Beastmen vs. Humans, Savage Worlds Showdown!

Picking up where we left off a few years ago in the Campaign for the Darkened Wood, the human kingdom had just come out on top in a three-way battle versus the Elf-Dwarf coalition and the dastardly Orcs. While the Elf-Dwarf gang and the Orc mob duked it out to the death, the humans rushed in, grabbed several magical (radioactive?) rocks that had fallen from the sky and would be useful in enticing a wizard to work for the human king.

Now the humans have departed with the loot and are making their way back to human lands. But first they must pass through a stretch of swamp. The swampy green ground on either side of the path through the swamp imposed a movement penalty on the humans. 

Any beastmen that may be in the swamp were immune to this penalty, owing to their swift movement and long legs. And the beastmen were hoping to get the meteorites from the men, in order to lure a necromancer to join their faction and add legions of the undead to their cause (any excuse to dust off old Warhammer skeletons).

We played this with the Savage Worlds Showdown! rules, using the excellent cards from Fistful of Lead for activations.

The column of human soldiers filing through the swamp.

Led by the brave and trusty Captain Trent, along with a scout hired to lead the convoy back to the kingdom of men.

Captain Trent close-up.

And a close-up of the local scout, a Norse woodsman who is handy with a bow and knows these woods well.

The convoy has advanced halfway across the board without incident. So far, so good...

...so what! Beastmen emerge from the nearby woods, charging toward the column of men.

Two beastmen charge the rear of the column...

...and one of the human soldiers goes down immediately, the victim of a nasty axe blow.

The humans rally and wrap around the beastmen, hoping to put their superior numbers to use, even though they are inferior to the beastmen in one-on-one combat.

Two more beastmen charge into battle further up the column.

The two beastmen at the trail of the column both have yellow Shaken counters.

One of the beastmen at the end of the column goes down, overwhelmend by the numbers of the human soldiers.

Things are looking better for the beastmen in the middle of the column, where they have temporary numerical superiority, and the human scout is wounded and has a yellow Shaken marker. But then a fortuitous initiative card removes the Shaken status.

Things go south for the beastmen at the back of the column, with both beastmen brought down by superior human numbers.

One of the beastmen in the middle of the column goes down from a lucky blow.

The beastman will breaks, and one of them runs off.

Human archers try to shoot the fleeing beastman, but miss.

The beastman runs off to live another day!

Things have gone very poorly for the beastman chieftain, who is one wound short of death.

The beastman chieftain flees sucessfully, expending all remaining Bennies (free saves) to get off of the field alive.

The beastman faction has been reduced to two beastmen. So much for getting a necromancer to build up their numbers. We decided to retire the beastmen as a going concern in the campaign. Any time they might appear from here on out would just be the two surviving members of their faction.

As a review note, the Savage Worlds Showdown system does account well for the weight of individually inferior combatants swarming superior ones. Had I appropriately accounted for this prior to moving in the beastmen, I might have changed how I deployed them.

Christmas Savage Worlds Showdown Game

Bit of a belated Christmas game post here.  This game pits the followers of Krampus, the Christmas beastman/demon that enjoys popularity in Germany, against Santa Claus and his Elves, with some raiding Dwarves that are hoping to loot Santa's workshop.  Krampus is tired of playing second fiddle to the jolly old elf, and it's time to settle the score.  This was also an excellent opportunity to use our newly assembled gingerbread houses for terrain.

The Elves got victory points for keeping Santa out of Beastman hands and protecting their packages.  The Beastmen got points for getting Santa - more alive for public humiliation, dead is okay as well - and for killing both elves and dwarves.  The dwarves got more points for gathering presents, but some smaller amounts for enemy casualties.  I had the dwarves, my oldest boy had the elves, and the younger son the beastmen.

Rules (skip if you don't care about mechanics and just want to see the action):  In my test games with Fistful of Lead:  Galactic Heroes - Game 1 and Game 2 - the action devolved into a bloody mess, and the mostly identical stats for each mini contributed to this dynamic.

For our first Christmas-themed game, I wanted to do something different.  Building off of the existing setting for the Campaign for the Darkened Wood, my fantasy Savage Worlds Showdown setting, I decided to use the stats from Savage Worlds with the activation cards from Fistful of Lead:  Galactic Heroes.  This fixed what I perceived as a weak point for the FFoL rules, the amount of differentiation between minis. Dwarves are stout and good in melee, Elves are good with a bow but weak in melee, and the followers of Krampus (beastmen) are fast and tough to kill. I know there are ways to make the FFoL rules provide some of this crunch, but it’s already been done in Savage Worlds and I didn’t see a need to reinvent the wheel.

Here's the table - Dwarves at top left, Beastmen at bottom right, Santa's village in the middle. 

Tranquil morning in Santa's village.

The dwarves approach from the woods, hoping to get in and out with a minimum of conflict.

Krampus sounds the charge with his horn.  It's on!

The dwarves rush in toward the elves.

The elves have dropped one beastman with a well-placed arrow.  The elven swordmaster rushes forward to confront the beastmen. He leaves one beastman shaken, but there's a lot of mad fur around him.

A scrum breaks out between the dwarves and elves.

The elven swordmaster gets brutally killed by the beastmen.

The beastmen rush forward into the village square.  Santa's at top right, and needs to get moving.

The beastmen look ready to dish out some pain.

The elves fare poorly once in close combat with the dwarves.

The dwarves advance into the village square, rushing to get the presents.

Santa, foreground, takes to flight and depends on his elves to create time for him to escape.

Beastmen continue forward.

The beastmen rush forward over fallen elves.

Aerial view of the battle.

The elven chieftain confronts one of the beastmen, and gets a helping hand from one of the dwarves.

Another dwarf joins in to help take down the beastman.

A beastman, top left, falls to elven arrows.

Santa continues his run for the edge of the field.

The elven chief is shaken, but a Remove Shock card puts him back into the fight.

Lots of corpses littering the ground, chaos in the village.

Dwarves making off with wrapped presents.

The dwarves who were helping the elven chieftain abandoned him, and now Krampus wounds him and knocks him down.

The dwarven wizard blasted the elf above and to the right of him with a magic missile.  In retaliation, the elf at top center of the photo fired an arrow that dropped the dwarf wizard.  A second elf then followed up with another arrow, a coup de grace that ended Stumpy Gandalf's run of good luck.  Dastardly!

Enraged the dwarves seek vengeance for Stumpy Gandalf.  Freya rushes forward to exact revenge against an elf.

Freya lays her dwarf low as other elves are tied up with a beastman.

Erik the Berserker downs another elf.

Krampus ends the elven chieftain's life.

Erik, having finished his business in the village, departs before the beastmen run out of elves to kill and turn on him.

The village falls to Krampus and his warband.

Santa made it to the woodline, escaping to live another day.  The dwarves ran away with the game both on points and in loot from Santa's village.  If you received your Christmas presents, don't thank the dwarves.  They didn't get a chance to take yours before the beastmen ran them off.

Rules feedback:

1.  I may never play Savage Worlds Showdown by the written rules again.  As written, cards are drawn for each unit instead of dealt to a player who gets to choose which mini or unit gets activated by a particular card.  Dealing hands to each player and allowing them to activate minis in turn both allowed the sequencing of actions and let the special card properties play out.  It lets players make choices that make the game exciting, which is what it's all about.

2.  I like the crunch of the Savage Worlds stats.  The troop strengths and weaknesses and exploding dice made for an exciting game.

3.  We had a great time with our Christmas game.  Definitely a new family tradition.