Nahlakar's Gambit-- first play

Nahlakar’s Gambit

Justin and I played the Nahlakar's Gambit scenario last night. He played the perfidious Men of Hawkshold, whilst I controlled the noble Undead.

Justin liked my starting setup quite a bit, so I'll mention it here. I had a 2x2 block of Giant Rats set up as far back as they could go in my deployment zone, right next to Nahlakar, and the Ghouls set up directly in front of them, centered on the 2x2 block. The Ghouls began the game on Hold. This effectively blocked the Rats from moving until I wanted them to, which he wasn't expecting-- he had planned for my Rats pelting across the battlefield starting on the first turn.

Having only played the scenario once, I can't say this with any certainty, but I *think* that I may have won the scenario as early as turn 2. On both of my first two turns, I gambled and spent only a single point on the recruiting die roll, reasoning that I was happy with any die roll other than a 1 or a 2, and there were a lot of command cards that would really help the cause (any green card + either of the two vampirism cards). On both of those turns, I rolled a natural "6", which meant that I got 2 units of Skeleton Hordes each turn. Both turns, I spent the extra command points to upgrade them to Skeleton Bowmen. So, by the time Justin was taking his second move, I had added a total of 4 Skeleton Bowmen and 4 Command Cards to my arsenal. If I play this scenario again, I'm pretty sure I'll just forego the potential benefit of getting the command cards in favor of maximizing my chances of getting the Bowmen, by spending 3 points per turn on the recruiting roll-- the command cards are nice, but the Bowmen are nicer.

Justin decided to send his cavalry units (Light Cavalry and Knights) ahead of the rest of his troops, hoping to make something good happen: a quick breakthrough for an easy win, or at least getting into my deployment zone early enough to cut down on my recruiting. His Knights did a lot of damage after they made it into the red (it took 3 tries to get the last one point of damage to kill them), but even still neither one of them killed their own point values in Undead, so in retrospect he probably should have kept them back and protected their flanks.

It was pretty much a rout for the Undead. In fact, it was so decisive that I even forgot to take any bowfire at all one entire turn (at short range, even!), and he didn't fail a single courage test (fear or rout) all game, and it still didn't matter. I recruited a couple of Abominations along with miscellaneous other troops, so there was no way he was getting into my deployment zone, yet alone close to Nahlakar.

I took some pictures as the game went on, I'll see if any of them turned out and post any good ones tonight.

We both enjoyed the game, and are very much looking forward to trying this scenario again, as well as trying the other scenarios. I imagine the outcome would have been very different indeed if I had rolled 1's instead of 6's on my first two recruiting rolls, given I was gambling and only adding 1 point. By adding 3 each turn, I think a more reasonable outcome would be 2 bowmen and an abomination, or 3 bowmen and a unit of zombies, or something like that, with no command cards-- which feels a lot more balanced (though I'd still bet on the Undead).