it does change their battlefield role a lot).

Treemen are Behemoths on 50x50mm bases (or up to 50x75mm, but all mine are on 50×50, which is definitely the preferred size for fitting into tight spaces and having fewer opponents able to strike back at you, so try to put yours on those if you can). As a Behemoth, they are Lumbering, which means they can’t join any units, but they also get a free 90° pivot after a regular move (i.e. not a charge, march or flee move). This is something to use to your advantage with their Strangleroots attack, among other things … more on that later. It also means that their Stomps (of which they get D3) are Thunderstomps, and so have AP -2.

They have a 4+ armour save, and a 5+ regeneration save (which they lose if your opponent has flaming, because they are counted as Flammable). They are Close Order, which just means they don’t get to count as Skirmishers ~~(it doesn’t grant a +1 combat bonus as some seem to think, see p100 in TOW rulebook for an explanation as to why).~~ Edit: The latest FAQ now means that Treemen do get +1 combat bonus because they are Unit Strength 5 (or 6 for TMA). Yay!

They are a Large Target, making them easier to shoot at, which means you need to keep an eye on your enemy warmachines to help prevent them from taking too much fire before they get into combat. This is particularly important for flaming attacks (mostly from Dwarfs/Chaos Dwarfs) … if you’re consistently facing these opponents, you’ll need to hide your Treemen behind buildings (or your free Woodland Ambush forest) while your fast movers or Deepwood Scouts take out their cannon. Dwarf Rangers with a Runesmith are also problematic, but thankfully slow moving, so just stay away from them if you can.

Like all Tree Spirits, they have Tree Spirit (duh), Magical Attacks, and Move Through Cover. The Tree Spirit rule is mostly just a bit of annoying bookkeeping: you can’t use your General’s Ld if the model is an Elf. Magical Attacks have limited use in the game, but they will cancel out Regen saves for Daemons (and allow you hit Ethereal units like Hexwraiths). Move Through Cover is of less use to Treemen mostly because you can’t actually take cover in a Forest, or rather, you don’t get any benefit from the cover in there. However, it does make it harder for your opponents cavalry to charge you by being in the trees (they’d be Disrupted), while you’ll have no penalty for charging out, so bear that in mind. (Edit: it’s been pointed out to me that you’ll still have to choose the lower of two dice when charging, you just don’t suffer the -1 M penalty … this kinda stinks and I hope they FAQ it, but those are currently the rules!)

They are Stubborn, which is great – you know that the first combat you’ll be in you won’t just Break from static combat resolution, which gives you time to bring in some other units. Number one rule of playing as a Wood Elf: never fight alone! And finally if your Treeman does eventually die, there’s a 50/50 chance they’ll fall on top of the enemy unit due to the Timmm-berrr! rule. A regular Treeman also has Armour Bane (1), something the TMA does not get (they get Lore of Athel Loren and are a L2 Wizard), but more on both these later.

A Treeman can take up to 50 points of Spites, and TMAs up to 100 points. What you do with them will depend on how many Treemen you take. We really only have four to choose from (two of the Spites give Terror and Magical Attacks which Treemen already have, and the other one is for Elves only), and you can only take each once. Annoyance of Netlings can only be taken by a TMA, and I recommend you take it, as it’s only 15 points. I think a Murder of Spites is a Waste of Points (d3 S2 AP -1 hits for 25 points), so that just leaves Befuddlement of Mischiefs (30pts) and Lamentation of Despairs (20pts). Both are worth taking. If you’re only taking one Treeman, give them both Spites. I’ll talk about why further down. If you’re taking more than one Treeman, pick which one will get which, but do take them both.

They do have some other special rules: Treewhack and Terror, plus their attacks of Oaken Roots and Strangleroots. I’ll start with Terror, and talk about the others after, as we get into battlefield role for both Treeman and TMA.

