The party flies the airship back to Triboar, where they enlist Darz to keep watch over it while they are gone. The dragon cultists bid the party farewell, and remind them to visit Klauth in the near future. The party spends some time in Triboar doing inventory, collating what they know, and deciding on exactly what to do next.
When the adventurers are prepared, they gather and use the Conch. They are teleported to a strange area, filled with bio-luminescent creatures and other sea life. The party notices a large glyph carved into the stone, and hear singing coming from up a large spiral staircase.
The adventurers follow the stairs, and see several giants of different types listening to two storm giant females perform music, one playing a strange crab-organ and the other with powerful, melodic singing. Starman and Berry perform for them, and the adventurers are brought before the storm giants. There are several giants in attendance, one from every major type: hill, stone, frost, fire and cloud...in addition to more storm giant guards.
The eldest sister, Mirran, informs the adventurers that her youngest sister, Serissa, is in charge...but is far too busy to meet with them. She has them escorted to quarters sized for 'small folk', where they take a short rest. Soon, Mirran returns and tells the party Serissa will see them and leads them back to the entry room.
There, the party finds several of the giant lords they saw earlier. After some hesitancy, the giants attack the unsuspecting group. Soon, most of the party is beaten and left for dead floating face down in a pool of seawater, presumably for the crabs.
Yet...
Two of the party, Starman and Ikki Popp...are air genasi. They could breathe underwater, and Starman used healing spells to stabilize those who had been wounded to near death. After laying low for a moment and pretending to float in the water as corpses, the giants left back up the spiral staircase. The adventurers then crawled out of the pool, heaving and panting from pain and lack of breath...unsure of their next move.
6.2 Court of the Storm Giants The party attempts to find a place to recuperate after fishing themselves out of the drink. They explore the immediate surroundings, and find only guest quarters - both human and giant sized - and a storage area. Unsure of what to do next, they send Briar up the stairs after the giants while Starman explored the grate at the bottom of the pool.
Briar found the cloud giant talking to the stone giant just outside the stairwell, and returned to the lower level to report this. Starman found a giant drain with five grates such as the one he found and slipped through. In several of the grates were similar pools, but the entire drain area was underwater. Also, there was wildlife in all the grates...giant crabs, but mostly killer whales. One of them sees Starman, and briefly calls to him. Shortly thereafter, he returns to the party, taking a moment to marvel at the vortex at the top of the massive drain.
The party decided they would brave the water and killer whales rather than the giants above. Softhands grabbed a barrel of dried fish from the storage area, and the party dove below and swam through the grates. Softhands broke the barrel up, and the party fed it to the more friendly-seeming of the trio of killer whales. The party swam through that grate from the drain area and up to the top of the pool.
Once out of the water, Berry spoke with the killer whale and got some crucial information. The whale actually belongs to Serissa, and what seems to be her private study is found nearby. The party resolves to try to rest amidst Serissa's knick-knacks, but is interrupted by the Princess herself.
What follows next is a flurry of action. The Princess, curious, talks to the 'small folk' (as she calls the adventurers) as her guards and advisors flit around. The players meet her uncle, Uthor and her advisor Imryth. When Starman offers to speak to the departed spirit of Queen Neri, Serissa decides to bring them to the throne room.
While in the court of the storm giants, the party sits with Serissa and her advisors as the body of the Queen is retrieved. Uthor and Imryth, the advisors to the queen, caution against trusting the 'small folk', and Imryth becomes heated. However, no one in the party that was listening could speak giant.
The Queen's body is brought forth, and Starman works his magic. They ask the Queen who killed her, and about Imryth. During this exchange, Imryth is questioned by the adventurers. She becomes agitated and, eventually, the subject of a zone of truth cast by Berry. Flustered, she snatches the Korolnor Scepter from around Serissa's neck and teleports away. Stunned by this development, Uthor and his guards can only watch in astonishment. Serissa, for her part, is distraught from hearing her dead mother speak.
Serissa gives the adventurers a wooden coin with a golden goose upon it, seemingly in line with something the dead Queen Neri had said. Serissa charges the players to find her missing father, for it has something to do with the coin. Serissa teleports the party back to Triboar, where they can begin their search for the origin of the wooden coin.
Herein lie the details for the Tier 2 Bastions of the forces of good in the North. Each has three scenarios, as compared to the 2 scenarios of Tier 1 Outposts. These are slightly more complex, and each is more delineated than the Tier 1 scenario sets.
In particular, this is where we will see other material referenced and modified for our purposes.
Some scenario sets favor Attack Wing, others favor D&D Miniatures. A balance of scenarios has been selected to provide a fun and engaging campaign. Experience points are not tracked, only wins / losses and sometimes other specific scenario criteria.
Tier 2 - Bastions of Good
High Forest
A druidic circle near the heart of the High Forest serves as a meeting place between the Harpers and the Enclave.
Scenario 1
Standard Attack Wing, 120 Legion Points
Scenario 2
D&D Miniatures, 100 Point Skirmish
The Good force must include at least 20 points of animals and beasts.
