YouTube Video

Exterior moody forest – dusk.

The last vestiges of gold sunlight rake through the tops of trees, pine and oak and ash.

A boot, battered and scuffed, presses into the loam. 

A man, 30, kneels quietly in the bracken, his blue tricorn hat pulled low. His long blue coat criss-crossed with dark leather, belts, straps, pouches. He scans the undergrowth, muttering to himself.

CLAUDE

So nice of you poor bastards to leave such a trail just for us. Except it’s not just for us, is it? 

He suddenly slips the great musket off his shoulder and brings it to his eye with a swift smoothness belying years of habit. 

CLAUDE (cont’d)

(to himself)

Y’all invited the demons to your party, didn’t ya?

(louder)

Madam!

Reverse POV, sighting down the musket barrel: just beyond a pile of forest stone, a clearing. Full of uniformed bodies.

Footsteps crunch up from behind. A voice, a woman.

OTTILIE (o.s.)

What’s there, Claude?

CLAUDE

Oh, I think we found the special unit. 

Angle on CLAUDE and OTTILIE. She stands just behind him, 30 years old, thick hair piled high and tied back from her ebony face. Her well-worn blue coat matches Claude’s, festooned with pouches and belts, a pair of pistols at her waist and a musket over one shoulder, its silver bayonet shining in the gloom. Her hair is remarkable not only for it’s sheer mass, but also because the left half has been shocked white as bleached bone.

OTTILIE

Sweep the east side, I’ll gather the rest. 

CLAUDE

Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars, going to work.

He slips off, just another shadow in the woods. 

PAN WITH OTTILIE as she heads back the way she came, revealing the shapes of other soldiers in blue coats moving quietly through undergrowth.

The scenario’s about to begin!

INTRO

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we’re doing part four of our little skirmish mini-series and battle reporting a solo scenario! And we thank our patrons almost specifically for the crazy cool deck of cards we’re gonna use in the game today, your support is always much appreciated!

So we’re playing the game of The Silver Bayonet today, the first solo scenario. In fact, this is my first time ever playing this game. Now I’ve played Frostgrave and Ghost Archipelago, which are also written by Joe McCullough, and I absolutely love his stuff. My brief overview of The Silver Bayonet’s gameplay experience is that it’s pretty fast-paced, moreso than his other games which are already pretty lean and fast moving themselves, and I think Silver Bayonet’s extra speed has to do with the fact that there really isn’t any magic to deal with. There’s only one soldier type that can cast “spells” and even then, there are only four spells that can be cast. 

Another mechanic that I really liked is the … I’ll call it “the melee exchange” mechanic. Every time a figure attacks another, in melee, you can essentially resolve two attack actions because Joe has created a ruleset that really captures the exchange of hand-to-hand combat. It’s very fencing-esque, for lack of a better word. Once a figure has been attacked, they get to make a choice, Strike Back or Back Off. And in today’s game you’ll see I don’t think I backed off a single time. This mechanic also really keeps both players having fun playing regardless of who’s actual turn it is. Well, in today’s case, which is a solo scenario, I get to sort of keep playing while the monsters are taking their turns. 

The swingy-ness of the 2d10 dice math also really makes for some serious ups and downs and dramatic occurrences. This is true of his d20-based systems as well, like Frostgrave and Stargrave, and while most competitive gamers don’t dig this swingy-ness because it makes tactical decisions harder to rely on, I think it forcibly injects cinematic storytelling into each match, which is pretty cool if you like that sort of thing.

So, TLDR at the beginning this time? Whoa, things are already crazy. My first impression of The Silver Bayonet is that it’s fast, pretty brutal, exciting and very fun to play. That’s just my opinion, of course, and your mileage may vary.

So the video intro was just my take on story-ifying the story setup Joe had written as the basis for the scenario. Essentially, the scenario states that a special unit had been dispatched to search for a lost chapel, but that unit went missing and now our warband is being sent to find that missing unit and recover, if not any survivors, at least the orders the unit carried with them, lest they fall into enemy hands. 

So, Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars has gone off into the woods to track down this missing special unit and they have just stumbled upon what looks to be the site of a battle the unit unfortunately lost, deep in the forest. The sun is setting, the shadows are stretching and our warband is hunting for those orders amongst the remains of this murdered unit.

Here’s a quick rundown reminder of the members of our warband, the full details of which you can find here <snap>: The Nightmare Hunters are led by Ottilie Bastarache, our inspiring Officer. She is joined by Felice Armand, a vivandierie; Vermont Escoffier, a supernatural investigator; Gaspar Gagneaux, a doctor; Claude Cellier, a scout; Jolanda Scaletta, an occultist; Baptiste Moreaux, an infantryman; and Brielle Pelletier, a grenadier.

Now, I’m not sure how this video battle report is going to turn out, I’ve never produced something like this so this is, uh, you know, another FFT, right? Setting up the table, this scenario calls for a two and a half by two and a half foot area, my card table is 32 inches on a side and my game mat is 36, so our playable area is essentially almost edge to edge. The scenario says to fill the table with trees and rocks and undergrowth. So I’m putting down all the terrain we made for this scenario <snap>, and I’m actually digging out some more scatter bits I had nearby, all of it forest-y themed, right? 

Now the clue markers, of which there are six in total, go down randomly at three distances from the center of the table – 8, 10 and 12 inches away. 

Each clue marker is tied to a random playing card, meaning every time we investigate one of these clue markers, we draw one of the six cards the special rules has instructed us to set aside. You’ll see here that I’ve neglected to include the Ace of Spades, I only shuffled five of the necessary cards at the beginning, but I realized that before actually starting the game and mixed in the Ace of Spades so the clue deck is correct.

Also, this is just a side note, you need little markers called Fatigue Tokens to place next to figures when they’ve engaged in melee combat, so you know I grabbed some Lego! Just these little Technic 1/2 bush parts and they stack nicely on a Technic axle for easy access. I have light gray ones too but figured the yellow would show up better on the table.

All right, now the warband gets positioned all within 3 inches of the center of the table. I don’t get real finicky with measurements – I’m not a competitive player, remember – but yeah, 8 figures in a 6” diameter circle means they’re kinda packed in there. 

