Road to Falkirk - Postgame

"I'm at a Halloween party and I'm kind of drunk, but I have to know if my characters are dead or not."

Preparing for the Battle, Real World Considerations:
    It takes time to prepare the miniatures (and what a joy they are to paint), and time to prepare the Unit Information Sheets. In the future, I want to offload the writing of Unit Information Sheets to the Patrons in question. This should allow me to get ready for battles faster, and make the Patron more familiar with the Swords and Spells Rules.

    I asked the Goblin Patron to schedule the assault around when he would be available to come to my place and game the battle out. I'm happy w/ how this worked out and plan to continue it in the future.

    This was a small battle compared to the one Uncle Gary lays out at the back of "Swords and Spells," but the if the attacking army had had any more units, they would hardly have been able to manoeuver. For future battles I may swipe some scrap plywood from the factory to make for a wider tabletop. 

    It took around 2 1/2 hours for this 20 turn battle. I think a considerable amount of time could be shaved off by having a second set of rules printed, and having both sets of rules tabbed for easy navigation. Also as we become more accustomed to the rules, thins should speed up.

Adjudicating the Battle:
    Cavalry have incredible staying power. It seems that rider HP and mount HP are just lumped together for the unit total. This means that the unit of 40 Wolf-Riders had only 8 fewer HP than the unit of 150 Orcs!

    The defenders of Falkirk could've used some ranged support. And some artillery.

    Figures are removed left to right, back to front. But the flanking bonus to melee only pertains to the 1st turn of engagement. Does this mean the dwarves turned left to face their attackers, and that casualties should be removed from the opposite end of the stand?

    To what extent can players not at the table react to events at the table? Ordinarily this concern comes up when Session-Players encounter the plans of Domain-Players week(s) into time-compression, effectively locking the Domain-Player into whatever plans (or lack thereof) they'd laid out in real time. In this instance, after hearing about the battle (I posted it in the falkirk-flugelhorn news-feed after it's completion) a Dwarven-Character declared that if the dwarves marched to battle he would've been with them , consequences be damned. In future, I'll post the outbreak of the battle, and then adjudicate player actions as they come in (e.g. If the Dwarven-Fighter messages insistent that he joins the battle while turn 5 is being fought, starting from turn 5 he'll leave the Inn heading for the battlefield, arriving on turn 20.
    
Dealing with the Aftermath:
    I consider the Goblin-Patron's Campaign Against Falkirk a success (from a gaming perspective, for Mayor Sneeks it was a very mixed outcome.) Going forward I expect other Patrons not present at the battle to be interested in rebuilding Falkirk. It has economic significance to some, military value to others, and other sorts of strategic importance to still others. I however intend to capitalize on the success by introducing a few more Domain-Players, and generally complexifying the situation.