Scenario 3
D&D Miniatures, 100 Point Skirmish
The Good player must select at least two commanders, one each for the Harpers and the Enclave.
When this base is cleared, the Evil player may add 20 points of animals and beasts to his next skirmish free of cost.
Deadsnows
A small, walled city that was destroyed during the Spellplague. After rumors of blue fire were quelled by the Order of Blue Fire, the Harpers quickly setup a small settlement within the walls to manage the campaign in the north.
Scenario 1
Standard Attack Wing, 120 Legion Points
Players deploy 50-75 points worth of units at the beginning of the game. Starting on the 3rd turn, at the beginning of each player's turn they may deploy one unit from their legion at the edge of the board. Place the model touching the table edge and place their dial during the planning phase.
Scenario 2
Standard Attack Wing, 120 Legion Points
Scenario 3
D&D Miniatures, 100 Point Skirmish
The broken outer wall of Deadsnows runs the length of the board. This can be any acceptable wall with at least three openings.
When this base is cleared, the Evil player may add a 20% bonus to his available Legion Points in his next Attack Wing scenario.
Far Forest
The Emerald Enclave has established a mustering ground on the eastern edge of the Far Forest, in a difficult to reach area due to natural hazards.
Scenario 1
Standard Attack Wing, 120 Legion Points
Only dragons deploy on the first turn of the game. Starting on the 2nd turn, at the beginning of each player's turn they may deploy one unit from their legion at the edge of the board. Place the model touching the table edge and place their dial during the planning phase.
Scenario 2
Standard Attack Wing, 120 Legion Points
Use the Set-Up and Special Rules from Adventure #1. Objectives are standard, and the winner acquires choice of one campaign artifact from any in possession at the end of the scenario.
Scenario 3
D&D Miniatures, 100 Point Skirmish
When this base is cleared, the Evil player may re-deploy up to two units after his opponent is finished deploying in the next scenario, either Attack Wing or Miniatures Skirmish.
It might surprise you to learn that I actually try to have my writing schedule set up a fairly long way into the future. I have a schedule, and I try to make my deadlines...though that seldom ever actually happens. In this way, the site will have a rhyme and a reason; moreover, as time goes on we might be able to make use of the resources we're building here.
Several months back, I wrote about Edition Purges. Around that time I drafted two more articles that I wouldn't get to for months because I was doing other things. I guess I didn't realize that everything I had drafted would change from the time I wrote the drafts to the time I would actually publish. So, the two follow ups to that post will be markedly different than their original form.
I'll start by saying that once, I looked forward to new editions.
Once. When there was nearly a decade between editions. I even supported the 4 year grind with Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000...that is to say, 2 years between full-on upgrading editions. That's how it used to work - every four years, staggered like Winter and Summer olympics. It's a big deal when you pretty much collect every army.
In those days, the rules were raw...but after four or five...eight (?!?!) editions you'd think they'd get it together. The rules used to evolve...now they just change for no apparent reason except monetary gain by the companies. I'm not against that...I want to give my money to these people. I'm even compelled to sometimes...but we can't incentivize this changing of rules.
This post was supposed to be about Fantasy Flight Games, and how they had been rolling out rules updates to X-Wing. I was going to rant about how all the cardboard accessories they used had pretty much put them in a position that they couldn't really pivot out of, sort of like how all Magic cards have the same stats on them whether they were published in 1994 or 2018. Changing any rules in a major way would see them asking players to throw out 90% of what they had collected.
I was going to talk about how updates are rolled out for X-Wing, as there had just been a FAQ update. I was going to talk about how introducing new cards like Chardaan Refit have changed the meta in a low-impact way and yadda-yadda-yadda. I was going to talk about how awesome that course of action is for customers and fans.
Of course, just a few weeks after my first drafts X-Wing 2.0 was announced. Shortly after, we learned that the only thing we could carry over was the plastic ships, stands and dice. ALL the cardboard and cards are now totally worthless, and looking at my collection that's literally MOST of what I bought from FFG.
You can imagine how stupid I felt - but this isn't about X-Wing or FFG. It's about me and the games I get to play while I'm on this earth. The move to X-Wing 2.0 jinked me off the X-Wing hype train...but I'm still going to play X-Wing.
Just not X-Wing 2.0.
I left this article on the draft board, and when it came time to write it for real I knew what I had to write about. No matter how you slice it, this opinion comes off as greybeard grognard, and it probably is. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to react to this, but I already knew what I was going to do about it...I just didn't know how much I wanted to tell everyone, since your feelings are protected animals these days and anything I say can and will be used against me in the court of public opinion.
So instead, I'm going to talk about how the X-Wing 2.0 pretty well killed it in my area. The casuals FFG gathered were driven away by the tournament scene 1000 miles away. I'm going to talk about how we as a community need not be bothered with this any further, since we can play any game we want at any time. I'm going to talk about how you kids need to be willing to play older editions if you're going to expect us to play your newer ones.
Firstly, I get why the change occurred. It's just a little too drastic for my taste, this pivot away from what we already had in material investment with FFG. Kind of like Primaris marines. I don't think I can see it as anything other than a blatant grab for the wallets of the gamers who "they've got" through this investment - but this is just the sad state of the industry right now. More and more companies are doing the edition grind, and it's just coming off as...bad. Bad quality games churned out, over and over.