Ottilie goes down first, she’s got eyes on something out past that rock bridge that looks interesting. Doctor Gagneaux is sticking close to Ottilie, basically focused on keeping her alive. I have this vague idea of splitting the warband into two smaller units and Felice with her Inspiring attribute will sort of head the second unit. For sure Claude the scout – who I’ve come to think of as a sniper for some reason – has clambered up onto a pillar of rock to get a solid view of the perimeter. And Jolanda tucks in here under his watchful eye. Vermont has spotted a body up on another rock formation and he needs to investigate that. Baptiste is positioning himself ready to climb up onto the rock bridge to offer some overwatch and Brielle has spotted yet another “something interesting” just a few strides to the west that she’ll investigate.

Now the wolves get basically evenly arranged around the table at the edges, two to a side. This doesn’t look dangerous at all, right, surrounded by wolves in a circle? Nope, nothing wrong with this at all.

All right, let’s do this! Turn Number One.

The first phase of a turn is me getting to activate half of the warband, rounded down. So we’re activating four figures. Ottilie starts things off moving her full six inches towards that clue marker. She calls over her shoulder, “Find those orders, but keep an eye on each other!”

Gaspar follows her, creeping under the natural rock bridge and searching the shadows for threats.

Baptiste grunts and climbs to the top of the rock bridge, working tension out of his broad shoulders and readying his musket as they all hear a lone wolf howl pierce the falling night. 

Brielle strides through the undergrowth with a grimace at the answering wolf calls and steps right up to what she thought might be a discarded satchel. 

Now, here I’ve made my first mistake with the rules. I made all the soldiers’ movements prior to finishing each soldier’s activation. So basically I did what’s called a “group activation” in Frostgrave but that’s not a thing in The Silver Bayonet. I’m supposed to fully activate a figure, meaning they do all their stuff like moving and taking actions, before activating the next one. It’s okay, it’s just a game and we’re learning. 

So, Brielle has moved and now uses her Action to Investigate the clue marker, this satchel thing she’s found on the ground. Since we’re investigating a clue marker, we draw a card and hope for the best. The 10 of spades means she’s found an ornate silver ramrod – we get to add 1 Skill die to the Fate Pool. Nice!

You’ll see how the Fate Pool works in a bit. For reference, in a solo game, we start with a very small Fate Pool, one Skill die and one Power die. And when we start rolling dice, you’ll see that I’m using blue dice for Skill dice and black dice for Power dice. There is a third type of die called a Monster die but, again, in the solo rules, we don’t really get to use those. 

Ottilie comes out from under that rock bridge to see a pair of glowing eyes in the distance: a big old Dark Wolf creeping towards her. She draws one of her pistols and fires, rolling a 7 plus 6 plus 2 for her accuracy stat and taking a minus 1 penalty because she’s shooting after moving. That totals up to 14 versus the wolf’s Defense stat of 12, which means she’s hit it! Pistols use the Power die for damage, so that’s 6 damage on a wolf who’s got 8 hit points. It yelps as it takes that ball right in the shoulder. 

Now we use little bits of cotton to signify when a figure has fired a gun and we’ll remove the cotton when they reload, that way we know which figures have loaded vs unloaded weapons.

Baptiste sees the smoke from Ottilie’s pistol and sees that wounded wolf, but he also spots another wolf closing in from the west and two more coming from the south east. He barks a warning to the rest of the crew and shoulders his musket, deciding the wolf closest to Brielle presents the greatest threat due to proximity. He fires and with a 9 plus 3 plus 1 for accuracy and minus 1 for moving before shooting, he just barely scores a hit with a 12! But the Power die is only a 3, so more of a grazing shot. It’s hard keeping a bead on these wolves in the trees as the darkness deepens. 

That’s the first half of our warband activated, now the enemies get to do some stuff. Despite it’s wounded shoulder, Wolf #1 charges at Ottilie, this behavior marking the beast as definitely somewhat unnatural and Ottilie hastily holsters her pistol and swings her musket off her shoulder. The wolf’s six inches of movement easily allows it to plow into her, snarling and snapping, rolling a 5 plus 3 plus the 1 it gets from its melee stat for a 9! And as angry as it is, it’s hurt and Ottilie dodges out of reach. 

She comes back from her dodge and Strikes Back with a vicious stab from her bayonet. That’s a 10 plus 4 plus 1 melee for a 15 and she slams that wolf to the ground, twisting that bayonet before wrenching it out with a gout of blood. 

Wolf #2 charges the black and white haired witch who just murdered it’s sister, bashing into her with a snarling fury. Rolling a 5 plus 8 plus 1 for melee for a 14 and Ottilie takes a massive hit from those ripping fangs, suffering 8 damage, leaving her with 5 hit points. 

The other wolves lope through the shadows as the moon rises.

Now our second warband phase kicks in and we get to activate all remaining figures.

Vermont Escoffier looks from the incoming wolves to the uniformed body lying on top of a rocky escarpment. His primary function is discovery and knowledge, so he quickly settles on investigating what happened to that poor bastard up there. He uses his action to Sprint in order to scale to the top of the escarpment within a single turn but he doesn’t have an Action left with which to investigate, that will have to wait until next turn.

Jolanda Scaletta steps back behind Felice at the sight of two wolves inbound; she knows her place in the warband, and the front line is not it. She takes a calming breath, winces as she takes a point of damage and utters an incantation, a prayer of harming directed at the wolf coming from the east. Failing to hit the target number of 18 for its Courage Check, the beast shakes its head and growls in confusion, glaring at the occultist and baring its teeth. It now suffers from a minus 1 penalty to all its rolls for the rest of the game.

Felice, holding aloft her burning torch as her short sword scrapes clear of its leather, notes Jolanda’s action and the reaction of the wolf and she charges the cursed animal. She hits with a 12 on her attack roll, inflicting 4 points of damage with a wide slash through the gloom. The wolf gnarls and strikes back, frothing, and the curse seems to afflict its depth perception as it snaps well clear of the vivandierie.

