Warhammer Session 1: Greenskins!

On Saturday night, I was able to gather the group together for our first session of Warhammer Fantasy. A couple of weeks ago, they sat down and made characters: a Human Coachman, a Dwarf Thief, and a Dwarf Watchman.

Yes, only three players. We’ve had some serious attrition, leaving only myself, Bridget, and two others. Bridget will be playing the male Dwarf Watchman.

Saturday morning, Bridget and I headed over to the FLGS, Unique Gifts & Games, and picked up three miniatures. I’m sad to say they weren’t Warhammer minis, as the price on those is… well, let’s say limiting. Also, no Dwarf Thief figures. So we picked up some Reaper Figures, two from their Warlord line, and another from their Dark Heaven.

Ed showed up a little early and we talked about Eclipse Phase and other things until Greg arrived. Bridget came down with a brutal headache in the afternoon, so she sat out. So we had two characters, the coachman and the thief. I read the following flavor text to the players to kick off the game:

The great Twin-Tailed Comet, a portent tied to both Sigmar and the Empire, has been seen in the sky. To some, it is a sign of hope. To others, the harbinger of doom. Tensions rise, as the effects of a ruthless winter and poor harvests are felt across the Empire. Villages and farms find it harder than ever to scrape by, and supplies for the Empire’s constant war efforts dwindle ever lower.

To many citizens, this can mean only one thing. The End Times are at hand. Fear is rife. Another Great War is coming. Beastmen are growing restless, attacking villages with greater frequency and ferocity. The Chaos cults are rising up, summoning daemons, fomenting rebellion, and instigating insurrection throughout the Empire’s cities. Bands of Chaos marauders scout further and further south than usual, some even penetrating as far as the Reikland to test the Empire’s defenses for the coming conflict.

In the midst of this bleak, brewing turmoil, the adventurers are beacons of hope. Fate has called to them, binding them with the silvery threads of destiny and fortune. Together, valiant humans of the Reikland, wood elves from Athel Loren, high elves from distant Ulthuan, and the dwarfs of Karak Azgaraz face the formidable threats of the Old World.

Can these brave few fulfill their destinies as Fate’s champions in this, the Empire’s time of greatest need?

The session began as I placed the Old Dirt Road and Forest Glade cards on the table, placing the two of them on the Old Dirt Road.

I said “You are travelling along the road towards Altdorf, capital of the Empire. Kusner (the coachman) has been paid a silver shilling to take Norri (the thief) to the capital to face the Emperor’s justice. Norri, you are tied up, behind bars in the back of the coach.”

And that’s how it began. I let Greg decide what it was his character was wanted for, and the two had a bit of dialogue as the dwarf demanded he be let free.

Coming around a bend in the road, they came upon a merchant coach stopped in the road. On top of it, a goblin was throwing the trunks and boxes to the ground as a large, armored Orc attacked the coach’s driver. Other goblins milled about, picking through the trunks and throwing clothing about looking for valuables.

There was a bit of a discussion on whether they could go around or not, but it was a narrow road, and it would delay them by at least three days to find another route to the city.

The dwarf convinced the coachman to let him free so he could help, and they moved in. The dwarf hopped out and moved into the forest to sneak in, while Kusner road the coach up, and fired his crossbow at the goblin on top of the other vehicle. A perfect hit, and the goblin toppled off, in between the orc and the beset human he was attacking. The orc turned and saw the other coach, bellowing “Get ‘im, boyz!” The goblins sprung into action.

I tried to fix the abstraction rules a little in the fight, by adding in a tic-tac-toe style board. I Google Searched “tic-tac-toe”, and came up with a suitable image, then printed it off at full-size on a piece of paper. The location cards for Warhammer fit perfectly within. To one side of the road was the forest, and to the other, a cliff side. I was hoping there would be some fighting on the cliff, as getting near it and performing actions can actually cause a player to fall to their death. Sadly, this side of the battlefield was mostly ignored.

Kusner hid behind the coach, firing off his crossbow (which he had both trained and specialized in, giving him two extra dice) at the goblins moving in on him, while the orc continued to attack the man he was fighting. I set up a tracker and moved it every round to represent how badly the orc was beating the man. Within five turns, the NPC coachman would be dead.

It turns out, my players are kind of ruthless, and didn’t really care about the man, and used the tracker to let them know how long they had before they were going to need to deal with the orc.

The dwarf began fighting the goblins in the forest, where he attempted to climb a tree, and discovered why it is that dwarves aren’t forest-dwelling folk. His failure drew their attention, and he actually ended up taking on four of the buggers, taking some heavy wounds.

Kusner moved into the forest, coming at the goblins from behind. Between the two of them, they were taken down quickly. Then, they heard the bellow of the orc. He had finished off the coachman, and was on his way to them…

Lumbering through the forest, the two prepared for his assault. The dwarf hid behind a tree, while the coachman prepared his blunderbuss.

The orc emerged, eight feet tall, and carrying an enormous choppa; not so much a sword, as a very large slab of metal. Rain began to fall hard, obscuring all of their vision. What followed was a long-winded fight. Using his sword, blunderbuss and crossbow, Kusner attempted to keep his distance, while Norri would move in, attack, and fall back. The orc got some heavy swings in, nicking Kusner and wounding Norri even worse. Wearing the orc down, they decided to run. Kusner loaded his crossbow and fired an immobilizing shot, hoping to pin the orc to a tree so they could run. There was no need. The orc had only one wound left, and the arrow sank into his eye, dropping him.

The last few goblins who were trying to break open the coach panicked and fled. Moving towards the coach, they heard whimpering within. They knocked on the door, and were greeted by a pig-faced man peeking out of the curtains. He was irate, and certain the two had killed his coachman. He told them he was a very important merchant from Marienburg, and very soon, a search would begin for him. While Kusner spoke to him, trying to convince him they weren’t the ones who attacked him, Norri found a locked chest dumped from the wagon, and picked the lock. Within, he found an elaborate dwarven horn. The merchant saw him with the chest, and began demanding the thief give it back, saying they’d both be prosecuted if he had anything to say about it.

Ed didn’t much like the idea of this merchant, having seen them, deciding they were criminals. “There’s a cliff off to one side of the road, right?” he asked me.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I smack the horses’ rumps, hard. I want to send the merchant over the cliff.”

I was speechless…

“Okay…” I finally said. “You can hear his screams all the way down to the bottom of the cliff.”

I honestly was not expecting that at all…

And that’s where we ended the session. I gave two XP to them for their first session. Ed decided that coachman may not be the job for him, and has actually found a couple of careers he can get for only two advances, including gambler, bounty hunter and hunter. He knows he’ll be in trouble with the law now that he’s not delivering a wanted criminal to them.

Greg is looking at the Slayer, but it’ll be a couple more sessions before he’s allowed to make the switch.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what these guys end up doing with their characters and where they’ll go.

On Friday or Saturday, we’ll be getting together again, when Bridget’s character will be introduced, the Dwarf Watchman. We’ll see how she fits into the story.

It was a great first session that really got everyone’s juices flowing and taught them the basics of the system, as well as how tough and brutal the world is.