Combat

The Treeman on paper outshines the TMA in Combat, having WS 6 (vs 5) and 5 attacks (vs 3), but losing a point in both BS (4 vs 5) and W (5 vs 6). The BS is only really important when it comes to the Strangleroots attack, the somewhat unexpected ranged attack that your Treemen can use, especially to stand and shoot. It is D6+1 shots, but that’s -1 because of Multiple Shots, and if you’re standing and shooting that bumps up to -2, meaning a regular Treeman hits on 5s, but the TMA hits on 4s. These are at S5 AP -1, so not bad (and Armour Bane (1) on the regular Treeman, don’t forget!).

Treemen, are of course, slow and flammable, which are their two main weaknesses. Initiative 2 means they will likely go last, often even when charging, so you want to be picky about when they charge as best you can be. Keep them away from Dwarf Runesmiths! Shoot those guys with extreme prejudice!!

As my opponent brings units up closer to my Treeman, I like to try to move the Treemen out to the flank of their units if I can, and shield them from a charge with some cover (or some Dryads), rather than charge or accept a charge from them. Remember, you’re playing Wood Elves – our job is to dodge, run around, and make it hard to be hit … play the game on our terms, not our opponents! Being able to jab them with Strangleroots is a great way to do this, and definitely an area where the TMA shines. When you combine this with a Magic Missile or two, the TMA is actually pretty decent at range.

When you do finally get into Combat, first remember to check for a Fear test (this won’t happen too often, as it’s only models with unit strength lower than the Treeman (5, or 6 for the TMA)).

Once you’re hitting, the Treeman’s Oaken Fists hit at S5, AP -2 (and again, Armour Bane (1) for the regular Treeman), so they are no slouch. You’re also getting D3 Thunderstomps at the end. If you’re facing lower initiative models, particularly if they have multiple wounds, then this is the time to use a Tree Whack. Swap one of your Oaken Fists attacks for this special one, and you force one of the models in a unit that you’re in combat with to take an Initiative test. It’s important to remember they don’t need to be in base contact, so I’ve used this on Damosels who are hiding in the back of a Lance formation for instance–it’s especially good on Wizards as they tend to have whatever the base Initiative is for the faction, often 3 or lower, and obviously great vs Dwarfs or Ogres. If they fail the test, they take D3 S5 hits, with no Armour Saves (they get ward/regen still). Not bad, eh? This is also where Befuddlement of Mischiefs comes in handy. In addition to making your opponent fight at WS -1, it makes them Init -1, so they are more likely to get Whacked!

Treeman Ancient

I think the TMA makes an excellent General, because they are Ld 10 and a Large Target, meaning you’ve got an 18″ command range for that high leadership. They’re also very hard to kill, which means you’re likely conserving points for both the model and keeping your general alive. And EVERY model in the army can use their leadership (whereas your Tree Spirits can’t use an Elf’s leadership). I run Ioreth as my General in every game.

Also, the TMA can still shine in close combat, even with only 3 attacks, because they are a Wizard and have access to Battle Magic. Hammerhand is the Signature spell, giving them 2d3 S4 AP -2 hits, which helps make up for fewer attacks. It goes off on a 7+, so it’s pretty likely to be cast even if you don’t take any extra levels of Wizard on the TMA. Battle Magic also gives you access to Fireball to use in the Shooting phase alongside the Strangleroots. The rest of the lore is pretty useful, so it’s been my default for the TMA to date. I’m experimenting with Elementalism, which is more of a supporting lore for the rest of the army, rather than making the TMA useful on their own. I’ll probably do a separate article about Magic Lores later, when I’ve had more results. For now, I’m recommending Battle Magic for the TMA. Oh, and you remembered to take the Annoyance of Netlings on the TMA, right? So all your opponents attacks are at -1 to hit, when you’re in a challenge. It’s not an essential part of the kit out, so if you have another character that you’d rather take that Spite on, that’s probably OK.

