Mortal Gods – More Games!

Originally, I had only written this article as a post on the hobby forum tabletopwelt.de, but Dennis thought it would be a good idea to show that we don't just write articles, but also actually play!

So please bear with me for the amateurish presentation, I will make the next summaries of the games a bit more interesting. My opponent was none other than Martin, whom I've known for over 20 years and our paths have crossed many times at the gaming table.

First game – Scenario „The Price“

I was once again a guest at the Rhein Main Tabletopclub e.V. in Nidderau and, as mentioned, played against Martin. He had so much fun with the extended demo last time that he bought the whole game in pieces and brought his recently painted Athenians to the table. Martin painted like a machine and I don't want to keep the snapshot of his Athenians from you, which he painted in less than a month:

Athenians…assemble!

The Athenians were organized as follows:

• 55 Athenian Lochagos (the „big“ hero), medium armour
• 45 Athenian Promachos (the „small“ hero), medium armour
• 30 Iatros (healer), medium armour
• 43 Athenian Hoplites
• 43 Athenian Hoplites
• 40 Veteran Toxotes (archer)
• 42 Athenian Marine Toxotai (archers)

Total, 298 points.

Normally, heavily armored troops are quite slow, but the Athenians are already a bit faster by default and have their own special rule “Inspire”, with which they can give Athenian troops an additional 1D6 movement.

I myself used the Theban lineup that Martin had commanded last time in the full demo game. Basically, I played with the generic Greeks card set here, but I think I managed to give them a certain Theban flair:

• 65 Lochagos, heavy armour
• 5 Weapons Master (can perform another attack once per game as if you had achieved an overkill bonus)
• 45 Promachos, medium armour
• 45 Veteran Hoplite
• 40 Experienced Peripoloi (the slightly weaker variant of a Hoplite)
• 35 Peripoloi
• 32 Sphed…sssphh….Slingers
• 32 Slingers

Total, 299 points

We left the placement of the terrain pieces to a club member to ensure a certain randomness and fairness. In the end, we ended up with a roughly circular area.

We rolled an “X” as deployment zone, whereby the side quarters were each the setup area for one of our armies and the mission objective from the scenario “the prize” was set up directly in the middle.

I have some problems with the scenario “The Prize”. Not because I can't play it, but because I think it needs a bit of tweaking in terms of the rules. The aim is to pick up the object in the middle and survive until the end of the fifth round. However, there is a problem: the rule for leaders. If you kill your opponent's leader, this is an instant win, unless the opponent has another model with the “Leader” rule in his ranks to whom command can be transferred to.

Why do I know this scenario so well? I use it for the demos to introduce the game, but I have adjusted it due to the aforementioned reason. To be honest, I've never seen a game with this scenario reach the fifth round. For the demo, I reduced the whole thing to two turns and I think I'll reduce the number of turns to three for the full game in the future. This creates an enormous amount of pressure on the players to act, so that you have to focus primarily on the mission objective and not on the opposing heroes.

But well, I thought, Martin would get to know his Athenians better that way and as a warm-up game it was okay.

The troops took up the following positions:

1. Martin had placed his hero very far to the left. Since I'd already paid this lesson myself, I was hoping to lure him away from there and seperate him from the main force. The heroes in Mortal Gods are damn good, but not enough to cope without their troops.

2. The main problem was the large open area - the Athenian archers lurked there like a damned porcupine waiting to fire its pointed projectiles across the entire field. They have medium armor and can therefore receive orders and attack bonuses, which is not possible with normal, lightly armed archers. They also received an additional attack die from the nearby veteran and another from their elevated position, which gave them five dice from the very start...

3. The veteran himself was not to be disdained either. At his side was another hero, the healer. When this model comes into base contact with other models, a dice is rolled and, depending on the result, a number of health points are healed. However, this only works for wounded troops, dead ones cannot be resurrected - there is another faction for that.

4. The Hoplites formed the center. I was pretty sure that Martin would march them forward to take aim at the mission objective and then attack my slingers. The fast movement of the Athenians made this quite likely. They in turn received help from the Promachos, who is also a pretty good melee fighter in his own right.

The elite Athenian battle line formed up threateningly...

...while the Thebans looked for a way to escape the enemy's arrows

5. From my side, I had a pretty good plan. The leader should first send the medium melee fighters around the rocks and the forest.
6. To avoid immediately looking like a pincushion, I had hidden my troops as far as possible behind the stone formations. The aim was to reach the flank as unscathed as possible.

7. The veteran should move forward himself and then give the Peripoloi an attack order with his special rule “Order the Charge”. If the Peripoloi received a movement order from the leader beforehand, I could cover a whopping 21 inches if everything went smoothly.

8. The slingers, on the other hand, were used as bait. I knew they wouldn't be much good, but I was sure Martin would take the bait - they were just too easy to slay in close combat.

9. For this reason, I kept my experienced Peripoloi under cover behind the forest. A nasty surprise was in store for anyone who tried to mess with the slingers.