If the tournament scene is what drives these, then the games need to be designed for that from the beginning. Instead what we get is half-assed in both directions. It's not designed for tight tournament play. We know this because it's expressly said that it's for casual play and because every wave there is a multitude of ridiculousness as holes in the design cycle became apparent. When the casual players are informed all their crap is junk and the edition is changing, they are told it's because the tournaments got out of hand.
So...it's a casual game...but it's governed by the fickleness of the tournament scene. This is the essence of what we are told everytime and with every game, and it's just...plain doublespeak (which itself is an oxymoron). Stop it. Just. Stop. It. I can't bring myself to support this edition grind anymore - which kinda makes me sad, since I have more available money now that I'm old. I find myself spending that skrill on all kinds of random gaming stuff, instead of keeping up with my old favorite games.
How long did FFG go into the production schedule knowing what they were going to be selling the equivalent of selling wooden nickels? The answer is: Quite Some Time. At a guess, I'd say at minimum a year and a half - but maybe it was rushed. Look at the packaging...pretty basic. Either way, it's a rough call to make, to change the foundation like that.
It leaves one to wonder if the late stages of design in X-Wing 1.0 were deliberately created to unbalance the competitive meta and allow pretense for the change to 2.0. That's one way to garner support for the change - appeal to tournament gamers, and as we've seen across the board it's quite effective. Indeed, it leaves one with doubt.
The decision to change the basic engine so none of the paper was valid is total folly. I just don't get it, and I'm not interested in the new game. We've implemented tournament environment here that simply don't allow the kinds of hijinks we see in these published games. No longer are we going to allow this kind of thing to disrupt our games, so there is no noticeable reason for this. You'd understand if you were around for some of the original edition switches.
I'm starting to think I enjoy games that are no longer officially supported or out-of-print, because we can take the close-circuit system they provide and tailor it to exactly what we like. Just because a game is no longer supported and fresh ruleset is out means nothing to me anymore. A lot of gaming companies will not be directly supported with my money because when things go stale the knee-jerk reaction is to ask everyone to start over completely, in some cases actually asking everyone to replace their game components entirely.
I think that's absolutely egregious, and it's a trend that has to stop. Better design, longer production cycles that are PLANNED out...it's hard to believe that these huge companies do not have the resources or personnel to actually manage these projects. It's as if they don't care about the game at all, and that makes it seem like they are only interested in what they can bilk. I don't like feeling that way.
And if it's not for love of the games...
Yes I understand that it's a business, probably better than any clod whose mouth that remark falls out of. I also understand design, tournaments, the community and a lot of the other factors. Anyone who believes that this is really about the good of the game is not only misguided, but foolish and will soon be parted from what little money he has left.
I'm done with what this does to our communities, fracturing them and stopping all the games because no one can find anyone that plays "their edition". Whatever that is. The publishers may be making money with these production models, and that props up the idea that gaming is doing great. They are making money, and in the holy writ of capitalism means that everything about everything is always good.
Obviously more people are playing games, since they are making so much money (especially in fiscal years where new editions are launched). I don't know if I believe that. Of course, they say it has nothing to do with rising prices and mandatory buy-ins created by changing the entire ruleset from the ground up. No, no.
On the ground it seems like there are far less large clubs playing games and more tiny groups huddled in their own corners. Two major FLGS for the entire state I live in simply removed X-Wing stuff to the back corner and went back to playing Magic. I can't speak for the others, but when you've got a grand total of about five or six cool FLGS in your entire state that's quite a bit. At least one of the others never did X-Wing to begin with, so there's that.
Now, none of this is to say I'm against new games. You should see what's coming up for this blog. I'm all about new games, this blog is pretty much about new games. I'm just tired of having to buy the SAME material again and again. Since I was about to praise them for NOT doing anything like this, FFG's decision to announce a 2.0 version really hit me where I lived.
I'm going to stay with X-Wing 1.0 quite comfortably. Hit me up if you're selling out. As far as new ships go - well, I've already got most of them...and any new ones I really want can be bought on Ebay without any cards or other trash FFG wants to sell me...and we'll just make our own cards and errata (if we need them) to go along with it.
From now on, Time Stands Still at the Iron Seer's Hill.
Editions won't change until we say they do. I don't really care what edition it is anyway, as long as it's complete. I'm starting to favor OOP games, since most things are dirt cheap. Since there aren't any WAAC players here anymore, it's simply not going to be an issue. What is going to be an issue is $200 buy-ins every edition for every game.
I'm not even bitter, despite what you might think after reading all this. It's just hard to care. I haven't played 40k since mid-6th edition, and it's been two editions in just a short time with talk of another on the horizon. It's ridiculous. It's hip to edition skip.
The Fate of us all
Lies deep in the dark,
When time stands still at the Iron Hill!
I stand alone...
no one's by my side!
I'll dare you!
Come out!
You coward!
Now it's me or you!
- Blind Guardian, "Time Stands Still (At The Iron Hill)
