KQ - Dragons don't scare us!

After nearly a week of half term I'd become human enough again to want to game with my boys. Even better, the request came from them! What large, lizardlike flying creature could be responsible for the recent spate of agricultural arson and princess-napping? Time to send in the knights...

Each boy took a knight and a retainer with crossbow, and I ran a wizard with three spells (Bless, Distract and Fireball) as the fifth party member. This was to give them the chance to get in a terrible tangle, to check that the order of Actions was correct, and to further test the Magic rules.

It wasn't long before the party of heroes encountered some goblinoids of various sizes that were in thrall to the dragon, and the Fireball proved its worth...

The dice by the crossbowman shows he needs to reload.

Not wanting to be left out, the two knights shouldered their way past their fellows and soon sliced and diced the remaining baddies into less combat effective sized chunks. This was to prove characteristic, by the way; their dice rolling was verging on statistically impossible!

After a quick check that everyone was okay, the party surveyed the room they were in. Two pillars held up the roof, making it difficult to keep an eye on the comrades of the slaughtered monsters as they rushed to take their revenge...

This was what I was interested in from a game mechanics perspective - a bit of tactical thinking required. As it turns out, the two little 'uns (Gawd bless 'em) had the idea of line of sight, fields of fire and the like immediately - more high rolling soon left the orcs as little more than arrow-filled and charred corpses, with the survivors minced by the two tanks. Did I mention their dice rolling? Sheesh!

The two knights had been racking up Hero Points (HP) from their slaying and had so far avoided even the lightest injury. The closest they'd come to harm was during one fight when EM had drawn a round but only thanks to a fortuitous Blessing boost to his score.

Would the dragon fare any better and burn up this crew who were metaphorically on fire?

An early blast of flame from the beast left Sir CJ a little scorched, but the rest of his band weren't far behind. Despite the dragon's Huge size and Toughness, there's little a monster can do against a minimum roll of 17 over eight consecutive dice rolls. Sad times for the big fellow...

... but medals and promotions all round for the heroes who had done the storybook double - slain the dragon and rescued the princess. Only the wizard was weakened by his exertions; the two knights had plenty of HP to spend. Both replaced their destroyed shields, Sir CJ acquired the Charge skill and Sir EM got two: Grapple and Parry. They were both delighted with their advances, with EM telling me he hoped there would be a bridge in our next game so he could Grapple his foes and throw them off the bridge into the water. Godd idea, kiddo!

Note to self - send more monsters!

Rab