If I say that now, I'm probably taking some of the tension out of the recap, but somehow it's necessary - Martin even managed to beat my own dice luck. His attacks hit well, but the intended victims didn't feel it. Martin simply didn't manage to inflict any wounds, so at some point I decided to save my actions and rely on the troops' natural armor.

So, what can I say? My plan worked quite well. The leader gave the order to move to the Peripoloi squad, who then moved on with their own movement. I then followed up with the veteran Hoplite, giving the order to attack and taking on the Athenian Lochagos.

I actually managed to steal all activations from his leader this way. Although he had killed one of my men, he had suffered three wounds himself in return. I also kept the Promachos and the Veteran close by at all times so that I could benefit from their bonuses.

The Athenians, meanwhile, had reached the mission objective. I think it would have been best to move it out of range now so that I couldn't possibly get to it and capture it, but did I mention my bait yet?

Martin did what his nature told him to do and headed straight for the slingers. As his leader only had two health points left after the bloody melee, he called in his healer and tried to restore him, but failed - after that I decided to send Martin to a boot camp on “how to roll sixes”.

WOLOLOOOO!

Matters came to a head for Martin when the veteran dashed forward to finish off the healer as well. The archers promptly failed their test of courage and came to a standstill at a hair's breadth from the edge of the field. If they were lightly armored archers, they would have fled the field, as they move eight inches instead of seven.

As it happened, my lesser hero seized the opportunity and sent the Athenian hero to Hades. By the end of the third round, the game was over.

MALAKA!

All in all, we still had a lot of fun and we (and everyone else watching) laughed again and again at Martin's botched wounding rolls.

 The hoped-for rubber band effect worked well for me, but a lot has to come together to achieve this feat. However, it's certainly good as an ugly surprise. The Athenian bonus for "Inspire" differs from that of the general Greeks, who get an additional attack in return. I think the Athenian bonus is more useful in missions with mission objectives, but the additional attack of the general "Inspire" bonus makes more of a difference in a direct exchange of blows.

 

Second game – Scenario „Sacred Sites“

After I explained to Martin that I generally thought the scenario could be improved, he asked me to choose one this time and not to randomly roll for it. I decided on “Sacred Sites”. In this scenario, four mission objectives are placed on the field, which are basically six inches away from the corners of the field, even though the rulebook explains it a bit more complicated, which is simply due to the fact that you don't always play on a 90x90cm (3x3) space, but it can also be larger. You get one point for each mission objective that you control at the end of a round and whoever has the most points at the end of the fifth round wins.

Since we had a nice flow in the game, we missed taking more pictures, but I think I can still get the important part together. This time we each got a half as the setup zones. Martin, who was again looking for an elevated position with his archers to take advantage of the bonuses, was able to see much of the field, but not all of it. The terrain had again been set up by chance by a non-participant.

The archers and the veteran were ready to pepper everything with arrows again

Especially at the beginning, I positioned myself just out of range of the archers and tended to move my troops via orders so that I could be sure of getting them safely to mission objective 1. I planned to fight my way through there and simply hold at the objectives 2 and 3, as they were already under my control anyway.

While mission objectives 2 and 4 remained largely undisturbed, fierce battles raged at 1 and 3. The Peripoloi and a troop of slingers managed to hold out until the end of the fourth round before they were finally routed by the Hoplites and the Athenian leader. The slingers had done a great job this time. Not only had they cheekily taken two health points from the leader, they had also robbed the Athenians of valuable activations, which delayed the action for a long time at this point.

At 1, on the other hand, a true bloodbath raged. My Theban hero managed to take out the healer quite early and still stay out of sight of the archers, who were keeping a wary eye on the forest.

We could rightly say that we didn't give each other anything. The turning point came when Martin managed to take out my veteran. This meant that 1 was in his hands for one round and I couldn't score any points for it.

Punchesmuchos struck and got rid of the veteran

I managed to push his Promachos back bit by bit, but the damage had already been done. The valuable point fell and Martin bagged the score instead of me. He had also realized by now that it made more sense to conquer the mission objectives than to concentrate on the skirmishes.

At this point, he was able to show off the Athenians' true strength: their blistering speed. The Inspire rule gave them additional momentum, which brought the Hoplites so close to the slingers at 2 that they were able to attack them without any problems. When one of them fell, the other two picked up their feet and fled the field.

In the meantime, Martin had decided to take 4, as he couldn't get to 3 anymore. Luckily, I had been able to push back his little hero on 1 beforehand, so I scored a point in the last round to secure a draw, even though it had looked for a while like I would take the game easily.

The loss of the veteran in the fourth round in particular had turned the game around. Martin was able to score a point, which ultimately robbed me of the win and forced a draw. I really enjoyed the second game, as every move was filled with tension.

 

Would you like to see more match reports on Mortal Gods? Then let us know!

 

Greetings from the Chaosbunker

Dino