WarbossD – Burrows and Badgers – A beginning

Having played a couple of test games of Burrows and Badgers, I decided this year to do the whole campaign thing with Trevor from my local gaming club.

As Trevor doesn’t own any models yet, we played our first game using two small warbands I had prepared from my collection.

My Warband: ‘Rebels with Claws’

Allegiance: Freebeasts

Den: Abandoned Burrow (Alchemy lab)

Warband rating 40

Black Magraw Creature type: Bird (massive) Species Rook

• Equipment: Staff, Mage’s focus (gem on staff)
• Spells: Life Eater and Paralyse
• Skills: Leader, Gifted (Dark magic), Flight, Delicate (2) , Weak (2)
• Stat upgrade: Fortitude (d10)

Sly Sylvester: Creature type: Fox

• Equipment: Pistol, Superior Black powder x 5
• Skills: Second, Expert shot

Scurvy Jack: Creature type: Black Rat

• Equipment: One handed weapon, Pistol

Little Kenny: Creature type: Mouse

• Equipment: One handed weapon, Light armour, Rope and hook

Reg the nose: Creature type: Hound (medium) Breed Beagle

• Equipment: One handed weapon, Light armour, Scent masker
• Skills: Strong(1)

Trevor’s Warband: ‘The King’s men’

Allegiance: Royalists

Den: Town building (Smithy)

Warband rating 30

Orlando: Creature type: Otter

• Equipment: One handed weapon, Bow, Broadhead arrow x 5
• Skills: Leader, Strong(1), Swim, Rock Steady
• Stat upgrade: Strike (d10)

Lieutenant Dorcas: Creature type: Tortoise

• Equipment: One handed weapon, Light armour, Heavy shield
• Skills: Second, Tough (2), Shield master

Brother Bertrand: Creature type: Mole

• Equipment: Mage pouch
• Spells: Lightning Bolt
• Skills: Tunneller, Short-sighted, Delicate(1)

Sister Celina: Creature type: Mouse

• Equipment: Mage pouch
• Spells: Heal
• Skills: Delicate(1), Weak(1)

Brave Magoo: Creature type: Mole

• Equipment: Two handed weapon, Heavy armour
• Skills: Strong(1), Tunneller, Short-sighted

The first battle

As my warband had a rating ten points higher, Trevor began the game with an extra Fate Point, making his total 11 vs my 10.

We rolled up the ‘Defend the Haul’ mission and deployed terrain appropriately.

For secondary objectives Trevor rolled ‘Deliver’, choosing Lt Dorcas as his messenger model. I rolled ‘Assassinate’, meaning I had to try and kill Orlando the Otter.

Turn 1

1) As the attacker it was my turn first. Spotting an early opportunity, I moved Black Magraw around the building he was lurking behind and fired off my Life Eater spell at Orlando. Sadly I only inflicted 1 damage.

2) Orlando responded by moving up on Scurvy Jack’s position and fired a fantastic one-shit kill bow shots on him as he stood in the open. Not a good start for me.

3) I moved up with Sly Sylvester and shot my pistol at Brave Magoo but couldn’t find Orlando’s luck and missed the shot entirely.

4) Spooked by the shot Brave Magoo sprinted for cover on the opposite side of the same building Sly was lurking behind.

5) Little Kenny sprinted up to support Sly in case he became engaged by an angry mole.

6) Lt Dorcas sprints up to put pressure on Sly as well.

7) Reg the nose sprints up to be closer to Black Magraw in the event he was charged by The King’s Men.

8) Lurking in the central objective, Brother Bertrand moved up to a window and lets fly a lightning blast at Sly, dealing him a glancing blow for 1 damage.

9) As the last activation of turn 1, Sister Celina drops from a window to be in range to heal Orlando.

Turn 2

1. Winning initiative for the round meant that I could go first. Sly ran for cover behind some nearby trees and discharged his pistol into Dorcas but a perfect shot was countered with a perfect defence and no damage was caused.
2. Dorcas retaliated by charging into Kenny who suffered 5 damage from the attack.
3. Knowing he was outclassed, Kenny ran from Dorcas, who missed his free strike, and took shelter with Sly.
4. Magoo repositioned himself to try and get into the fight.
5. Magraw continued his offensive against Orlando with Life Eater, dealing an impressive 6 damage this time round.
6. Orlando moves back toward the objective building and returns fire against Magraw but misses.
7. Confident that the cover and his flight ability mean that Magraw is safe, Reg makes a reckless charge at the objective building barking his head off.
8. Seeing Reg’s mad charge over open ground, Bertram repositions to a different window and unleashes another lightning bolt, this time at Reg, who suffers a crippling 8 damage. OUCH.
9. Celina casts her healing spell on Orlando and heals 11 damage undoing all of the progress Magraw had made on his objective.

Turn 3

1. This time Trevor won the initiative, and Dorcas goes on the offense, missing Sly who makes a perfect block.
2. Realising that the healer needs to go first, Magraw blasts Celina with Life Eater doing 5 damage.
3. Bertram blasts a second lightning attack into Reg, doing another 2 damage.
4. Kenny makes a break for the objective building. If the attacker ever has more models within 6” of the objective than the attacker then I win at the end of turn, and I need to end this mauling quickly.
5. Orlando joins the attack on Reg, finishing him with a perfect shot from his accursed bow.
6. Outclassed by the battle tank Dorcas, Sly makes a run for it, barely evading Dorcas’s free attack.
7. Magoo heads back to the objective building to consolidate the numbers and keep the defenders in the game.
8. Celina tries to climb back through the window to shelter in the objective building but rolls a 1 for her nimble check leaving herself stuck outside. She tries to heal the damage from Magraw but fails her spell check despite using a fate point on it.

