Hey There!
Last spring Byron introduced me to 'Burrows & Badgers'. To be honest, I wasn't expecting too much, thinking it would be a cute game, but nothing to take too seriously. A skirmish game in a world of cute anthropomorphic animals? Maybe fun for one-off games, but no real legs to it, right? Well, I was proven wrong.
The game is simple and straightforward, but is quite nuanced, having a few key mechanics that really make it sing. The other thing that makes it a winner is the depth to how you can build and develop your warbands, making them unique and telling a story. It has a bewildering number of creatures to choose from for your warbands, an astonishing depth to its magic system, a wide variety of weapon's and armour, powerful skills, and even rules for building your warband's den (think of the charm of Bilbo's hobbit hole, but with an armoury, apothecary and archery range thrown in and you get the idea). It's pretty amazing, and I recommend it not only as a great game to play, but also as a terrific example of quality publishing. The 272 page hardcover rulebook is both beautifully designed and wonderfully illustrated, making it a pleasure just to flip through and enjoy.
Our group recently started a B&B campaign which is proving to be a lot of fun. We have six warbands battling it out, three Royalist troupes and three fighting for the Freebeast Union.
So, for my second entry this season, I have a warband for the Freebeasts. This is 'Ratatevsky's Mischief'.
Warbands in B&B can be as small as three creatures, or as many as ten. Players have 350 Pennies to build their beginning warband. The bigger/more powerful the creature, the more they cost in Pennies. As I knew several of the guys would create some low model-count, heavy-hitting troupes, I decided to take a different path and maximize numbers. Mice are the least expensive creatures to recruit, so I thought I'd try to 'flood the zone' with these little fellas in the hope that their increased numbers would allow me to take objectives, soak up casualties, while still being able to swarm for attacks. (By the way, a group of mice is called a 'mischief', which I thought was too charming to pass up so I worked it into the troupe's name.) All of these figures are 3d prints from 'Dragon Trappers Lodge' on MyMiniFactory.
This 'Mischief' of mice is led by a Great Grey Rat, Anna Ratatevsky. I really like her rakish, rapscallion appearance. Anna sports a fencing blade and has a lot of sass.
Anna's second-in-command is Maizy the Mage. Like magic users everywhere, she's a bit of a glass cannon with a few powerful spells, but is otherwise quite fragile.
The rest of the warband is split evenly between four close combat mice and four with ranged weapons. The models here have crossbows, but they are serving as proxies for calivers in the game. (Calivers are ferociously powerful in B&B, and having four of them will give a bit of pause to opponents who wish to move carelessly in the open.)
This is a warband that requires a good amount of luck and timing to work, but nonetheless can take a bit of punishment. Time will tell if they prove themselves worthy on the tabletop.
The nine mice are pretty much all 20mm in size, while Anna is quite tall, coming in at 40mm. All together this makes for 43 points in total. The 'Mischief' will also provide a squirrel point as an added bonus.
For those who have read through this whole thing, I thank and applaud you! I hope to have a few more creatures for Burrows & Badgers over the coming months, but we'll see where the brushes take me.
Again, thanks for stopping in and have a good one!
- Curt
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