D&D Miniatures: Report
 

I got together with a friend of a friend who also had a preview starter set to try out the game.

Oddly, we each had a kobold, goblin sneak, kuo-toa, dwarf axe-fighter and wolf. We played our first fight with matched teams of these figures, ignoring factions and the command rules.

We both had a bit of trouble remembering exactly what had been stripped from 3.5, so we kept wanting to do 5' steps, to shoot at distant targets etc. It was a quick fun battle (I won).

A few observations: the kobold sucks, and the kuo-toa isn't much better. The dwarf axe-fighter was amazing, and the goblin sneak showed potential. The wolf seemed alright.

We then played a faction game with commanders. Between our two sets we could have made a CE and LE warband, with not quite enough to make LG. We were not even close on CG. We decided to do Good vs. Evil, and could barely scrape together a 'Good' 100 point warband.

I had: cleric of Yondalla, halfling veteran, Lidda, gnome recruit, Nebbin, wolf, evoker's apprentice, 2 dwarf axefighters, sun soul initiate and a man-at-arms.

My opponent had: human blackguard, bearded devil, hellhound, goblin sneak, zombie and I think one or two more.

He cleaned my clock.

I had some difficulty remembering to keep my guys in range of the commander, and I didn't utilize my spells as effectively as I could have. I did have 3 magic weapon spells which was a good thing againt the bearded devil.

The wolf being out of command didn't have as much impact as I expected, ditto for the bearded devil.

The sun soul initiate was not as useful as I hoped. He was fast, but couldn't hit anything. The evoker's apprentice was definitely not worth the cost. The man-at-arms and gnome recruit were not-very-useful meat shields. The dwarf axefighters were good, but even with magic weapon and blur cast on them did not hold up against the blackguard and bearded devil. Nebbin was useful for most of the fight because he had enough spells to keep him going. Lidda would have been more useful if her main target weren't the bearded devil, or if I had got her into the sacred circle sooner. The halfling veteran (again with amgic weapon) probably did the most damage to the bearded devil. The cleric of Yondalla was mostly useful as a commander and especially for his command ability. I did get to use his spells, and I didn't feel that any of them were a waste. I also managed to turn the zombie.

The blackguard used his command ability once, destroying one of his own guys. Other than that, he was just monstrously tough. The bearded devil was extremely effective, even out of command, mostly due to his high HP and his DR. The hellhound's breath weapon was pretty good, but he didn't stand up to the dwarves. The zombie was useless. The goblin sneak probably would have been more useful if I hadn't picked him off with a magic missle.

What I got out of this was that my prediction was wrong. I though the mid-range guys would be more valuable than the expensive ones over the course of the fight, but that didn't seem to be the case. The big tough guys kicked butt. I would like to try it again with fewer really low point guys though.

One more rule we pretty consistently overlooked was the morale check at half HP. I don't know what the impact would have been on the fight.

After the fight we traded some miniatures. I traded my orc warrior for the zombie, and I'll horrify lots of people by telling you that I gave my opponent my Tiefling Captain for Lidda.

Oh yeah, the other thing I should say is, it was fun.

Craig Shackleton,
The Rambling Scribe