Let's Play 5 Leagues From the Borderlands - Warband Creation
This week on the Blog, we are starting a new series of posts which will track Flossy and I playing through a Cooperative TTRPG (Table Top Role Playing Game) adventure released by Modiphius Entertainment called 5 Leagues from the Borderlands. Link Here : Five Leagues
Both myself and Flossy will be playing together, and this series is to track our adventures so you can see what it's like to play the game, see the models I am painting up to go alongside it to support the battles and hopefully have some fun seeing how badly we get it wrong along the way! This will be Flossy’s first introduction into the Mini Wargaming hobby outside of D&D, so a co-operative experience where we can work together and let the story show itself should be a fun experience where we can focus on learning the system and the strategy rather than on beating each other… We have plenty of other games for doing that!
Throughout the posts, I am going to focus more towards the story and the experience rather than the mechanics of the specific dice rolls, but before we get to that, let’s understand a little more about what 5 Leagues is and why we chose it.
What is 5 Leagues?
A game created by Modiphius Entertainment - probably best to let them describe their own product straight from its description on their website : “Five Leagues From the Borderlands is a solo adventure wargame where you take the role of a warband of heroes and adventurers and explore a grim fantasy world full of monsters, enemies, creeping malice and exciting quests. The whole campaign is generated procedurally with each battle created from over 100 different enemy types, 17 unique foes and 6 scenario types that can play out in a wide number of ways. As you play, you will explore the game world, discover new locations and take on quests and jobs. Your warband will gain experience and power and find wondrous loot… or die gruesomely in brutal combat.”
We are hoping this will allow us to play through a campaign together, both working towards a single goal rather than the more DM/Player dynamic we have had in the past when playing D&D as a pair. We generated all of the warbands, enemies, battles and campaign elements through dice rolls, so let's see the warband we created and who you will see going forwards.
Meet the Warband - Flossy’s Characters
Valindra - Female Fey Blood Outsider
A tough elven creature, fighting with a shield and a blade, Valindra relies on her experiences and talents rather than any advantages she gained from her birthright. Mechanically, she comes equipped with a Bastard Sword and a suit of partial armor to help her survive the front line, as well as the Pathwise skill to assist with the tracking of enemies and avoidance of obstacles whilst traveling.
Valindra is also the Avatar of the group, which means she is the “main character” of our story, giving her a few additional benefits such as some luck, some Will points and a map making kit to allow her to make a safe travel route when we get to the region.
Tarrin - Male Halfling Frontier Fighter
A small but plucky fighter, Tarrin tends to be resourceful relying on a highly skill based fighting style. If he can he tries to pick a spot near the back of the battlefield, picking people off with his sling, which was upgraded to be a fine weapon, along with some light armor to help him with his skill of Scouting as he moves round the battlefield.
Til - Human Outcast Drifter (Follower)
Til has only recently joined the group, finding them in the last town and deciding to tag along to try and help out to earn some coin and fame. He comes with a self bow, trying to stay back with Tarrin and provide a little support from the rear of the battlefield.
Meet the Warband - Everstromn’s Characters
Asim - Human Mystic
Asim is on a search for knowledge to aid him in the spellcraft he acquired at a young age. Coming with a few extra items from his arcane background, he will likely focus on helping his allies stay in the fight longer, along with controlling the battlefield and debuffing enemies - he doesn’t know any offensive spells yet!
He comes with the knowledge of the following spells, but I am sure he will pick up more along the way : Darts (Restock an Allies ammunition), Manipulate (Pick up / move items on the battlefield), Fog (Line of Sight blocker), Steelbreaker (Remove an enemies Armor) and Mark (Make an Enemy easier to hit).
Sir Mokrog - Human Noble
Sir Mokrog disgraced his family after a drunken night at a rather formal occasion, and as such has set out into the world to seek fame and fortune to try and restore his name and honor. He comes with as much armor as he can muster, a giant warhammer, a full face helmet, a full purse and an arrogance that he may be slightly better than the others…
Bimmer - Faithful Servant (Follower)
Sir Mokrog also brought along a follower. Bimmer has helped him through a few sticky situations, ensuring that when Sir Mokrogs mouth gets him in trouble and overwhelmed, Bimmer's fists can get him out of them. He has stuck with his master ever since being picked up off the street after a tavern brawl, and only needs to be told where to punch to start the process of letting the fists fly.
Party Resources
Before setting out into the world that we needed to create, we finished out the warband creation process by assembling all the items into one list of Warbands resources. We are not going to keep these separate between the two groups - this is a co-op game after all!
7 x gold pieces
2 x Silvertree leafs (healing herbs)
1 x Repair Kit (fix a damaged item)
3 x Story Points (used for re-rolls at key times)
Concluding Thoughts
So there is our warband, created through the dice rolls and choices we made guided from the book. Overall as a creation experience, it was pretty good - the book stepped us through each step one at a time, there wasn’t too much jumping around the layout and we didn’t have to go back and re-read sections that were long or confusing too often. There were a few hiccups, and we likely made some wrong decisions with regards to the racials and the kinds of characters we created, but we will find that out moving forward. So far we are really enjoying the process of 5 leagues and look forward to seeing what's in store for the motley crew we have in front of us.
Next time on “Lets Play 5 Leagues” Flossy and I will be diving into creating the Region, the Settlements, the Map and finding out the threats we shall be facing in the campaign - we hope you join us for more! - I would put this paragraph in italics to separate it from the rest of the text