Muttering about being surrounded by four-legged sharks, Claude swings his musket to aim past Brielle and fires. With his plus one to accuracy, he scores a 13 and puts a steel ball right between the wolf’s eyes, and he’s already reloading and searching for a new target before that wolf even falls.

That marks the end of Turn One! Now I messed up again, here: I forgot one of the scenario’s special rules that was supposed to happen at the start of the Monster Phase rather than the end of the turn, and I also forgot to allocate Fatigue tokens. But Fatigue tokens are cleared at the end of each turn, so I don’t think we had any situations where they would have come into play this turn anyway, especially since I seem to have forgotten to let Ottilie strike back during that second wolf’s attack on her. 

Now the special rule I’m enacting a little late here is that one of the running wolves transforms into a Werewolf, and that turns out to be this one right here. So we’ll swap the miniature as this wolf surges through the undergrowth and transforms under the moonlight, stretching, rising, swelling into a nightmare of murder and mayhem. 

Turn Two! Baptiste reloads and fires over Ottilie’s head, his 9 total resulting in a clean miss. He swears and spits in frustration.

Brielle, hearing Ottilie’s pained grunt, spins to her left and fires her musket. 4 plus 9 plus 1 accuracy succeeds with a 14! And that 9 damage drops the wolf Baptiste failed to hit. She laughs at the infantryman, shooting him a maniacal grin as she reloads. “That’s another flagon you owe me, Baptiste, ya clumsy bastard!” Baptiste makes an angry face.

Okay, I messed up again! I was even looking forward to this but I completely forgot to roll on the Wolf Pack Event Table at the end of Turn One. We’re supposed to roll on that table at the end of each turn. We’ll do it now – that’s a 9, which is … rainfall, damn! Maximum line of sight is reduced to 12” and all shooting attacks suffer a minus 1 for the rest of the game. That’s not good. These enemies don’t even have ranged weapons, so it’s all us taking the penalty.

All right, thunder rolls overhead and rain starts with a light patter in the trees, then turns suddenly into a full downpour, drenching our warband.

Gaspar steps up to Ottilie and works his medicinal skills to heal her for 2 hit points. Another side note, I realized after the fact that this was incorrect, the doctor is supposed to NOT move if he wants to perform a healing action on a friendly figure within 1 inch. It’s just another rule that’s slightly different from other games, so, you know, we’re rolling with it as we learn.

Ottilie moves to investigate the clue marker, the upper torso of a ravaged soldier from the special unit that fell victim to something possibly worse than a park of Dark Wolves. We draw the Jack of Spades and Ottilie takes a Silver Saint Medallion from around the torso’s bloody neck. 

It’s kind of a bummer that Ottilie was the one to find this artifact because it makes all of the finder’s attacks function as if they were made with silver weapons, but our Officer already has a silver hand weapon and silver shot for her firearms. But hey, we get to add 1 Power die to our Fate Pool so that’s pretty good.

All right, the Monster Phase kicks off with Wolf #8 rushing Jolanda, careening off wet rocks and churning up mud in its wake as it launches itself into the Vatican occultist. Oh boy, that thing rolls a 2 plus 10 plus 1 for melee which is a 13, which is also Jolanda’s Defense stat, which means it crushes her with maximum damage, 10 hit points from that Power die! Jolanda goes down with a shriek under 300 pounds of rage, wet fur and savage teeth and blood flashes in the moonlight. 

Don’t ask me how the moon is shining during a rainstorm. Things are getting weird out here in the Gloaming. 

Wolf #7 bites at Felice, but misses with a 10 – that’s 6 plus 4 plus 1 for melee but minus 1 for the curse. Felice Strikes Back, hearing Jolanda’s cry behind her but not daring to turn her back on this thing, but Jolanda’s cry distracts her enough that she misses her lunge. Both Felice and her foe receive Fatigue tokens.

Wolf #6 skirts Vermont’s escarpment and blurs through the rain to plow into Felice’s back. The total of 12 would normally be a miss, but Felice’s Defense stat has a -1 penalty now due to the Fatigue token, so that 12 becomes a hit and the wolf tears 5 hit points of blood out of her with its ferocious jaws.  

Startled, Felice reacts on instinct and rage at the surprise attack and she whips around with an unexpected fury and Strikes Back with a staggering counterattack! 18! And also causing max damage with that 10 on the Power die! She nearly cleaves that wolf in two with a massive swing and apoplectic battle cry; gore spatters across her feral features. 

The Werewolf bounds silently through the rain towards Felice, intent on bringing death to this human wearing with the blood of its brother. Its black claws grow in the stippled moonlight, glinting like daggers.

Wolf #4 lunges through the trees at Brielle but misses with an 8, the grenadier ducking, before retaliating with a her bayonet, rolling another 18 and gutting the beast with 7 damage. She kicks it off the end of her musket and wipes rain out of her eyes. She spits on the steaming carcass, and receives a Fatigue token.

Vermont sidles up to the body he’s been intent on investigating and we draw a card – holy smokes, the body rears up, a monstrous second Werewolf unleashing a debilitating roar right in Vermont’s face. That Ace of Spades, man, worst card in the deck to draw. Oh, this is, this is a pretty bad turn of events here.

Claude, on his spire of rock, spins, raking the sights of the musket across the battlefield and fires on the first Werewolf, having heard Jolanda go down and seen Felice take on two more wolves. The scout’s roll of 9 plus 6 plus 1 accuracy but minus 1 for the rain equals 15 for a hit! AND he’s got silver shot loaded! So that’s 6 damage to the Werewolf that it cannot negate with its Damage Reduction attribute because of its Silver Allergy. It doesn’t seem to notice the damage but its bleeding for sure, and Claude is already reloading, muttering about how he hates dogs that walk on their hind legs. “No one wants to see that here,” he mutters.

Felice Armand is in dire straights. She can’t flee because the wolf behind her will force an attack no matter where she tries to move, so she just resigns herself to attacking it first. And she’s tired, with two Fatigue tokens, so her attack just misses with an 11. She stumbles on a root and bites her tongue. The Wolf counters with a 14 after modifiers and Oh man, that 10 on the Power die is huge! It snarls and shreds into her and she goes down with a terrified wail.