The Terror Bit

Treemen cause Terror (and thus also Fear), and are themselves Immune to Psychology. Terror can be a very useful weapon in your arsenal, mostly because it puts extra pressue on many units, forcing more and more dice rolls. Remember, a Battle Standard Bearer’s Hold Your Ground special rule DOES NOT apply to a Terror test, so your opponent typically only gets one roll at this (unless they are Veterans). Even an Ld 10 unit will fail their Terror test 1 in 12 times, which means this will work to your advantage more often than you (or your opponent) might think. For reference, the more common Ld 9 will fail 1 in 6 times, and Ld 8 will fail almost 28% of the time (Ld 7 is ~42%!)

This is why I recommend you always declare charges with your Treemen first: your opponent must immediately take a Ld test, and if they fail they must flee. Then you can use your faster moving units (e.g. the Great Eagle, or cavalry) to charge into that fled unit and just wipe them out.

Earlier I mentioned taking the Lamentation of Despairs, and this is where it comes in handy. You have to be within 6″ (the big downside, 9″ would’ve been so much better!) but it gives an additional -1 to the Ld of every unit within that 6″ bubble for the purposes of Fear, Panic or Terror. As you can see from the numbers in the last paragraph, that -1 is a big deal. There’s another magic item that can be taken by one of your Elf characters (Wraithstone) that does the same thing … any unit touched by both bubbles will be at -2 Ld, so now your Terror becomes a really potent weapon.

If you have multiple units able to cause Terror (like, say, 2 Treemen and a Treeman Ancient) and you’ve got the Lamentation and the Wraithstone, you could be causing several units to just turn tail and flee before they ever even get into combat. (We also have a Spite AND a banner than give Terror, so you could easily have 4-5 Terror Causing units to really lean into this type of build). You’ll need to have Great Eagles, Warhawk Riders, or perhaps even some skirmishing Glade Riders close by to run them down (heck, any cavalry will do, but these ones will probably be the most capable given their greater manoeuvrability). I think there’s probably nothing more Wood Elfy than having the forest suddenly come alive and scare the living crap out of your enemies so that you can kill them while they flee and make sure they never step foot in Athel Loren again!

Summary

Phew! If you’re still with me, well done! I think Treemen are underrated and people don’t take them terribly seriously (everybody’s hot for Dragons right now too). However, at T6 with 5 or 6 Wounds and a 4+/5++, they are very survivable, and the can fit into small spaces to hit flanks or force advantageous charges for you. Give them a try, and try 2-3 on the battlefield at once, if you can. I think you’ll enjoy it!

What’s been your experience with Treemen? Let me know in the comments!

Originally written for rankandflank.com.

Venting Pyrokinetics

Posted on April 1, 2024 by AJ

Our fourth and fifth in-game sessions of the 23rd Letter saw quite a lot of action! I’ll give a brief summary, and then talk about some of the rules that I think were interesting. I’ll put a * and a number on some rules I’m going to talk about at the end.

Everybody woke up in the morning after not having slept very well, and discovered that they had had similar dreams … after some discussion, they determined that maybe the baby’s mother was being held captive somewhere near the Gateway Arch and a McDonalds. Richard (the precog) had an inkling that something big was going to go down, and made a few preparations[*1]. Meanwhile, Vonbella (the telepath) was able to remotely connect to Poppy, the woman in their dreams and the presumed mother of the baby, and find out that she was going to be moved out of the city later today!

Richard (backed up by Jenny the detective) met up with Royal, the Cell’s command and control contact, and got some info that helped fill in some gaps: Poppy had been a double agent within a government Project, secretly working for the Network to help supply them with Psilence (a necessary drug to help reduce Stress). The group pieced together that she’d been compromised and had tried to escape but had been caught, succeeding only in smuggling out her baby (and hiding a stash of Psilence somewhere also). Just as Richard finished up chatting with Royal, Vonbella got an urgent telepathic message from Poppy – she was being moved now!

