This game is the 5th and final adventure in the Demons gate campaign. Ours parties have scraped through the games barely surviving and quite often carrying each other’s lifeless bodies to safety.
For this scenario, the parties have entered a large cavern and their goal is to kill or wound the High Priest and then escape with their lives. All the while the priest is busy summoning all manner of creatures and the parties have to cut their way through the minions to get to the priest.
I didn’t have any cavern scenery so I reused some scifi boards I made, along with rock crystals, clump foliage, lichen and GW Azrite ruins. Once again I used a large Reaper bones piece, this time as the portal where the creatures would enter.
The priest is protected by a Chaos Champion, hordes of cultists and imps (we used goblins instead) and some rather tough Cult warriors.
Onto the game. After the party deployed on the opposite side to the portal, one of the first activation failures, caused a Minotaur to arrive through the portal (I used a large Gnoll as I couldn’t find my Minotaur figure).
A few more failed activations produced a Monster frenzy, That’s a big one and then Monster activates cards to come out. A cultist charged one of the Rangers but was cut down.
Then the horde of red cultists activated again and charged the Ranger.
Another Ranger rushed into assist and they made quick work of the cultists (unlike prior games where their dice were woeful, the rangers were rolling well tonight)!
Then another complication card was drawn, and a Chaos Champion arrived through the portal.
The parties continued to advance and were getting close to the 1/3rd mark
Two “They’re at our backs” cards arrived in quick succession, and suddenly a horde of 8 cultists loomed behind the parties.
Ignoring this the parties pushed onto the center. A horde of goblins got closer and a bigger Goblin broke off, while the Minotaur was killed by some bow fire.
A Horde activates card was drawn and the horde of goblins contacted the rangers.
The high priest started firing magic blast at the two closest PCs, but they successfully dodged
Then a Monster frenzy which the large goblin and a horde of cultist contacting a couple of fighters.
Another creature arrived through the portal, this time a Mutant Souldrinker
The scrum in the middle continued and the Rangers had dispatched the Goblin horde, while other foes got closer. One of the Cult warriors gained a mutation in the form of an extra arm.
Next the Chaos Champion is dropped by the rangers. They definitely brought their A game tonight and so far have had their best dice of the entire campaign. The 2 fighters are not making any progress against the horde of Cultists though.
Now the path was clear to the Warlock, the Rangers magic user let loose with a fireball! This was successful and the damage was enough to cause the Warlock to flee, through the portal, closing it behind him.
Game over or so we thought, until we read the victory conditions and realised we had to exit the table from where we had started!
Next one of the rangers was contacted by the multi-armed Cultist warrior, while the fighters in the middle made progress whittling down the cultists. In the back a horde of Goblins who had been slowing moving up attacked.
One of the Rangers was in a spot of bother with a Chaos Champion and a Mutant souldrinker bearing down on him.
And near the entrance two groups of cultists stood blocking the way to the entrance/exit.
After dispatching the Mutant Souldrinker back to the underworld, the 2 parties began to retreat towards the entrance. Most were wounded (the red markers indicating the wounds they had suffered).
Then one of the archers was taken out of the game by a Cultist, and a Chaos Champion (the Warlocks bodyguard) was getting very close to the PCs.
A Ranger who had fallen over with a Loss of balance at an inopportune time, now had a Minor Demon breathing down on him. With the best dice of the night and the best use of a Leadership bonus, the PC turned all the 7’s turned into 8’s and stood up and ran for his life!
On the other side of the table a group of Cultists had been moving up and now threatened the flank of the retreating PCs.
More good activation dice for the Rangers meant the Magic user (who had run out of casting magic) got to the exit, while 3 PCs were close behind.
However the fighter was valiantly fighting the Chaos Champion and a Cult Warrior while his friends abandoned him to his fate. The other PCs only had one wound remaining each. After heroically killing the Chaos Champion, the PC was killed by the Cult Warrior.
The Cleric who had been carrying the fallen Archers body to safety dropped the body near the exit and returned to help the other Archer, but he was too late to save the Archer, who was also killed.
At this point with 3 down PCs and only 2 alive, the party had to abandon the other fighters body, vowing to return, and carry the 2 Archers bodies to the exit. The Rangers also completed their exit and it was victory to the PCs in the campaign!
AfterthoughtsWe actually had a plan this game which was to not split the parties up and charge straight up the middle and kill the Warlock as fast as possible. This went well but we didn’t realise we had to exit again, so we should have had guys defending the return route.
The Rangers probably had their best dice of the campaign, and it was a good time, as the opposition in this game were a lot tougher. Overall we enjoyed the campaign and found some nice ideas and challenges in the scenarios. At times it was a bit of a hack/slash because there were a lot of foes on the table, and it did get overwhelming dealing with massive hordes of monsters.
What next? Well I’m writing our own campaign which we hope to playtest in the new year (or maybe sooner). Also Ganesha games have been drip feeding new monsters and other ideas through their Patreon so I plan to incorporate so of those into the campaign , along with what we learned from playing this.