That’s the end of Turn Two! Rolling on the Wolf Pack Event Table produces a 3, two more wolves join the action! Holy crap, this is getting a little crazy! I’m a little worried about The Nightmare Hunters, not gonna lie.

Turn Three kicks off with, well, there are things to consider on the board now. Vermont is surrounded, like a guy on a raft in the ocean surrounded by barracuda. Should he flee? Yeah, there’s just no way around it, he’s gotta get outta here, he’s cut off from the rest of the warband now, he’s gotta go, gotta live to fight another day. He flinches back from the Werewolf and jumps slash falls the ten feet or so to the ground, landing in the mossy loam, rolls to his feet, darts 3 inches away from the rock, draws his pistol and fires at Wolf #7, the brute that bested Felice. His roll results in a 13 total and with 7 damage, drops that wolf.

Brielle yells at Gaspar, “Get off your ass, Doc, and take out this wolf, I’ve done most of the work for ya! I gotta get to that body over there, we’re running out of time!”

Gaspar frowns but draws his medical saw and charges after her. He lashes at the wolf but misses with a 2 and a 5. The wolf Strikes Back, snapping at the flashing steel blade, but misses with an equally terrible roll of a 5 plus 2. Each take Fatigue tokens as they square off facing each other, both growling in the rain.

Brielle’s already tearing headlong through the woods, rolling a 19 on her Sprint check to gain an extra 4 inches of movement, pushing to get to that body that might hold what The Nightmare Hunters are looking for.

Wolf #8 charges straight up the low cliff Claude has perched himself on and attacks with a near miss, jaws snapping into the hem of his coat but gaining no purchase. Claude jerks around, whipping out a boot knife and jamming it right into one wild canine eye, that roll with a 10 on the Power die just enough to hit but impacting more damage than the wolf’s entire health stat, executing it in a single blow! Claude jams the knife back into its sheath and puts his eye back to the musket’s sights and continues scanning the battlefield.

Werewolf #1 is equidistant from Claude and Vermont, but it can’t see where Vermont has gone and it’s been shot by the scout on the rock, so toward Claude it veers. On its way, the Werewolf gains 2 hit points from its Quick Heal ability, recovering from its wound preternaturally and horrifically fast. These things are nasty!

Werewolf #2 launches itself after Vermont, leaping from the cliff and almost reaching the Supernatural Investigator, but falling just an inch short, roaring its anger and hate in his face. 

The almost-dead wolf, bleeding heavily, limply snaps at Gaspar and misses, and the doctor flinches but Strikes Back with a hefty roll and puts it out of its misery with 6 more damage. Gaspar takes on a second Fatigue token and, chest heaving, looks around for Ottilie.

Baptiste and Claude both unload on that first Werewolf as it careens toward the scout, flanking musket fire thundering in the rain. Baptiste rolls a 6 and a 5, the rain penalty and his accuracy bonus cancelling each other out for an 11 total and his shot goes wide. Claude rolls complete garbage, a gout of rain flooding his face and obscuring his vision just as he fires, his shot ricocheting off the rocks.

All right, we’re gonna use a die from the Fate pool to re-roll his Power die, this Werewolf is freaking me out, I think these guys might be in serious trouble. The thing heals every turn and can negate 5 points of damage from non-silver weaponry. So let’s re-roll that Power die and … are you kidding me?! A three? A three?! 

Good lord. Okay, I’m gonna cheat right now, ‘cause I’m freaked out. I know this isn’t right, but I’m justifying it because I basically forgot about the Fate pool until just now and we have four dice in there! So I’m retconning back to Baptiste’s stupid roll and we’re gonna re-roll his Power die. Oh my god, another three?! This is a joke, right? C’mon, these guys are doomed!

Claude, always the professional, is already reloading.

Ottilie bolts after Gaspar and Brielle, rolling a crappy Sprint Check and gaining only two inches of extra movement, putting her shoulder to shoulder with the Doctor. “Nice work, Gaspar.” She claps him on the back. “Keep moving.”

All right that’s the end of turn three, we’re rolling on the Wolf Pack Event Table … Five. Another wolf shows up! For fuck’s sake! This is getting real hairy real fast. So the new wolf is gonna show up in the center of random table edge, so I’ve numbered the edges from North to West as 1, 2, 3 and 4 and I’ll just roll a d6 until I get a number between 1 and 4. And this wolf shows up … oh man.

Turn Four begins with Vermont. He’s backing away from this slavering fiend when he hears a twig snap behind him. Without looking he knows he’s done for. His only hope is to flee to the south and try to outrun this nightmare. He dashes to the left and Sprints for all he’s worth! With an 8 on his Sprint Check, the rain has turned the ground to mud that sucks at his boots and he struggles to gain just two extra inches of movement. As he rushes through the trees, something out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. Damn, there’s something lying off to the west that could be valuable. He gauges the forest ahead of him and the sounds of the creatures behind him and makes a snap decision. Instead of veering off the map to safety, he heads toward that curiosity, fairly certain he can decide in the next few moments if he can stop to check it out or if he needs to flee for real.

About to continue after her grenadier, Ottilie hears the double musket fire to the west and looks sharply in the direction of her scout and sees the massive Werewolf about to scale that low ridge and she immediately draws her second pistol and fires. With the rain and that sub-par roll, she only manages to draw the thing’s attention briefly. With a snarl of frustration, she bum rushes the menacing figure, holstering the pistol and unslinging the musket in one crazy action and leaps with a rabid battle cry – and rolls a 20 total! Holy cow! One point shy of absolute maximum damage! Her silver bayonet flashes through the rain, her bared teeth a bright promise of righteous fury as she guts that Werewolf from sternum to throat, laying its black heart bare and sending it back to the mud with a confused yip of surprise and pain. What an epic scene! 

Claude yells to his commanding Officer and savior, “Another one, madam, to the east!” and he readies his aim, blinking more rain out of his eyes.

Brielle races up to the body she’d seen, rolls it over, pats it down, looking for a satchel, an envelope, anything – we draw the next card … and YES! She finds the missing orders! Success! She snarls as she rips them free and yells as loud as she can, “I got ‘em! Get to safety! Retreat, you bastards!”

