On the Field: Silver Bayonet Campaign

We had our first proper day for our Silver Bayonet campaign, launching with six players and three games. There’s a few more who couldn’t make it—scheduling is always a challenge.

For this event, I used the base scenarios from the book, lightly modified to fit the terrain I had on hand and to have clearcut end conditions so as to end the games a little faster. I find having to run all your models off the board or having to declare an end cooperatively with your opponent to be an unnecessary burden.

This proved to be the right choice overall and I learned a few things about scenario design for the game. For one, you don’t want to have a ton of monsters. The game seems to work best when your opposing player is your true opponent and the monsters are just interfering. Two, the game seems to work best when you’re competing over an item that has to be absconded with.

For example: in one game, the mission ended upon killing a Hobgoblin. The player feedback for this game was that it would have been better to get an experience reward for killing the Hobgoblin, but then being required to cut off a trophy or acquire an item and escape with it. The other two boards had such a system in place and I did feel that it produced more robust experiences for the players.

My obvious concern is repetition, but I intend to adapt missions from the expansions as well, which will hopefully give a few more ideas for addressing this. Granted, the campaign is intentionally short, so it may not be much of an issue in the end anyway.

What’s funny is this changes my overall vision for the campaign. I have toned things down considerably for the sake of having playable, fun, simple campaign structure that lets the players show up and have a good time. It’s easier on me as a GM, but almost feels too easy. Originally, I wanted to build toward some grand final event battle or some satisfying campaign conclusion. Now? I’d be happy to allow the campaign to just abruptly end and the players to call their chapters complete. The life of a Silver Bayonet unit is one of many stories and troubles, and the campaign just allowed the players to tell a few of those.