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After action report: The Red King

We recently completed The Red King campaign in our club. I just wanted to share our experiences, comments, highlights and some photos from our 12 weeks long journey.

First, the wizards... we had a good mix among schools: Witch, Necromancer, Elementalist, Sigilist, Summoner, 2x Illusionist. The players had varying degrees of experience in Frostgrave but that did not stop even the new players from demonstrating playing styles of their own and have fun.
I played Witch. Due to the PvE nature of the scenarios, I used Fog spell A LOT, embracing a very conservative way of playing to avoid casualties. Likewise, elementalist's favored spell was Wall. Even more so after he found Ring of Elemental Fire which made his walls deal flaming damage. Being the only woman player, necromancer was the murderhobo of the lot, where she blasted Elemental Bolts to rival spellcasters with nothing but 16+s in one game. Summoner was the best prepared wizard with Control Demon, Summon Demon and fan favorite Telekinesis in his spellbook. He struggled in the first few scenarios when only Blood-marked Barbarians were involved; but he eased through scenarios where Hruts were involved by simply taking over control. Sigilist was one of the experienced players. Being a previous Illusionist, he leaned towards Wizard Eye - Transpose combo many times. He also tried some shenanigans with Write Scroll; but he will be remembered the most for casting Draining Word on Leap as the first spell in many games to deny other people quick access to treasures. Lastly the Illusionists... I must say I was very surprised to see how different they were from  one another from the spells they selected to the gameplay. One player was counting on Leap to get to the treasures quickly and threatening whoever gets too close with dreaded Mind Control. The other Illusionist however just loved to be in the thick of action at all times. Beauty and Teleport baby...!
The scenarios in the campaign were quite thematic and engaging. Especially after being cut off from Felstad and shifting to The Red King's plane, all players felt the gravity of the situation and sense of urgency. Really good storytelling here. The unhospitable conditions of that plane were translated into game mechanics in a decent way (the use of string, Reality Crack mechanic, end of turn rolls for various mishaps). Only criticism I can think of is, the lack of instructions for 3+ players for the scenarios in The Red King's plane. We tried to improvise; but failed horribly in Ethereal Tethers scenario. That week we had 5 players, hence decided to increase the number of pillars (and treasures) accordingly. We ended up with 11 pillars and a shitload of Hruts. In the end we failed the scenario and our warbands should ve been effectively dead, since we couldnt manage the sever the ties between our plane and The Red King's. Not in the mood of finishing the campaign, we decided that nobody gets any treasure, casualties were rolled normally and wizards got the experience. You learn from mistakes too after all.

We played the final scenario one a single table with all 7 players present. Seeing all warbands on the table, along with the bestiary that we printed and painted for this campaign was such a great scene. After the setup, there were almost 100 figures on the table. There were no instructions for 3+ players for the final scenario either, so we ended up improvising about the table size, amount of uncontrolled creatures, the locations of treasures and Key Masters etc. Cautious of previous failed scenario experience, we were modest about the number of bogeys; but we faced The Red King itself. I created it using the guidelines and ended up with with a monster which was truly terrifying. You can find his sheet among the photos. Since we did not increase the number of monsters too much and players ended up helping each other for the common goal, we managed to kill The Key Masters and won the campaign. Our only regret is The Red King itself was still alive when the last Key Master fell.  Our fallen soldiers will always be remembered, as they are heroes.

Throughout the scenarios, we used all optional rules (Random Encounters, Black Market, Critical Hits, Reality Crack, etc.). I strongly suggest everyone to use these rules for the best experience. They would increase the game time, granted; but it would be worth it.
As for starting advice, we ran 2 weeks of warm-up before starting campaign scenarios. We used scenarios from main rule book for those games and that helped the warbands to gain some levels and get an odd treasure or two. By the time we started the campaign, wizards were between level 2-6. We exclusively played with 3+ players every week on the one table, with only one exception where I ended up playing against Necromancer where 5 players showed up and we decided to split.

A little comparison between campaigns... Before 2nd edition, we played more than halfway thru Thaw of the Lich Lord campaign with a smaller audience. I must say these two campaigns are very different from one another. In Lich campaign it was easier with less dangerous PvE, hence PvP was more common, especially when securing an extra treasure involved. In Red King campaign, PvE is intense. Even to a point that we ended up not trying to get treasures in some scenarios (like Bridge). I think this might be due to 2 reasons: We didn't care for the treasures from the campaign book. They seemed inferior, even most of the artifacts were meh. Another reason was the Ragged warbands rule. Since we were cut off from Felstad, money from treasures was of no use for any of the players and survival instinct took over. This campaign had a lot to do with risk management rather than creating a foolproof plan.

This has already been a long post; but I'd like to mention some a couple of the highlights of the campaign before I wrap this up. The first one is pretty common I think; but never ceases to be fun. In one of the earlier scenarios where PvP was still a thing, Sigilist used Push spell to catapult a rival soldier from top of a tower. Poor sob ended up falling from 30" or so. Let's say that it will be a close casket ceremony. The second one was caused by a Reality Crack roll. We were playing Planar Sinkhole scenario where there was a black hole in the center of the table which not only had a vacuuming effect on treasures; but was also spewing Nullmen to guard the treasures while they were being sucked in. All players collected their share of treasures and were trying to get to the table edges to secure them when a Reality Crack roll dictated that the figures could only leave table from the center. Imagine the wizards along with their warbands first trying to avoid The Black Orb like a plague, then after an anomaly, decided that their best bet would be to walk into the dark unknown, through a host of Nullmen. Such thematic, much wow... It sounds cool now; but we were less than happy during the game and might have uttered some curse words to the player who rolled that result.

At the end of the final game, I had a trophy for the winner of the campaign. All players voted and Elementalist got to take the trophy home.

Congratulations to Efe for winning the campaign, and all my friends for fun games. Also a big shout out to my pal Kyle for carrying the campaign book all the way from UK to Turkey. Lastly, thanks to Joseph A. McCullough for this campaign book. Looking forward to more of your stuff.

Eline Sağlık / Health to your Hand