ShiverShield – 2026 Warband – Part 4 – The Woods in the Woods
Well.. I kinda hopped to take some photos or do an audio recording but.. I’m just not really that good at doing that sort of thing ^_^ might need to figure out a way to improve, but there will probably be some photos around so.. maybe able to show something but anyway..
4th July 2026 was the date for The Woods in the Woods Unlimited (to give it it’s full name). As it takes place in… well.. I’m not 100% sure what the town/village it comes under.. Avening in Gloucestershire. Anyway, this is a long way from home, with about a 3 hour drive there and 3 hours back. So a long day.
I only got in one game this year, but it was a fairly long one, running 11 out of 12 turns and taking a bit of time, not just due to ‘slow players’ ^_^ Again, I’m not great at writing up what happened like a fully battle report or log but I can give a rough run down.
My Merfolk band has hidden some loot of some kind in the centre of the battle field (near a statue, which made sense) in an area of grassy with little ponds and pools of water which would be helpful to them. However, the Fae had a gate to the world nearby and a Fae raid had come through it and was hanging around the area. At some earlier point, my Deep priest had sent one of the Shellycoats to perform a raid on the unalerted Fae and had taken an item of importance to them, and they wanted it back, and just happened to have tracked them to this area.
This gave the primary objectives. My Merfolk had to move to the centre of the board, dig up the buried treasure and get off the opposite side of the board (the side the enemy start at), where as the Fae had to steal the item back from the shellycoat (Zadoc) who still had their item on him.
As for Secondary Objectives. My Merfolk had one of the hardest secondary objectives in the current game. I had to finish the game with more captives then I started. Yikes. As I said before on earlier posts in this series, in order to do that I had to use a net fish to catch an enemy, and then I would have to keep him in the net throughout the game. Not amazingly easy. Also.. I start with one captive per priest. I had 2. If I wanted to use any ‘spells’, then I would have to kill one of my captives. And for everyone I killed, I would have to capture one more to end up with more then I started. nasty. The Fae had the secondary Objective of having their gate as a scared area where I was NOT allowed to go at all though out the whole game. That is a bit harder then I appeared, even though that scared space could be pretty close to where they started and in deed, wasn’t too far way from that deployment ground.
So. Objectives set, they knew what to do. Dragging the captives, my Priests headed for a small strip of land, giving some basic cover while getting them closer to the buried treasure, which my Shellycoats gave support and a bit of protection for them and my two netfish who headed right for the loot and started digging it up. This didn’t take too long and one of the netfish was able to head to the far left of the board and then forward to head off the opposite side of the board, which was also far way from the Fae raid.
While this was going on, the Raid were out hunting. a Collection of Whist hounds with their Fae master headed towards the centre of the board, as well as a group of hobyahs. Out of the way, a Sprite hanged around trying to be out of sight, and this wasn’t too hard as it could fly great distances over any terrain which slowed down the whist hounds. It didn’t take too long for the Sprite to dance out of the world, then return near ‘ld Zadoc, but out of sight, then take back their item and fly away. No way my guys could catch up with that.
As the netfish were digging up the treasure, The whist hounds were getting closer to them. Knowing that they wouldn’t be fantastic in a fight which was 3 on 1, the Deep Priest backed up the netfish by sacrificing a captive and summing a pool of water, pushing the whist hounds out of the way, while creating a barrier between then and the netfish. This helped greatly and the Whist hounds went to find a way around this, by heading to the right, where they saw the Shellycoats. However, around this time the net fish left around decided to try to catch a new possible sacrifice, and they picked the leader of the raid. This caused the whist hounds to go wild as they no-longer had there master, as he lay prone in a net.
With the Whist hounds and the Shellycoats locked in battle, it didn’t take too long for the ravenous doggies to make short work of the undead cannon fodder, though they did their job in kept the hounds stuck in place for some time.
While the Fae was being freed from his net by the Hobyah, the now unarmed netfish decided to walk over to the sacred gate and did a little dance. This stopped the secondary objective from happening but triggered the Hobyah into a rage, deciding not to let him live. This lead to a little chase, the netfish climbing ontop of a pillar of the gate, then having the donkeymen yelling and scaring him off the rock they couldn’t climb themselves (no space for more then one), where they able to pile onto him and take him out.