Luckily, it turned out that she was halfway between Richard/Jenny in one car and Vonbella/Bryce (the pyrokinetic) in another[*1]. Joy (the nurse) had decided to take the baby back to her apartment … thankfully! Both pairs got into their car and tried to use Poppy’s weak telepathic messages to help triangulate her position. They eventually caught up to the SUV that the agents were transporting her in, but by this stage they were all on the freeway and heading out of the city.

Bryce used his powers[*2] to burn out one of the tyres on the government vehicle, causing it pull over onto the shoulder. He and Vonbella pulled in front, and Jenny/Richard pulled in behind. Everyone put on on their clown masks and got ready to for action (well, Vonbella kinda cowered in her seat, but she was there!) (end of session 4)

Two armed and armoured soldiers got out of the vehicle and drew a bead on each car, while a third agent tried to radio for help. Bryce and Vonbella, despite their antagonism, worked together for the greater good by creating a Gestalt[*3] and using Vonbella’s telepathic powers to see through Poppy’s eyes and allow Bryce to target his pyrokinesis to superheat the soldiers’ weapons and the radio, causing everything to be dropped (although bullets were sprayed wildly). The attempt was successful, but given all the Stress that Bryce and Vonbella had, it caused Bryce to Vent[*4] creating a massive pyrokinetic explosion which destroyed the car they were sitting in and sent fiery debris flying across the freeway. Several cars crashed into each other on the other shoulder, and ~~one went spinning wildly out of control and did several flips, killing everyone inside~~ thankfully nobody was killed.[*1] The explosion was enough to kill one of the soldiers, and set a second one on fire. Jenny quickly finished off that one and the third with some skilled shooting, while Richard hustled up to the SUV and helped the heavily sedated Poppy back to Jenny’s car.

Bryce and Vonbella left their “car” (by this stage it was just the two seats they were sitting in, and a large, blackened crater) and hustled into Jenny’s car. They took off before backup could arrive, and found a safe spot to wait for Joy to come pick them up in her minivan–Richard took Jenny’s car and ditched it in the Missisippi, while Jenny reported it stolen, in an attempt to cover their trail.[*5] They got back to Joy’s apartment, fixed Poppy up with a saline drip to help her recover in bed, and that’s where we wrapped session 5.

OK, let’s look at the rules that helped this story move along.

1. Richard is a precog, which means when he wants to see the future, he makes a roll with his ability and each success gives him one ‘preparation’–a secret thing his character has done ahead of time, but that he as a player doesn’t have to think of until the action is actually happening. Richard’s player rolled 3 successes. Where did everyone get clown masks? That was one of his preparations. How come the bad guys were halfway between Richard/Jenny and Bryce/Vonbella? A second preparation (which in Richard’s case is part of his ‘things just happen the way they are meant to’ view on life). The third preparation went on saving the lives of the folks in the car that flipped: Richard had seen it coming and had called the cops to report *that* car stolen earlier that morning. Those poor folks had been hassled by the cops and never made it onto the freeway, but hey–at least they were still alive!

2. Bryce is a Major Pyrokinetic, with 2d12 in his Psychic Talent. However, he and Vonbella were both Stressed (mostly caused by each other!) – Bryce had 2 Stress and Vonbella had 3, so when he rolled to blow out the tyre, he had to roll 2d12 + 5d6 – 1d6 for each Stress in their shared pool: all psychics share their Stress pool when in close proximity. Luckly, he rolled 1 success and 1 bane, which was enough to blow out the tyre, but it also gave him another Stress (rolling a bane on a Psychic talent roll adds a Stress dice), bringing his total Stress up to 3 (and the shared pool to 6!)