Vermont’s new wolf chases after him, hissing through the rain, snapping at his heels, followed closely by the bellowing and baying Werewolf.

The two new wolves coming from the southwest each go after different targets they can see, one after Gaspar, the other hunting Baptiste, who’s standing tall and angry atop the bridge of rock. 

Hearing Brielle, Baptiste runs to the edge of that rock and leaps to the ground, landing next to Gaspar, who starts to head towards the hollering grenadier, but stops to keep an eye on Ottilie.

Claude, having swept the forest with his musket sights and failing to find fresh targets, finally gives up his perch and slip-slides down the wet rock to the forest floor.

That’s the end of Turn Four, let’s roll on the Wolf Pack Event Table. And that’s a six, which means another wolf arrives at a random table edge, please, please, please not the western – that’s a four. That means it appears on the western table edge. Dammit! The Gloaming is angry tonight!

Turn Five and we’re starting with Vermont again. There’s just no other choice than to have him get to safety. He heard the faint holler from Brielle and he knows they’ve got what they’ve come for. He has no allies in sight. He’s got a Werewolf and a Dark Wolf nipping at the tail of his coat. He’s vacating, right now. He races off  the table, which means he’s able to leap across a ravine and slip away down a hillside and vanish into the night. 

One survivor so far.

Ottilie runs back to her doctor and infantryman, spots the new wolf heading straight for them. She raises her musket and fires and with a roll of 2 plus 1, she uses a Skill die from the Fate Pool to re-roll and gets a … no way, another three? Damn. All of her weapons are now unloaded and she’s already moved this turn. Oh man. Just when we thought we were home free, right? 

Doesn’t this game seem to be a decent emulator of real life?

Baptiste Sprints ahead to prepare to provide cover during the next turn and makes a great Sprint Check, gaining those extra 4 inches of movement to help him get clear of the woods.

The wolves and werewolf all give chase through the deluge and the newest wolf explodes from the trees and rocks at Ottilie.

Of course, the wolf rolls great, a total of 16 and tearing into Ottilie with, oh man, 7 damage! Ottilie collapses under the mauling claws, taken to exactly 0 Health. But this is crazy, it’s the exact reason Gaspar stayed where he was. He sees her go down, calls for help and then he’s right at her side with a bandage and a strange poultice he crafted himself only the day before and it brings Ottilie back to 2 hit points. 

The Medic attribute can literally only help wounded figures that are not down OR have been reduced to exactly 0 hit points. Had Ottilie taken one additional point of damage, she would very likely have died or suffered a permanent injury. Crazy, man, just crazy!

Claude hears Gaspar’s cry for help, drops to one knee without moving further, aims through the rain and the trees and the bracken and fires! It’s close! That Power die is gonna be great if it hits. A 3 plus 9 and the other modifiers cancel out so his total is 12 and that’s what he needs to hit! Yes! That 9 damage on the Power die drops that wolf right at Ottilie and Gaspar’s feet. Awesome! Claude is definitely in the running for MVP of this match for sure.

Brielle almost leaves the map to safety, but abruptly halts and turns to provide support like the badass grenadier she is.

And that’s the end of Turn Five. Wolf Pack Event Table roll! Eight! Nothing happens! Finally, a tiny flicker of hope! Yes!

Turn Six opens with Ottilie shoving Gaspar ahead of her, “Run!” and he does, blowing his Sprint Check, so only gaining 2 inches of additional movement, wet branches slapping at his head and roots causing him to stumble. But he can see Brielle at the edge of the tree line, waiting with her musket and her savage grin.

Ottilie limps after her doctor, but instead of Sprinting, she stops at the end of her regular movement to reload her musket.

Baptiste muscles his way through a patch of difficult terrain and turns to provide covering fire if necessary.

The wolves and werewolf surge through the undergrowth, gaining on the warband, unflagging, unstoppable, growling and slipping through the rain like ravenous shadows.

Claude moves past Baptiste and after a quick survey of the field, feels confidant they are all going to make it safely to the rendezvous, but he drops again to one knee and fires at the closest wolf. He uses the last Fate die to re-roll the Skill die and gets a 7 plus 4 and just misses with an 11.

Brielle spots a wolf appearing just at the edge of her vision in the downpour, grunts with satisfaction and aims her musket. Bah. It was a hail mary of a shot to begin with, she doesn’t even feel bad about missing. It’s just covering fire for now.

That’s the end of Turn Six and essentially the end of the scenario, as Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars are all out of reach of their pursuers and they escape to safety, which is a unit of grenadiers waiting atop a hill to pour musket and rifle fire down on anything else coming after them.

Wow! Now that was quite a bit of narration. This video must be ridiculously long. But man, what a fun game! Like, I was pretty worried there from time to time and hey, we have two soldiers who didn’t make it, or at least, we have to roll to find out what’s happened to them. But man there were some cool highlights too, right, just some epic scenes in there. So maybe you see how the swingy-ness of using a 2-20 number range really results in unexpected, uh … results. Results that result in results. Huh. 

Anyway, yeah I found this to be super fun. So real quick before I sign off here, let’s do the campaign shenanigans. The first thing we gotta do is roll on the Injury and Death Table. So first we’re rolling for Jolanda Scaletta.

Oh my god, no way, a ONE! A one!! No! Oh no, Jolanda didn’t survive. Damn, that’s a huge bummer. I’ll be honest, I feel like cheating and re-rolling. I’m not going to but I definitely feel like it. And actually what’s kinda really dumb is that I didn’t realize you could use any left over Fate Pool dice to re-roll these rolls on the Injury and Death table. So Claude burned that last Fate Pool die just because I didn’t think there was any reason to keep ahold of it after the actual match. There was no real reason for him to even take the shot to begin with. Hmmm. Well, I could let myself just retcon using that Fate Pool die from Claude and use it now to re-roll this death result for Jolanda. 

