Blackstone Fortress - first play through

So on Wednesday evening Steedo came over we had a bash at the Blackstone Fortress. We play a one off expedition to get a hang of the rules before we tried the full on campaign for the hidden vault, with the rest of the collection. 

We picked the 4 explorers, from the 5 (well 6) I had painted. We had Esperanto Locarno, Thaddeus the Purifier, Dahyak Grekh and Pious Vorne (Rien and Raus were left in the box, as we thought that the extra move might have to much for our tiny brains). 

I set up before Steedo arrived as much as I could - popped all the little bits of cardboard out and sorted the cards out - I may have made an error here as I set up for the campaign, but I think I should have kept some of the baddies in (such as the beastmen and rogue psykers, but to be honest we found it pretty tough as it was) for the one off game. The victory conditions were that we had to get 4 clues and 8 points of archotech. 

The first two encounters we had were challenges - the first what appeared to be a simple move across a bridge using agility and defence rolls, where we managed to hobble our explorers with some wounds, the second challenge I can’t recall, but at the end Esperanto Locarno had completed his secret agenda and was now was using the inspired profile.

The initial combat board - lots of traitor guard and a spindle drone to try and thwart the galant heroes. This was a tough combat and took us the longest to complete as we were learning the rules and how the hostiles act.

The explorers finally managing to extract them from the chamber - I believe that Pious Vorne managed to get herself out of action. But she survived the recovery phase and improved her vitality, so could continue the expedition - we weren’t convinced that we actually gone the rules right here, but went with it as we were enjoying the game.

The second combat was a little easier. With spindle drones and negrovolt cults as opponents. 

We tried a couple of different tactics this time - an all out assault on the hostiles, a dash for the discovery markers and to summon the exit chamber rather than wait for one in the event roll.

This worked a treat - all baddies killed - more archotech collected (we ended up with 11 points, we only needed 8) and up to 3 clues - only one more needed for the win. We also discovered that we had possibly over used the support from the ships - never mind fog of war and first time play through. Picture above shows the explorers in the exit chamber and the spindle drone reinforcements a long way away. Confidence was up we would bear the game. 

The final combat started off like the second so we thought - this time cultists and traitor guard.

Unfortunately this time the dice gods were against us so although we got the final clue Esperanto was beaten to a pulp by the cultists and needed to use the destiny dice to move, Dahyak Grekh received 3 grievous wounds and was in a bad way - Thaddeus picked up 2 more wounds … 3 characters and 2 dice and the destiny dice to move them ..: with a debris twist on the encounter card meaning that moving across cover was an extra point of movement. 

At this point Pious Vorne’s flamethrower became very effective as she first incinerated the cultists then the traitor guard. One of the characters pick up the final clue from a discovery card, so we were all set for the win if all the explorers could get to the exit ….This was a really tense ending to the game as if one character died the expedition would be over and we would have lost having collected the booty. We needed the event roll and the reinforcement rolls to go our way …

Which on the whole they did - I think we need to check the placement rules for the traitor lasgunners as they arrived in the final turn. But Steedo and I will take the hard fought win … very close.

We really enjoyed the game and reckon the campaign will be good fun - I plan to play another few rounds with the stand alone set up with the other heroes when they are painted (before February), to see how they play - will also include the beastmen and psykers (and the chaos marines if they are painted). 

We like the destiny dice mechanism, but need to check the hostiles rules, and explorer recovery during an expedition - other than that I think we got the rules pretty much right (apart from using the ship support a couple of times when it should have only once during the expedition). I think having a hostile player might make the game a little bit more challenging if they go for it.

Hopefully we will see the campaign for the Hidden Vault play out in 2022.

Happy new year, let’s hope that 2022 is an improvement on the last couple.

Morts