3. Now Bryce and Vonbella are working together, they create a Gestalt – a unified effort to use both their powers in a single, combined psychic action. In this case, using Vonbella’s telepathy to view through Poppy’s eyes so that Bryce could easily see the guns and radio and superheat them. Vonbella is a Minor telepath with only 1d6 in her ability, but because the Stress pool is so high, she gets to roll an additional 6d6 and add those on. Each one has the chance of giving her a success, but of course, each one also has the chance of a bane … Bryce also has to roll 6d6 + his 2d12. After both players had rolled, they had 3 successes. They needed 1 success to heat 1 gun, and an extra 2 successes for the extra two targets, so they just made it! However, Bryce had rolled 3 banes, and rolling 2 banes (snake eyes!) on a Psychic Talent roll means that the Esper Vents!

4. What’s a Vent, you ask? Well, it’s those times when psychic stress builds up too much and explodes out of the Esper in a wild and uncontrolled fashion, wreaking havoc on the people and environment close by (but leaving the Esper intact, and now drained of Stress). Sometimes this is pure mental energy, and people around them might get nosebleeds, aneurysms, heart attacks … in Bryce’s case, it was a massive pyrokinetic explosion. To work out the size of the Vent, he adds on the additional Stress he just rolled (3) to the current Stress pool (6) and adding in his psychic power dice (2d12). So, he uses 2d12 + 9d6 to determine much damage is done – every success on that roll will do 1 damage to everything in close proximity! Bear in mind, 3 damage is usually enough to cause a critical injury, so this was a HUGE explosion! Luckily, because she was part of the Gestalt that resulted in the Vent, Vonbella is also unaffected by the explosion. However, the car was more or less vaporized, and the explosion rolled out in a huge fireball … one dice drops for every zone (10m), so there effects felt up to 100m away!

5. The Network Cell tracks a score called Heat, which is a measure of how much external observation and pressure there is on the group and their activities. The group’s Heat score went up by three over the course of this session, 1 for each crime they committed (the freeway shootings/explosion and then ditching a car in the river), and an extra 1 for the extravagance of the explosion–it was certainly newsworthy! The higher the Heat score, the more likely there will be some kind of external interference, in the form of police, feds or worse …

Anyway, we have one last session to do for our playtest, where we will wrap up the story line of Poppy and Baby Blue, and then have some Downtime–more on that in my next write up.

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Wood Elves: Deepwood Scouts

Posted on March 26, 2024 by AJ

Cover Art is “Stealth” by Hector Becantur

Apologies for the delays to this final write up on Wood Elf core units. I’ve been busy getting the play test version of a roleplaying game finished (if you’re interested, it’s called The 23rd Letter and you can join the play test / Discord over on LateGaming.com), and now that’s out of the way I can compose my thoughts on what I think is probably the #1 choice for Wood Elf core, the Deepwood Scouts. For core, Scouts are restricted to one unit per 1,000 points, but don’t be afraid to make it a big unit if you only have one!

The statline for Scouts is identical to Glade Guard, but they cost an extra two points each. For those two points, Scouts lose Open Order but gain a bunch of extra Special Rules. Let’s start with Skirmishers, which is only upside for the role you want for these archers. Most of the downside for Skirmishers comes when you put them into combat, but you really don’t want your Scouts in combat anyways. As Skirmishers they get a 360° firing arc, and are at -1 to be hit by your enemy shooting–when dealing with unarmoured T3 Elves, you want every bit of advantage you can get in this regard!

Speaking of not being shot at, they also gain Evasive. Combined with the awesome range of the Asrai Longbow (32″ in case you’d forgotten), this means you’re able to shoot at enemies more or less with impunity. If you’re at long range, you can set yourself up at ENEMY_RANGE + 1″ away and shoot at the enemy unit. On the next turn, they are forced to move if they want to shoot at you (-1 for moving, -1 for long range), you’re skirmishers (-1 to hit) and with Evasive, you get to Fall Back in Good Order if they declare a shot on you, which most likely would take you out of range anyways! That means most troops (BS3) are hitting the Scouts on 7s. Now to be clear, you really don’t want to be at long range, but the same principle applies for being at short range. If you’re at 15-16″ away, you’re at long range for most other missile troops. So the enemy commander has to decide if they want to try to move into short range when most likely you’ll skip away and keep them at long range anyways. And if you have a forest at your back (and thankfully, Wood Elves get to bring one along) then you can flee into the forest and get an additional -1 for the cover.

