Guards of Traitor’s Toll, or Possibly Return to Whitby

We played through the training game over the weekend. It’s designed to teach the basics of the game without overwhelming the players, which is nice since Guards of Traitor’s Toll features a lot of unusual concepts. We played with squads of three guards each, and were given a deck of four plot cards that asked us to break up a smuggling operation. The first plot introduced the game’s movement rules, which are intended to simulate the idea of guards on a meandering patrol of the city until they spot some obviously suspicious activity to investigate.

On each guard’s activation, they are given a choice of random directions they’re required to move in, unless they have a clear target within view. Normally I don’t like random movement in skirmish games, but in this case it was one of many unusual mechanisms that only makes sense when you consider the highly narrative nature of the game — in practice I found that it didn’t bother me too much until near the end of the game when there was only one suspect left and I couldn’t get close enough to “spot” her because my guards kept meandering in random directions.

Once you’ve identified a suspect and managed to get close enough to them to attempt an arrest, combat and damage are fairly straightforward. However, here the game uses another one of my pet peeves in skirmish game design: requiring multiple rolls to make a successful attack. In this case, you decide whether the attack is intended to wound or subdue, then roll; if the target hasn’t activated yet, they get a reaction to try to avoid the attack. If they don’t manage to evade, you have to make another roll to either inflict damage, or subdue and restrain the target. It’s something that really turned me off of the Warlord Judge Dredd game, and it’s not doing this game any favors either.

Another minor quibble was that, with 20 or more non-player models on the board, getting a tape measure in for movement was often very difficult, especially when most of the models are moving in random directions. I think this aspect of the game might be made much easier by playing on a one-inch hex grid, so to that end I’ve ordered a vinyl mat with such a grid on it. We’ll see if it helps in our next game.

There may be one or two mechanisms I’m not 100% sold on, but overall I still found the game enjoyable enough that we’ll try a full game as soon as we get a chance. Tactically, we learned that it’s best to have your guards patrol in groups of two or more — arrest attempts are much easier if you can gang up on the suspect, especially if at least one of your guards has a rope or chain, or even an open hand. The game is highly narrative in that respect: a lot of the mechanisms seem random and arbitrary, but they lead to fun story moments, which seems to be the whole point of this game.

I’m thrilled to have been awarded a coveted Golden Button for this project. Thanks to Ben, Gerry and Justin for the kind words!

I’m especially proud of the guy with his hands full of junk. And the fish-juggler.

With these done I should have enough guards and civilians to play the game, and I’ve got an extra sprue of townsfolk in addition to what’s in the Busy Streets expansion to build later — I’m sure there will be more characters needed that I haven’t thought of yet.

Now comes the real challenge: setting aside an afternoon and getting a table set up to play…

While I stuck more-or-less to the game’s illustrations for my first batch of guards, I let myself be more creative with the civilians. I used the game’s “identify” card as a rough guide to what I would need for the game, and over three sprues of civilians plus a batch of models from Midlam (see below), I think I’ve got most of the possibilities covered. Here’s the first set of 6 civilians.

Midlam Miniatures makes some great medieval townsfolk. I got these to pad out an order, thinking they might work for Traitor’s Toll, and I’m pleased to report that the scale and sculpting style match up perfectly. “Man running with small bemused pig” is a personal favorite.

Here are few random models that seem like they might fit in: A promo from Footsore Miniatures (I assume it’s for Baron’s War), the promo dwarf from the Traitor’s Toll base set + expansion bundle, and a shifty looking llama I found in a bargain bin at a local shop.

I’ve got two more sprue’s worth of civilians assembled and primed, which will give me a total of 36 models plus the guards. That should be enough to at least try the game out, and since I’m sprinkling in a few of the Midlam models I’ve got an extra sprue of civilians to do later, even before I get into the expansion.

I bought the Busy Streets expansion in addition to the base set, so I’ve got four sprues of guards. I want to get the game to the table sooner rather than later, and I’m not likely to play with more than two players, so I’ve started with just the two squads. For these I decided to stick pretty close to the artwork on the game’s stat cards, just to make it easy to tell who is who as we play our first few games.

I painted them with my usual mix of techniques. The base coat is black primer with a few shades of grey drybrush, then speedpaint for the browns and metallics and traditional 3-color triad for the skin tones and uniform colors. One day I will learn my lesson about avoiding color schemes that include yellow, but this is not that day…

Guards of Traitor’s Toll needs buildings. While I am sorely tempted by the pre-colored Tollingchester kits from Sarissa, I already have several bins filled with Dave Graffam papercraft terrain from my 7TV Dracula campaign, some of which were in turn re-purposed from a 7TV Prisoner village I did a few years earlier.

Sadly, the impressively huge church from Dracula chapter 1 was destroyed by my cats. I could always print and build another one, but I think I’ve got plenty of other buildings, certainly enough to fill up a 3×3 table.

The aesthetic of the Graffam models will be perfect for Traitor’s Toll, so that’s one of the game’s biggest stumbling blocks out of the way.