Turn 4

1. Tervor wins initiative again and Magoo makes a charge into Sly doing 6 damage.
2. Kenny leaps into the building and tackles Bertram but misses completely even after using a fate point.
3. Bertram defends himself doing 4 damage to Kenny.
4. Sly attempts to escape Magoo but is cut down by the free attack and is out of the game.
5. Dorcas moves back toward the objective building.
6. Magraw again blasts Celina, this time dealing a puny 2 damage.
7. Celina climbs back down from the wondow ledge and hides at the base of the objective building.
8. Orlando again turns his fire on Magraw, who is saved by the cover.

Due to lack of experience we forgot the required rout test for the Freebeasts  warband at the end of turn.

Turn 5

1. Trevor wins initiative and Bertrand takes down a valiant Kenny easily. “OMG! He killed Kenny! The bastard!”
2. Magraw targets Orlando as Celina is now hidden dealing 5 more life eater damage.
3. Orlando and Magoo creep up to the objective building and hide to keep safe, anticipating the end of the game
4. Dorcas marches for the board edge, seeking to complete his secondary objective.

Turn 6

With the Freebeasts all but destroyed, no engagements occurred in the final turn and Dorcas made it off the board to score the Royalists secondary objective.

The aftermath

When rolling for injury rolls it was discovered Reg had been fatally wounded. Kenny, although alive was robbed of his items and left for dead. Magraw discovered a well and made some valuable pennies for his warband, with which he was able to buy a rare quality sword.

Celina went wandering and recruited a new small animal for the Royalists. I will look at buying a model and getting ready for our next game. Dorcas discovered some ancient stones that awoke magical abilities within him. We will choose a spell for him before our next game. Orlando and Magoo laboured for their den building up some resources for future projects.

Freebeast Warband lead by Orlando the otter.

Orlando – Otter – One-handed weapon, bow, 5 broadhead arrows – 51 pennies

Brother Bertrand – Mole monk – Mages pouch – 30 pennies

Sister Celina – Mouse nun – Mages pouch – 24 pennies

Brave Magoo – Mole mercenary – Two-handed weapon, heavy armour, healing potion – 30 pennies

Lieutenant Dorcas – Tortoise – One-handed weapon, light armour, heavy shield – 36 pennies

Warband total 300 pennies

Rogue Warband lead by Black Magraw

Black Magraw – Raven mage – Staff, Mages focus – 40 pennies

Scurvy Jack – Black rat – One-handed weapon, pistol – 33 pennies

Little Kenny – Mouse burglar – One-handed weapon, light armour, rope and hook – 24 pennies

Sly Sylvester – Fox – Pistol, 5 superior black powder – 43 pennies

Reg the nose – Beagle – One-handed weapon, light armour, scent masker – 30 pennies

Warband total – 298 pennies

The models are great. Just enough detail to bring them to life but not so burdened with fiddly components that they became a chore to paint.

Recently I’ve been using Army Painter Quickshade to produce great looking models quite quickly and I wanted to go with this for these models. Being metal models the shading step will also make the base coats extremely robust to wear when handling the metal models during highlighting.

The brown earthy tones of the ‘dip’ technique should really suit the natural colour tones I am planning of using to make thew models feel grounded and ‘real’. Although in fairness I only ever apply with Quickshade with an old brush as I find the dipping technique often lays the shade on way too thick and pooling is a real problem.

Another advantage for me is the Vallejo Model Color range of paints that I favour have many subtle tones of brown, green and grey which mean there are many ways to differentiate models parts without resorting to exotic and off the wall colour schemes.

To begin I wanted to just lay down neat base colours and then using an appropriate shade over the top.

The images above show the base colours used for the represented models, and I think give the general idea. While some of the browns and green would probably stand a coat of strong tone I will generally use soft tone to avoid over muting the red and orange tones on some of the models.

Unfortunately there is no obvious entry point for Burrows and Badgers currently, e.g. a two player starter set. Fortunately the staff at the BNB booth at UK Games Expo were really helpful.

Basically the advice I got was, buy any number of models but not more than ten in total and no more than two ‘huge’ models. This would give me enough to make either two small starter warbands or a single regular warband.

My good friends David S. and David W. helped me to pull together nine models that frankly looked like they would be cool to paint.

These nine models, a core rulebook and a couple of terrain pieces came to just over £100. Shoppers at UKGE were also given a free mouse burglar promo miniature so this made my starting pool of models ten.

A couple of days studying the rulebook and I broke this down into two 5 model warbands worth 300 and 298 pennies respectively.

Otter – 1-hand weapon, bow, broadhead arrows x 5

Mole monk – mages pouch

Mouse nun – mages pouch

Mole mercenary – 2-hand weapon, heavy armour, healing potion

Tortoise – 1-hand weapon, light armour, heavy shield

Raven mage – staff, mages focus

Black rate – 1-hand weapon, pistol

Mouse burglar – 1-hand weapon, light armour, rope and hook

Fox – pistol, superior black powder x 5

Beagle – 1-hand weapon, light armour, scent masker