If someone does sneak (or most likely, fly) into range for a charge, you’ll get to Fire & Flee, which is almost always the right thing to do because you’re not likely to beat too many things in combat and will end up fleeing anyways. Sadly this is not Feigned Flight (that’s a Waywatcher talent), meaning you’ll need to rally with a Leadership roll, so I think you need to keep an eye out for those pesky fliers and shoot them down if they come too close.

Finally, and obviously, they also get the Scouts special rule. My suggestion is to put them into a forest, which may sound obvious but I’m always shocked by people not doing the obvious thing. Place your Woodland Ambush forest in your opponent’s half and put scouts in it. In fact, you can probably put all your scouts in it if you have more than one unit. Obviously this depends on scenario, opponents deployment, etc. etc. but it’s a good rule of thumb!

That then leads us to the question, what role are the Scouts playing in your army? I think their number one use is to eliminate enemy warmachines. It’s hard to hide a warmachine from Scouts and still have it be effective in the battle. And of course, the ultimate arrow for taking down warmachines are those tipped with sap from the Hagbane, for some excellent Poisoned Attacks for an extra 2 points per model. Some quick Mathhammer will show that 16 shots at short range, or 18 at long range, will do 3 wounds on average to T7 warmachine with no armour (yes, Dwarfs are a little tougher needing 18 and 21 respectively because of their light armour). Would I take 18 Deepwood Scouts in my army? Absolutely (in fact, I’ll likely take two units of 15-20 depending on points). They’ll easily fit within the free Wood Elf forest, and they’ll use up more than half your Core allowance doing it.

Scouts: Woodland Ambush

Here’s a quick screenshot from Herald (my battle reporter) showing a 12″ x 8″ forest with 30 scouts skirmishing in it. These are 1/2″ apart. You can fit more in obviously, and likely these couldn’t all see the enemy without first moving, but that’s fine. They’re safe in turn 1!

For command options, ~~Scouts are limited to a champion only~~*, who can take a magic item up to 25 points. The only option that might be worth taking is Asyendi’s Bane, to give a re-roll to hit (with a nasty downside if you miss again) but the cost of that is 16 points (6 for the champion and 10 for the magic item) at which point I think I’d rather just have another Scout.

*as you can see in the comments, I just read this completely wrongly! I don’t think I would take a Standard on the unit, mostly because it makes the Scouts even more of a target for a combat unit to come take them out, for no real bonus (it can’t be magical, and I think that’s what confused me). I would probably take a musician, for the +1 to Ld when Rallying, given that you have Fire & Flee.

Deepwood Scouts are only 3 points cheaper than Waywatchers, but Waywatchers are just hard to fit into the army because you have to pay for a Waystalker first (85 points base) and then you are competing with points in the Rare section – Treemen and Great Eagles, both of whom are good choices. Compare with Scouts, who are Core, this is a no-brainer for me. Sadly the only character who also gets the Scouts rule is the Waystalker, so these brave Elves are out on their own!

This is my last article on the Core choices, as I’ve now covered them all. Having played more games and learned more about the rules, I think my original choices still stand in terms of ranking, and I’ll list them out here for good measure.

Deepwood Scouts
Glade Riders
Glade Guard
Dryads
Eternal Guard

That’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t take models at the bottom of the list! It’s more to say that from a pure numbers standpoint, I think the models at the top are more likely to perform well for their point cost than those at the bottom. Thanks for reading! If you’ve got ideas for other articles you’d like to see, let me know!

Originally written for rankandflank.com.