Ultimately I understand it’s just a game and I’m the only one playing it and I could just simply do what I want, but I’ll think about it. Let’s roll for poor Felice, who did so well and but also got bushwhacked. Oh man, that’s a TWO! Oh my gosh, the two lowest possible rolls? Well, a 2 means we gotta roll on the Permanent Injuries Table. And that’s a 7, so she suffers from the jitters now, which means a permanent minus 1 to her Courage. That’s a fair and very story apropos result. If I’d been attacked by and fought off multiple wolves and had a Werewolf come at me, I’d probably lose a point off my Courage stat too.

I think I’m gonna give myself the benefit of the doubt here and retcon Claude’s Fate die usage and we’re gonna use it here to try to negate Jolanda’s death. She’s Schroedinger’s Jolanda right now. Okay, here we go. That’s a four, okay, I’m gonna go with it. From now on, I know I can save Fate Dice for these rolls, so that’s just another tactical consideration to keep in mind during a game.

Okay, last there’s the XP points, which everyone gets a point for participating in the scenario and the group as a whole gained the following experience: a point for investigating three plus clue markers, a point for killing five or more wolves (they put down 8), a point for slaying one werewolf, two points for getting more than three soldiers to safety, and 3 points for securing the missing orders! Awesome, that’s 8 more XP points which we can kinda divvy up as we see fit, as long as no soldier gets assigned more than 3 points in total. So I’ll just give everyone 2 xp each. 

The characters don’t really gain anything until they hit 5 XP so they’ll have to go through a couple more matches to see some results from this experience progression. 

All right, well, there you have it, a Silver Bayonet battle report. And a finale to the four episode mini-series, which I’ll put into it’s own playlist. 

I have no idea if this kind of battle report execution is interesting or dull or unwatchable or fun, I just don’t know, so let me know what you think of the format I cobbled together for this thing and uh you know, 

Go play a game and have some fun!

See ya! 

Napoleonic horror. Victorian fashion. The Enlightenment of the 1700s. Movies like The Duelists, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Plunkett and Macleane, Master and Commander. And one of my favorite shows Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Dracula, even. While none of these take place in the same literal time frame, we’re gonna throw ‘em all into a fashion blender and play a skirmish game for which we can draw inspiration from all of these pieces of media and story and visual aesthetic. 

But the first thing we gotta do to play this game, is create a warband. 

Greetings good humans and welcome to Table- what is this? Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy where we’re doing part two of a skirmish game mini-series! And where we say Merci beaucoup to our patrons in a gesture stylized just a bit to fit today’s theme. 

All right, I’ve been waiting to get into this kind of video since starting the channel. Today we’re gonna draft up our first warband for Joe McCullough’s The Silver Bayonet: a War-game of Napoleonic Horror. Ooh, I like the historical era this game takes place in. I mean from a romanticized fantasy aesthetic sorta way. I would never want to actually live in that time frame. 

I mean, unless werewolves and vampires were real, then maybe I’d, you know, give it a shot. But I’m truly a fan of modern plumbing.

The Silver Bayonet is all about small groups of brave and specialized soldiers taking on the nightmare creatures of fantasy lore. Specifically, the rule book explains that basically scary monsters are coming for humans, feeding on the rage and pain fueled by the Napoleonic wars being waged across Europe. Collectively, these forces of darkness have become known as the Harvestmen. And Europe’s armies are being forced to face this darkness one way or another. 

And for now, small troupes are put together to execute raids against the Harvestmen, or to track them down, or race the fiends to seize magical artifacts et cetera et cetera. Basically, we’re putting together a group of 19^th century commandos to go kick monster asses in the murky forests of haunted Europe. With, you know, muskets.

Silver Bayonet war bands are predicated on several European country forces, so the first thing you do is choose the nation you’re fighting for. We can go with Britain, France, Prussia, Austria, Russia or Spain. In my case, I’m choosing France. One, cause you know, I liked girl from France and two, the Three Musketeers. C’mon! I know they occur historically a hundred and fifty years before Napoleon goes stomping across the fields, but hey, you know they’re super cool. You know, kinda like pirates. Just the whole aesthetic of rapiers and I don’t know. Anyway.

One thing the nation of choice will do is set our paint scheme for us, so that’s kinda cool. At least for me. Totally helps with the whole “come up with a color scheme” thing right?

So now we’ve got our nation of origin settled, the next thing we do is create our commanding Officer. The author of the game heavily suggests coming up with a back story for your Officer and warband just to personalize the group and add narrative to the game. So the first thing I did was go a-googling for French names. Go a-googlin. Yep, I wrote that and I said it. I do this sort of googling, let me rephrase that. I do this quite a bit for all kinds of fantasy game stuff, I particularly like checking out the meanings of names. I also have a vague notion of basing this character on one bit of the lore regarding Brad Pitt’s character in the movie Legends of the Fall. Yes, I’m pretty much built out of obscure film and book references. 

Anyway, I came across this name Ottilie and I liked the weirdness of it and the meaning behind it: prosperous in battle. It’s a little on the nose, sure, but hey, we’re having fun. Looking up some French surnames, I came across this one, Bastarache – and yes, I’ve had to listen to lots of pronunciations to learn how to butcher these names properly. While I’m not a huge fan of the sound of the actual surname, Bastarache, I am a huge fan of the name’s meaning: lives near a boundary. That is pretty cool and feels very apropos to the Silver Bayonet’s setting lore. 

So now for the fun part, writing up a little backstory for our Officer, Ottilie Bastarache. This kind of thing is fun for me, just splashing words down on a page, not worried about anything. Of course the first thing I had to come up with was a name for the warband itself, and I figured Nightmare Hunters was in order. Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars. I don’t know if I said that right either, but that’s my best attempt and you’re going to hear a bunch in this video, so prepare for the pain.

All right, let’s spin up a story.

Ottilie Bastarache went to war when she was sixteen. She marched with Napoleon’s ranks as a vivandierie, meaning she would procure food and wine and water for the troops. Her unit had a nasty habit of running on the vanguard and more than once she would pick up a fallen infantryman’s musket and return fire during the heat of the battle. After her third time doing this resulted in her saving a Lieutenant’s life, he gifted her his bracer of pistols, a pair of firearms his father had commissioned from a local weapon smith. She refused the gift at first, but the lieutenant insisted, pointing out even though she had saved his life, he was still losing a leg to gangrene and would be chaptered out. He had no use for the pistols and the men in the unit would be better served if she had them in her possession. 

