Secondhand Lion's First Crusade

 

The game club gathered for our Thursday night event and this time it would be to start a small campaign game based on the Crusades.  Two newly acquired Supreme 60mm armies would be playing the parts of Crusader and Saracen in a Hordes of the Things organized game.  We as a club are all playing the part of a Baron on crusade in the holy land with all of his retinue and army.  We are envisioning a long march column heading into the middle east.  We arrived at Constantinople and each club member would take it in turn to be the "tip of the spear" and lead the column.  For each win that the Crusader armies get we will advance the groups campaign pin one more step toward Jerusalem.  The map is a line of connected locations and looks like this.

Constantinople ---Nicaea---Antioch---Tripoli---Damascus---Acre---Jerusalem

Each club member rolled a die and was placed on a campaign ladder 1-7.  In our campaign then each player would play the member below them as Crusader vs. Saracen respectively.  Each player would tally a score based on his number of Saracen destroyed minus the number of Crusader army points he lost.  Perfect score would be 12 to 0 in HotT army point cost giving the Crusader a 12 point win.  The club member that has the best aggregate score versus the Saracen will be crowned the King of Jerusalem, Knight Commander of the Holy Land and Defender of the True Cross.




 

Our first evening saw three battles fought with three consecutive wins by the Crusaders.  The battle of Constantinople was won by Lord Terry scoring an impressive 8 AP.  Following this the campaign pin was advanced to Nicaea with Baron William taking command and getting a quick kill on the Saracen General scored a 2 AP leaving him in dismal hopes for that crown at the end.  The campaign then saw the action in and around Antioch with Lord Carl "the petulant" defeating a well commanded Saracen host and racking up an even 4 AP in the standings.  The evening went well and will continue with the remaining 4 games to be played to decide the overall commander.

 

The group discussed a "kicker" for AP or Glory would be the Holy Grail.  If a player presents for perusal a "holy grail" cup that is deemed worthy as a trophy to mark this historic campaign that that commander could receive an additional 1D6 glory to his final score and may actually win from a secondary finish with high enough points to carry the victory of the campaign and accrue the coveted seat in Jerusalem.

We leave you with a few additional pictures from more Hordes of the Things action in 60mm.  These armies fought the previous Thursday for a HotT double points bash of 48 AP semi-historical fun.

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