A precog walks into a bar …

Posted on March 14, 2024 by AJ

Now a few weeks into the first play-test of the 3rd edition of The 23rd Letter, I wanted to post some updates on what’s been going in the game, and a few reflections as both Referee and game designer. First off, let’s talk about the party, which in this edition is by default a Cell in the Network. If you’ve never player T23L before, the Network is the psychic underground, a loosely connected group of people (some psychic, some not) who help each other to survive, and to keep off the government radar. This game is set in St. Louis, Missouri, chosen because it’s a big city, in the middle of the USA, which none of my players have been to.

Richard Moonglow – in his mid-50s, Richard lives out of his old VW camper van and would’ve been a hippie if he hadn’t been born two decades late. He is a powerful Precog, but in his worldview “everything just happens the way it was meant to, man.”
Clark (NPC) – Clark is a Cryokinetic, an unusual psychic power which allows him to reduce the temperature of things around him. However, just before the start of our game, Clark went missing.
Joy Mary Smith – Joy is a nurse in her late 30s working at a local hospital. She first encountered psychics while treating Clark after he was in a car accident–when he regained consciousness, he froze his saline drip! She’s been helping the Cell ever since.
Detective Jenny Blake – Jenny works for St. Louis Metro PD, in their Domestic department. She has a chip on her shoulder about being overlooked for promotion or better roles, and helps the Cell partially out of spite for her job. She and Joy are close friends, having met because they are neighbors in their apartment block.
Vonbella Alexander – Young, blonde and classically beautiful, Vonbella is a medium, talking to the spirits of the dead to help her clients. In reality, she’s a minor Telepath, who reads her clients’ minds and makes up stories to fleece them of their hard-earned cash. Hey, everyone’s gotta make a living, right?
Bryce – Bryce is Clark’s brother and is traveling to St. Louis to find him. He works as a chef, mostly to help cover up the fact that he is Pyrokinetic.

Each player decided for themselves whether to be a psychic (or Esper, as they’re also known) without really talking to anyone else, so we ended up with an interesting mix of three Espers, and two regular folks (or Nulls, as they are sometimes called). We’ve had three sessions after character creation. Our first two sessions were played without Bryce, because his player was unavailable, and Bryce just arrived in the third session.

Session 1

Richard receives a message from Royal, one of his Network contacts. The group meets up at their favourite Waffle House to discuss the message. Clark’s brother is coming to town, which is when the group realizes that they haven’t seen Clark in over a week. The message also instructs the group to collect a package from a drop location. “Blue Monday, 3C, location Bravo.”

Jenny stops by the motel where Clark has been staying, only to discover he checked out a week ago. Some questioning of the staff led her to the lost and found box, where she discovered his copy of Call of Duty for the Xbox, which had been left behind under the bed. Why wouldn’t he pack that?

The group scopes out location Bravo: it’s a warehouse out in the suburbs, and it’s closed (it’s a Sunday). They decide they’ll come back when it’s open, because the message is a little on the cryptic side. Maybe they can just go in and ask for Blue Monday?

Notes: there wasn’t much in the way of psychic activity in this session, although Richard did attempt (and failed) to see if his precognition was telling him anything about Clark or location Bravo. This is when we realized (as game designers) that even though Richard was a Major precog, he was not any likelier to succeed than a Minor precog on the dice roll, and we decided that Major powers should get to roll two dice for their powers rather than just one. This is now so fundamental to how the game works that it was definitely a good call!

Session 2

Richard received a precognitive vision in his dreams, and decided that the right time to visit location Bravo was actually later that night. (As the Referee, having both a Telepath and Precog in the group gives me a lot of opportunity to help shape the story without being railroading too much. I realised I hadn’t given enough info in my cryptic message to be truly useful, so I added this bit in).

