Another weekend, another attempt by the Dark Brotherhood to claim a soul for Sithis.

I thought I’d take this from a different angle and discuss how I shaped my plan. The scenario saw a series of hidden objectives scattered across the centerline of the map within a 6 inch linear zone. You score points for killing your opponent or resolving these hidden objective tokens. The tokens are revealed on contact, and can vary between several options: control areas, puzzles (intelligence checks), and master treasures. My opponent brought a party of five elite models plus summons and I brought a party of eight models.

I had two hero archers, a hero warrior-assassin, and a bunch of assassin mooks. My plan was to have my forces sneak forward (which makes them harder to attack) and apply pressure across the board, taking advantage of my greater numbers to access more of the hidden objectives and pick and choose which would bring me victory. My two archers were meant to solve problems where needed while my force closed in. They were also meant to capitalize on my faction ability to set assassination targets and gain extra VP for killing them–I chose two spiders that were in easy shooting range and one frost troll in the center that could go either direction.

The spiders were meant to guarantee me some easy VP, whereas the troll was meant to distract my opponent and drag them into a rough melee. It… somewhat worked. The troll ate up some of his time and was higher on his target list because it was worth extra VP to me. The spiders were, mostly, easy kills–except they were about the only thing my archers hit!

One archer missed every shot in the game and the other only killed the spiders. So much for solving problems. Thankfully, my efforts to flip objective tokens somewhat paid off. I managed to solve a puzzle for two VP and we found the center to be full of secure objectives, which forced my opponent forward into a nest of monsters and, well, assassins.

I ignored the monsters and went for the kill… and missed. On the other flank, a giant spider climbed down the tower and ate my opponent’s mage. Very helpful.

I ultimately had to push the center engagement–with one of his heroes down, taking out another would be devastating. I spent time trying to solve how my warrior could solve the problem… only to realize I had a perfectly good assassin mook standing around waiting to score some criticals. And boy, did he.

With the second major death and my VP now climbing out of reach, my opponent called the game here. I don’t believe he was 100% out, but I do agree I was overwhelmingly the favorite to win at that point. I still had all eight models on the board and should be able to secure the center pile of area control markers, which would score me a whopping 6 points per turn. In a game where scoring 20 VP overall is doing really good, 6 points per turn would be quite dire. His faction ability (Aldmeri Dominion) would have allowed him to claim all three with a single model, but his nearest hero was a bit tied up fighting yet another assassin mook. Turns out having a ton of them is useful!

Another great game. Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms has yet to fail me. Ironclads aside, I’m hoping to paint up a party of adventurers to give my opponent some reprieve from the Dark Brotherhood–but man, when you pull off the epic assassination that ends the game, that’s such a good feeling. It’ll take a good while to adjust to a new faction and new style of play, which is part of why I enjoy this game so much. I look forward to the chance to learn.

Plus, I’ll finally get a dragonborn. Fus-ro-deathball here I come.