Although Ottilie had proved herself in battle, she was known for her uncanny ability to procure provisions of surprisingly high quality, a rarity on the battlefield. Her unit often had better wine and meat than most of the army and her soldiers loved her for that. Five years into the wars, there came a fateful day. She caught wind of a farmer rumored to have three pigs ready for butchering and a cask of trappist ale for sale. With her current officer’s blessing, she took five infantrymen with her in search of the farmer’s house. They found it in a clearing in the woods a day’s hike from the unit proper and arrived at dusk.

She bartered with the farmer, secured the freshly slaughtered ham, the cask of ale and a basket of fresh bread. And a space in the barn for her and her men to pass the night in. 

At midnight, there in the clearing in the woods, the Harvestmen came, drawn from the Gloaming by the perfume of blood and the stench of good will. Ottilie woke to the screams of the farmer and his family, smoke and ash stinging her eyes and throat, as a pack of goblins mischiefed and murdered their way through the main house. She and her infantrymen burst from the barn, already set ablaze with faerie fire and hatred. 

Muskets thundered in the chaos and Ottilie drew her pistols and went to work, yelling to rally her soldiers in the face of nightmares come to life. But the goblins were many and the Frenchmen were few. Chittering and gibbering, the twisted visages of scarred and evil fae swam out of the murk, Ottilie trying to draw a bead on the closest horror when something slammed into the side of her head like a steam-powered hammer. She blinked, and the world tipped on its side. She blinked again, and all sound drained away into shadow. She blinked a third and final time, and watched a hulking malignant form scoop up two of her soldiers and fling them like sacks of potatoes over its broad shoulders, striding away into the Gloam, lit by the fires of Hell.

Three days later, Ottilie’s unit was packing up their tents, readying to deploy upon their new marching orders. Distraught, more than a few of the soldiers moved under a pall of uncertainty. Their Officer barked words of encouragement, assuring them he would send scouts to continue the search for their missing brothers and their vivandierie. But his voice faded and his men turned to follow his gaze to see a figure trudging along the dusty road, approaching. A lone figure with wild hair and a bulky sack over one shoulder.

It was Ottilie and all of the hair on the left side of her head had turned white. She dumped the burlap sack at the Officer’s feet and stared at him, one bloody tear running down one scarred cheek. The sack tipped in the dust and fell, and a malformed, horned head rolling out to stare blindly up at the Officer. “I tried,” she said, “but I couldn’t kill them all.”

Now, Officer Bastarache leads a band of brutal, strange and fanatical soldiers into the Gloaming on moonlit nights, hunting the Harvestmen as they once hunted her. Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars is making a name for itself, both here in the army and there, in the shifting shadows of the border of Fairy, and this is not the end.

Nothing like a wandering, wordy, first draft of a little bedtime story. But hey, I’ve got a little background of this warband now and we can just keep riffing on it for the rest of the warband members.

So, I’ve gone through the recruiting section of the book and taken a quick look at all the different soldier types. I’ve made selections based more on story than on min-maxing for tactical advantage. Plus I’m just not very good at min-maxing for tactical advantage anyway. But we get to choose up to seven soldiers and there’s a simple point-buy system. The author recommends taking the maximum seven soldiers instead of fewer, more expensive types, so I kept that in mind.

So Ottilie has recruited Felice Armand, a vivandierie; Gaspar Gagneux, a doctor; Vermont Escoffier, a supernatural investigator; Claude Cellier, a scout; Jolanda Scaletta, an occultist; Baptiste Moreau, an infantryman; and Brielle Pelletier, a grenadier.

Now the next cool thing we get to do is choose some miniatures to represent our characters. I went looking through my Pile of Opportunity gallery and while I discovered that I have quite a few miniatures that could vaguely fit this era’s aesthetic, albeit a definitely fantasy-infused sorta take on it, I have very few miniatures that have black powder weapons. I mean to be really honest, I do have enough that I probably could have built up the warband without buying anything new, but then what kind of a tabletop gamer would I be? A poser at best. This is a prime gamer opportunity to BUY MORE STUFF! C’mon!

So I went onto Etsy to search for some figures with muskets or flint lock pistols, and I even started by searching for hussars and Napoleonic figures. There are a few but they are all sort of rank and file and very normal looking? And also, not many female figures. Even though historically, according to Wikipedia anyway, France had quite a few female fighters. Until a certain political group went into action, but, we’re rabbit-holing. So I tried out some more search terms and one that returned the best results for kinda what I was looking for was vampire hunter miniatures. Eventually I came across this set and what I liked about these was the ability to order them with or without their hats. So I ended up ordering seven figures from this store, two of them I ordered duplicates of because I couldn’t decide between the hat or no hat version. Also, I was uncertain about how customizable – or non-customizable – their weapons are, and the no hat versions seemed to be all the versions with black powder weapons versus the swords and crossbows. 

Anyway, this is the figure I think will be Ottilie. Here’s what I’ve decided to go for with the rest of the warband.

Felice Armand is the sister of an artillerist who was rescued from a werewolf by Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars. She tracked down the Silver Bayonet warband to offer her gratitude and was so taken with Ottilie, she pledged to join them on the spot.

Gaspar Gagneux was a medic with a marine unit. When they launched a beach assault on a seaside town in Spain, they found it overrun with pixies and a revenant. Gaspar became obsessed with the possibilities of Gloaming magic insofar as how it might be utilized for practical medical purposes. He annoyed his commanding officer with so many requests for Silver Bayonet assignment, he was kicked out of the unit without orders and left on the shore. While tracking a vampire across the Spanish countryside, he encountered Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars and tagged himself along.

Vermont Escoffier hails from the newly re-opened College of Sorbonne where he has studied mythology and theology. He joined a secret society of magicians and has been deployed by them to recover magical artifacts. The society found an assignment for him with Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars via a distant relative of one of the members who’s brother’s sister-in-law’s aunt is –

Jolanda Scaletta, an expatriate nun from Italy who’s work in Silver Bayonet units has caused her to both strengthen her faith in God and distance herself from the Church as a remote agent of the Vatican. She has served in three of the fringe units, the first one having been disbanded due to the insidious actions of a changeling and the second having lost all but two members to a vampire’s estate in the Gloaming. 

