So a couple of nights ago, I cracked into Triumph & Treachery for the first time. I invited three pals around for a 1600pt free for all with 320 points of Mercenaries.
I (Loremaster Geo of Hoeth) took a relatively friendly High Elves list with an Ancient Stegadon, Warboss Squiddy brought an Orc & Goblins force with an Empire Light Wizard and a Celestial Hurricanum, Mark Giantbreaker took his Ogre Kingdoms with some Daemonettes of Slaneesh and Lady Sarah of the Lake brought a Bretonnian force with a High Elf noble on a Griffon.
We didn’t play with much terrain but, to be honest, a few pieces of impassible, one building and a forest was enough to keep things interesting when you have nearly 8,000 points on a 6’x4′ table! I’ve included a few photos and I must say that I’m getting very excited about my Table Scapes table which is due in a few months! That’ll make things look a lot cooler!
We diced off to see who would deploy where and (in clockwise order from me) we had myself, Squid Mark and Sarah. We were playing the capture the artefact scenario. We put an artefact in the very centre of the board then we each had a point on the board edge evenly spaced apart (6’x4′ board meant 20′ perimeter so 5′ between players). From your point on the board edge you project a 12′ radius semi-circle and deploy within that little bubble and anything you cannot or do not want to start on the board must enter as a reserve on turn 2.
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| A wide shot and some close ups of deployment |
The broad way scoring worked is thus; throughout the game, in each phase of each turn, you total the amount of victory points you have gained (including banner and general bonuses) and you get that many points rounded down to the nearest 50 in the form of coins. Clear as mud? Excellent. There was also a 500 point bonus for your general holding the artifact (or being close to it if no one held it) at the end of the game. To pick it up you just moved into contact with it and took it with you.
The rules are interesting. You randomise player turn order in each game turn and from then you pick one player per phase (movement, magic, shooting and combat) to be the enemy player. You can only interact with that player in that phase and the others wait patiently but can interact with cards, which I’ll get to later. There is the restriction that if you are in combat with one or more players in the combat phase you must pick one of them as your enemy and all other combats become separated. It sounds clunky but in practice it keeps the rules simple and plays well.
You also get Treachery Cards. At the start of each game turn you draw 1-3 cards (depending on the size of your stash) and then in each phase you are not declared an enemy player you can draw an additional card on the roll of a 6. These cards are incredibly varied in both function and power level and really add another exciting element to the game. I think we misplayed this slightly by shuffling used cards back in at all times where you are supposed to go through the entire deck and shuffle the discard pile only when the deck is empty. This likely only had a small effect on the game though and certainly didn’t change the enjoyment.
I guess the last important rules thing (which we forgot mostly, to be honest) was that Mercenaries can be bribed. The mercenary contingent that you take can start a bidding war where any player may commit an amount of coins to pay to prevent that Mercenary from acting in the current phase. The controlling player can outbid to prevent this from happening but at the end of the bidding war all coins from all players that participated in the bidding war are forfeit. This really could have changed the game for a lot of players at various times through our game but I suppose due to playing for the first time ever from 7pm until 3am (!!) our brains were not functioning at peak efficiency!
It’s also worth noting that promises, cards and coins can be traded freely throughout the entire game and promises especially are not binding. You can tell someone that you’d pay them not to attack you then refuse to cough up once they’ve nominated someone else. It’s all part of it.
So here’s how it went down. I think Sam had the very first turn and opted not to declare any charges but fired a Doom Diver off at Sarah’s Knights of the Realm, killing one and drawing first blood. Sarah retaliated by killing the Doom Diver with a Trebuchet and that was the first coin earned. Mark fired a couple of Ironblaster Cannons through Sarah’s Knights killing one or two. In my first turn I went to cast something and Sarah caused me to miscast with a Treachery card (how treacherous!). Fortunately the Loremaster only did one wound to himself. I then took some pot shots at a unit of 10 orcs, killing three having them fail their re-rollable Ld. 10 panic check and legging it through half his army panicking another unit. On the whole though, not a particularly eventful first turn for anyone but the rest of the game could best be described by a phrase that joins two words. The first being defined as “A group of the same or similar elements gathered or occurring closely together” and the second a term for coitus.
Squid saw an opportunity to pick on some squishy Elves, perhaps annoyed that I’d charged a Great Eagle into a Goblin Shaman who found himself exposed after the orcs in front of him had legged it the turn before. He charged his trolls into my Swordmasters and his General Gorbad Ironclaw into my High Elf noble on Griffon. This was a pretty massive positional error on my part, allowing the guy with a Star Lance to be charged but oh well. He tore the elf and his griffon to pieces and his Timewarped trolls destroyed my Swordmasters over two turns. This is one of those times I wished I’d bribed his mage to not cast that turn! With a good 700 coins in the bank, Squid (and everyone else mostly) left me alone for a few turns, thankfully! Around about the same time my Loremaster miscast a fireball on three dice, was sucked into the warp and blew up 11 Seaguard. For a dying race, the High Elves certainly don’t help their cause by blowing up all over the place!
This is around about when things started to get swingy. Squiddy turned around after killing my combat units to head towards the artifact only to have his General’s unit shot in the back by me, removing his chance for a Look Out Sir! roll. Squiddy was a clear leader at this point so he had painted a big target on his back. He picked up the artifact and promptly ate a cannonball. A lapse in memory of 8th edition rules led Squid to charge some orcs into the Ogre deathstar and get hacked to pieces. My Eagle in combat with the Goblin Shaman fluffed his attacks (with the help of the Oil Slick Treachery Card) and the other one against Sarah’s trebuchet met the same fate! A Swiftsense Great Eagle shouldn’t lose to a fearful Bretonnian Trebuchet very often but these things happen, haha.
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| Some notable moments… a Loremaster’s miscast carnage, Ogres getting charged in the rear, a challenge gone very poorly, and our obsidian elephant artefact! |
A Misdirected (another Treachery Card) Shem’s Burning Gaze from Squiddy aimed at Mark’s Ogres hit his own Trolls and toasted two of them. A million poisoned shots from my Ancient Stegadon’s Giant Blowpipes killed the Griffon from Underneath Sarah’s High Elf Noble who hid in a building but the Stegadon still found and crushed him the next turn.
There was a bit of a standoff at the other end of the board as Mark had charged through Squiddy to pick up the artifact and several points. Squiddy suicided some Orcs into Sarah’s Knights of the Realm and Bretonnian Lord allowing her to reform to charge Mark on her next turn. Much to Mark’s chagrin I played a Treachery Card causing him to lose the rules for Steadfast for that turn and he was onto a Snake Eyes Leadership test instead of a 10. Sarah picked up the artefact and chased them away, not killing many then killed both of my core units to rack up about 1000 points in a turn to surge into the lead and that’s about where it ended.
I did surprisingly well (I still came last but I got some points!) mostly from shooting off units that people had routed but not killed. In the end Lady Sarah of the Lake had 1,650 points, Warboss Squiddy had 950, and Mark Giantbreaker and Loremaster Geo of Hoeth split the wooden spoon with 750.
Overall the game was a blast and I am very keen to try it out again!