Burrows and Badgers

Root, but a miniatures skirmish game.

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This came out last year, at a time when I’d become burned out on developing my own skirmish game and churning through other products in the genre. I skipped it at the time. Now, my wife and I are obsessed.

The system keeps things simple, with levels determined by increases in polyhedral dice. The one clever idea it has—and it really doesn’t need many—is it that it gives a high-roll critical to all the dice, thus giving little underdogs like mice a 1 in 4 chance on a d4 to seriously kneecap a massive d12-strike badger.

Honestly, one of the coolest parts of it is that the guy who developed the system also sculpts the miniatures, and sells them through his site at a fair price and free shipping. The animals are fun and simple to paint (lots of fur) and mesh well with Mice and Mystics figures. The book is an Osprey title, and the rules organization borrows a lot from Frostgrave.

Anyway, here is my Wildbeasts starting crew, led by Skweeg Leggings, a toad familiar with dark woodland magic, who’s made a shakey alliance with a pair of squirrels and a mercenary Badger.

And my wife’s team, a group of Freebeast merchants who she says “just want to open up a game store and write poetry.”

Somewhere there is an alternate universe, and alternate me spends all day playing Osprey games.

GorillaGrody wrote: a mercenary Badger.

Obsession continues. Gotta keep writing this one up.

We played the “Lost in the Fog” scenario. Each figure activated had a 50/50 chance of wandering off in the wrong direction. Her Lizard Mage, named Von Cellphone, managed to teleport his Hedgehog friend off the side of the board to safety, but took a few turns to successfully bamf himself to safety. Meanwhile, my squirrels, Joey Condom and his brother Skeevy, ganged up on a mithril clad mouse, gave up, saw a break in the fog, and escaped the board (as Wildbeasts factionistas they’d scoped things out earlier and got a jump on things). A little scrimmage formed in the middle of the board until my toad bodyguard Bippo wised up and scrabbled for the exit, winning by a hair. Afterwards everyone went back to labor on their den except for my Badger, who did a little farm work for cash, and Squeeg Leggings, my leader, who saved an alchemist from drowning and won a few healing potions. Love this game.

Your terrain is stunning.

I’m not looking at this stuff la la la y’all are talking about a game that doesn’t exist la la la

Michael Barnes wrote: I’m not looking at this stuff la la la y’all are talking about a game that doesn’t exist la la la

This is the game I’ve wanted from Osprey over the course of a dozen books, but of course it’s a very specific painting project, too, one for which mere proxies would never work.

Except for the fact that it’s really great, I’m afraid that, in its specificity, it’s all too easy to avoid.

I actually quickly touched base with the sculptor/author and he assured me he’s working on a new book of scenarios. So it’s getting support.

Well worth the effort.

Also, I don’t know how hard it would be to locate some Disney-specific Robin Hood figurines, but they’d be spot-on for this game.

I’ll sue you

I wish you were my neighbor

ubarose wrote: Someone needs to write a review of this for the site.

I will! I'm still working on my promised follow-up to the Warhammer saga, comparing more user-friendly indie systems to the Warhammer system. I just got a little caught up in work and life stuff (which phrase will be etched on my tombstone).

I went and looked at the minis site you linked and I love their minis:

www.oathswornminiatures.co.uk/

They have an extremely high character 1980s/1990s GW vibe... before the sculpting got admittedly better but the models because less off-beat.

I mean, look at THIS cat:

burrowsandbadgers.com/gallery-image/g13.jpg