Claude Cellier is the most talkative scout in the Army, and his constant stream of chatter subsides only when he’s walking point or securing a perimeter. Although even then his chatter merely becomes a whispered conversation with himself. He’s strangely adept at finding cover, at blending into the background, and he thinks he’s fallen in love with his commanding officer, though not a day goes by that he hasn’t tried to talk himself out of that notion. 

Baptiste Moreau is a brute of an infantryman. He’s been enlisted for almost a decade and prefers his axe to almost anything else. His snarling attitude and general demeanor has kept him from being promoted beyond the low rank of Corporal, though he has received and melted down over a dozen medals of honor. He has traded that raw gold for silver and commissioned the making of silver rings that he wears on a chain under his breastplate, elements of a singular dream he holds close to his black heart and tells no one of. 

Brielle Pelletier is a madwoman, a force of nature on the battlefield, one of the few female grenadiers in the ranks. Ferocious and bold, she looks for challenges everywhere, and creates them when there are none to be had. Combative and brash, her commanding officer recommended her for assignment to a Silver Bayonet unit just to teach her a lesson. Upon learning of the Harvestmen, she knew the Gloaming was her next challenge, full of new foes to vanquish. She came to respect Ottilie only after witnessing Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars’ commanding officer in combat. 

Ignatius! Please stop torturing your dear viewers!

I sincerely apologize for my friend, his French is terrible.

They deserve to know how to pronounce correctly the names of the members of Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars.

Ottilie Bastarache

Felice Armand

Gaspar Gagneaux

Vermont Escoffier 

Jolanda Scaletta

Claude Cellier

Baptiste Moreaux

and Brielle Pelletier

Thank you!

Enjoy the rest of the show. If you can. See you!

And this is the Silver Bayonet warband! Almost ready to go. There’s just a few small things we need to do to wrap it all up, and that is selecting attributes for our officer, selecting gear and filling out the unit sheet. The gear list is fairly short so it doesn’t feel overwhelming like certain games that are out there. 

For our officer we get to increase a few stats of our choice based on the rules. So I’m going to increase Accuracy over Melee, Health over Speed, and Recruitment over Courage. I would have rather have gone with increasing Courage story-wise but increasing Recruitment gives us an extra 5 recruitment points which allows us to make Brielle a grenadier rather than an infantryman, so she has a littles stat boost.

We also get to choose two attributes for our Officer, and for Ottilie I went with Indefatigable and Inspiring, mostly driven by character flavor again. I feel she’s quite inspiring to her soldiers and the indefatigable attribute prohibits her from receiving more than a single fatigue token at any time. And fatigue tokens are  essentially equivalent to a -1 penalty on combat rolls. In Silver Bayonet, melee combatants receive two fatigue tokens almost every turn they are in combat so this feels like a good balance between supporting the story of this character and a decent game tactic.

Our officer has six equipment slots and may select items from the General Armory and up to two items from the Special Armory. We’re definitely going with her storied two pistols, a musket with a silver bayonet and a cartridge box, and silver shot for one of her pistols. I’m doing a little bit of meta gaming here because I know the first solo scenario has a likelihood of spawning in some werewolves, which are susceptible to silver weapons. But Officers are allowed to change up their gear between games, so, you know, Ottilie has some peculiar instincts, or perhaps even top secret intelligence from military scouts regarding what to expect. Who knows? It’s just a game. 

For the rest of our warband members, they each get to choose one item from the Special Armory, with the exception of any soldier that has the attribute Supernatural Veteran, which three of our seven soldiers, do, and those get to choose two items from the Special Armory. But as opposed to Officers, the equipment these soldiers select is permanent, they don’t get to switch gear between games. So, we’ll go down our unit sheet and add all this stuff.

Felice Armand, our vivandiere, has the Supernatural Veteran attribute, so she’s going to carry a silver hand weapon and oil and torches.

Gaspar Gagneux, the doctor, will carry a salt bag, which some Harvestmen monsters are susceptible to, but it does have a chance of ruining a firearm when it’s used.

Vermont Escoffier, our supernatural investigator, has the Supernatural Veteran attribute and so he’ll deploy with a heavy weapon and pistol and he’ll take along some oil and torches and some cold iron shot.

Claude Cellier, our scout, will take some silver shot for his musket.

Jolanda Scaletta, the expatriate occultist, benefits from her Supernatural Veteranship by carrying a well-worn holy symbol and a silver hand weapon.

Baptiste Moreau, the surly infantryman, shall take some cold iron shot and Brielle Pelletier, the grenadier, has a holy symbol of her own making.

Now, obviously playing a game will require me to be able to make notes and changes on this unit sheet in pencil, and so this onscreen version is just to show how I’m going to fill out the actual printed sheet.

Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars, ready and waiting to storm the Gloaming. By the way, this term “the Gloaming” is my own little invention to add into the Harvestmen lore for the game. I just wanted a way to refer, I guess according to the game lore, basically to the fae realm or land of fairy, which is where these monsters are coming from.

So, all that’s left to do is a massive building and painting session to get these figures ready to fight on the tabletop. Again, I’m not looking forward to that, to be perfectly honest. This will be painting up eight unique figures for the warband, I had to order eight wolf miniatures from Etsy for the enemy models – and that’s the bare minimum, more wolves will be needed, but I’ll have to proxy some, you know the budget can only afford so many wolves! And I need a couple of werewolf figures because in the scenario there’s a chance for werewolves to appear on the table as well. And I only have one werewolf figure at the moment. Actually no I’ve got two. So what is that? Like, I gotta paint up like 17, 17 figures?! I don’t know about that, I kinda want to break that up into two separate painting episodes, even that would be tough to do but that’s gonna wreck my perfect little mini-series schedule. 

But hey, we got a warband on paper, a scenario picked out, terrain from last month’s crafting video, basically, game on! 

So. Go build a warband. Write up some backstory, just for fun. See where it takes you.

See ya!