Well, one Netfish was off the board now, one was taken out (later turned out he was fine, just knocked out. Hobyah were too dumb to check I guess), and the Shellycoats being taken out by the Whisthounds, I was left with just two priests (and one captive). The Deep Priest decided to try his luck against the Fae, as his Leaf sword wasn’t completely useless but he didn’t fare too well in the long run. The other Priest, wasn’t gonna stay around now and tried to get off the board with his own captive, who he really should have just dumped but oh well. The whisthounds didn’t take long to catch up with him, hurt him and then take him out. This left only two survivors of the warband. the escaped Netfish, and a Captive, stuck there as the Fae weren’t interested in rescuing him and he couldn’t do anything on his own. The Fae raid itself, suffered only a couple of minor wounds throughout the clash.
Post game, I rolled up to see what wounds the band would suffer before their next clash. well.. Turned out pretty well (If I did it all right, which I think I did). No real damage but one of the Shellycoats (I think Zadoc again) did learn from the experience and could gain a skill.. However, he couldn’t because as part of a company, they could only learn a new skill if all of them could learn it at the same time. One divided by 4 isn’t a whole number ^_^
Well, for various reasons, a second battle didn’t take place but that’s no real problem. But what did my band learn from it’s experience? Learn to leg it more. After achieving the primary objective, the net fish has no problem with stopping the secondary via going to their sacred land, but the rest should have decided that as there was nothing else to do, they should just get out of there. but they decided to try and do stuff a bit. My secondary objective wasn’t gonna be something I was going to achieve, more so after using one of my own captives.
The band did suffer from the lack of some real strength, but at the same time, that strength isn’t really needed, as ideally, it is to create a living wall to protect the others going about their own tasks. If they got far enough long their path, an upgrade would be some Spear fish which would be useful, but I don’t think I would have swapped either the netfish or the shellycoats for them. That said, yeah, I didn’t REALLY need a deep priest and a priest.
Another thing of note is the Water. Not only do the Merfolk have the ability to walk through water without any penalty, but the Bucca refresh their stamina when entering water, like (again) I have said in earlier posts. This is, or more CAN BE very powerful. The main problem is melee. You can’t go from water, to combat and then back to water because most of the time, once you are in melee combat, you are gonna be there for a while unless you (or your rival) decides to leg it. This really balances it out and really, the ability is only gonna be really useful in one of two main ways.
The first is if you are running. You can travel like a frog, newt or many other water creatures by going from pond to pond. Sure, you are still limited by a maximum you can run in a single turn, it does really help you move fast and keep your stamina up if anyone wants to try to attack you.
The second is if you have an real range attacks. The net fish DO have the nets which are a range attack, but don’t really do damage (they can, they are barbed but not gonna be great) and they are one-shot. Ranged weapons (apart from things like spears which have a ‘reach’) are fairly uncommon in the Woods world, and pretty powerful and the only option I have for them is the Netfish.
But the nets aren’t the same. They are Throwing weapons, which are different from missile weapons. Missile weapons are ones which shot something, so we have 2 bows, Sling and staff sling, with a couple of very rare special ones like the Gnawloch musket. Being a throwing weapon, like the Javelin and Throwing Knives. If they were in the same group, they could be exchange for another item from the same section (though if they are more expensive you will need to have some money to pay for the upgrade).
So… I guess I don’t have more to say at this point ^_^ I’ll try to get some photos of my completed band at some point. Oh and with the new rules in Shivershield, you can’t take Allies by default, but only as later recruitment, so they aren’t gonna help with missile weapons.
It doesn’t help your current lineup, but I believe the spearfish have javelins.
Yeah. the Barbed Javelins are pretty powerful but another one-shot weapon, though unlike the netfish, they have another weapon so aren’t left with just bare fins ^_^
With the impact of 3 and piercing, just one Javelin can do alot of damage. being barbed makes is even more of a powerful weapon. I think, apart from the one shot only thing, a Javelin is probably the most powerful weapon in the game right now.