The group arrived at the location only to discover that someone had been there before them. Tire tracks in the ground were the first hint, and then the door to the warehouse being broken open was the dead giveaway! They went inside all the same, and in location 3C in the warehouse, in one of shipping company’s cardboard boxes, was a baby, wrapped in a blanket. A hastily scribbled note in the box read “Blue Monday.” The group decided they should smash up the warehouse a bit, figuring that vandalism would be less likely to draw attention than a break-in where nothing was taken. (The Cell received 1 Heat for this, bringing them to 6, enough for the Referee to roll at the end of the session to see if anyone takes an interest in their activities).

Joy and Jenny took the baby to the hospital to check it over for its health, while Richard and Vonbella went to a 24-hour Walmart to buy some baby supplies. They all met back at Joy’s apartment and deliberated about what to do. Eventually they decided to send a message back to Royal to ask for further instructions. While waiting for an answer, they tried to figure out what had happened to Clark, and eventually worked their way into his email account (passwords aren’t as secure as you think, when you have a Telepath for a friend). They discovered he’d posted a personals ad and had been arranged to meet a woman about a week prior. He’d sent no further emails since that date. Jenny took note of the location they were meant to meet for later reference.

The answer came back from Royal by the end of the session. “Split in half. Keep half and drop the other half at location Echo.”

Notes: Joy’s player spent most of the session holding a make-believe baby and trying to keep it soothed. I think there was maybe one or two dice rolls the whole session, and virtually no NPC interaction (apart from the Walmart staff) – the group just roleplayed everything out among themselves and had a blast. As both Referee and game designer, this was very positive feedback! The players know their characters and how their relationships and are happy just acting them out.

Session 3

Vonbella wakes up from some awful dreams, where she’s being interrogated, somewhere near to the Gateway Arch (the big landmark in downtown St. Louis). She tells the group some of it, but it’s pretty vague and the group decides not to take any action.

Bryce arrived in from Florida, after a long bus ride on a Greyhound. Richard picked him up and brought him back to Joy’s apartment, where a very suspicious Vonbella and Jenny interrogated him. At one point, Jenny pulled her gun on him, trying to provoke a reaction (when she did this with Clark, he accidentally froze his coffee!) Bryce, however, was not as easily triggered as his little brother, so Vonbella tried to read his mind, which led to some Pyschic Friction (this is a new mechanic, and basically the Espers push against each other psychically until one of them backs down … or explodes). Both Bryce and Vonbella came off badly from this incident, nursing some aches and pains and generally disliking each other intensely, but Jenny was happy that they’d proven Bryce was an Esper at least.

To help calm things down, Richard takes Bryce to go help in the local soup kitchen, and on the way they send a message to Royal asking for a face-to-face meeting – surely there must be some mistake, nobody could really be suggesting to split the baby in half?! Jenny spends some time during her working day to look at footage of the park where Clark was meant to meet his date, and discovers that Clark was grabbed by two men who injected him with something and tossed him into the back of a van! She immediately panics, and worried that everyone is at equal risk of being grabbed, sends the bug out signal to everyone (which the group agreed would be a picture of a Quokka). Everybody gets their emergency bags and heads out of town to a log cabin near the commune where Richard used to live. On the way, Richard picks up the reply from Royal, with a location for a meeting the next day.

Out in the cabin, Jenny brings the group up to speed. She may have overreacted, but everybody thinks its better safe than sorry. Bryce talks a bit about he and his brother’s past, how his parents were killed because they wouldn’t let Clark be taken by “some guys in suits”, and how Bryce’s talent literally exploded out of him that night. Vonbella makes some off-colour comments about his history, and pisses Bryce off even more, but Richard plays the peacekeeper. Everyone settles in to try to get a night’s sleep before they go back to the city tomorrow.

Notes: Bryce and Vonbella generated a lot of Stress dice on themselves and each other with their Pyschic Friction, so they are tense and angry. This also spills onto Richard because when Espers are close together, they feel each other’s stress. It’s going to be difficult for the group to get any sleep at all tonight …

Originally written for lategaming.com.