War Conflict - Help please!

Mouse Guard Missions
1

My groups game has lead to a point where an army of weasels is laying siege to Sprucetuck. The mice have managed to get into the tree, send a runner to a nearby town and barricade it in time before the weasels arrived.

Neither guard mouse in the group has militarist or administrator. One mouse has War Wise. Both mice have Will 3, and current Nature of 2.

I’m trying to work out the how to structure the GMs turn, and the climactic War conflict so that its very hard fought, but that the mice still have a chance if they are smart.

I figure they have enough time to organise 1 of the Weapons of War, and i’ll use that as the first obstacle in the GMs turn. Presumably the mice of sprucetuck will suggest a couple of things that might help and they can choose one to try to do before the war proper starts.

For the war conflict itself:
In the last session the weather watcher mouse spent a check to dictate that it was going to be really bad weather (heavy storm). I figure this is worth the ‘Properly Equipped’ weapon of war for the mice side as the weasels will be trapped in the mud outside.

Disposition of the mice: Since neither have Militarist, one of them will be making a Beginners Luck or Rolling Nature test here. Likely to result in
[ul]
[li]Beginners Luck: (Will of 3 + 1 Helping Die + 1 Properly Equipped + 1 for War-Wise) / 2 + Will 3 = 3d + 3 Disposition, e.g around 4-5, max 6
[/li][li]Nature: Nature 2 + 1 Helping Die + 1 Properly Equipped + 1 War-Wise) + Will 3 = 5d + 3 Disposition, e.g. 5-6.
[/li][/ul]

For the weasels I’ve been considering a couple of options: Captain lead, Tunnel Lord Lead, or Tunnel Lord with Captain lead. This would result in the following Dispositions:

[ul]
[li]Captain lead: (militarist 4 + 1 War-Wise + 1 Cunning trait) + Will 5 = 6d + 5 Disposition, eg around 8, max 11.
[/li][li]Tunnel Lord: (militarist 5) + Will 5 = 5d + 5 Disposition, eg around 7-8, max 10.
[/li][li]Tunnel Lord + Captain: (militarist 4 + 1 War-Wise + 1 Cunning trait + 1 Help) + Will 5 = 7d + 5 Disposition, eg around 8 or 9, Max 12.
[/li][/ul]

The calculation for militarist dice for disposition is also indication of the strength in actions. I.e the weasels in the worst case (Tunnel Lord) will be rolling just shy of twice the dice of the mice. The last situation seems most flavorful to me, but the numbers look like it will smash the mice into the ground in a couple of actions unless they are very smart.

We are playing this thursday (~wednesday american time), so i’d really appreciate feedback on this before then!

2

Don’t have my book handy but…

I would give them properly equipped if they are, plus an advantage die for the weather.

Can the mice split into teams and double team them?

Can they circle up some veterans of the weasel wars?

They’re going to have to tap their natures pretty hard to get through this, methinks. But that makes sense. They’re definitely going against mouse nature here.

3

Dude, tell them to freaking run! They are going to get crushed!
Seriously, evacuate Sprucetuck and head for another town. Come back after they’ve trained in Militarist!

Their Nature is too low to pull off any major heroics. They need to buy time to recoup their taxed dice.

4

Oooh…I missed the Nature of 2 part…yeah, Run. Run very fast.

5

This would either be a really cool chase, or an epic battle worthy of song!

6

Thanks for the quick response :slight_smile:

I’ll reconfigure the scenario to have an epic flight from sprucetuck and leave the recapture for a future session, and use both the Tunnel Lord and the Captain as the leaders of the army.

(sorry about the slow reply, my home connection to BWHQ is apparently flaky ATM)

7

Can I politely request a report after your game? Would love to see how it turns out.

8

I’d love that too. There’s a certain risk for the coming of situations like that later in our adventures. It’s interesting to see how other game masters construct their adventures and what their players do.

9

Sure thing, i’ve fallen off the AP wagon recently and really have been meaning to get back on it. I’ll try to get it writen up on the AP forum by the weekend.

10

Actual play can be found over here

11

Well if any of them are sciencemice this is Sprucetuck we’re talking about. The place that can figure out how to make a trap to rid the territories of a moose which would have required an army of 20,000 mice to fight off.

Perhaps rather then try to figure out a way to field an army out of thinkers they should figure out a way to lead an army of thinkers. Maybe they poison the weasels, create some kind of trap to ignite the forest where they are at, depending on how much time they have you could try luring some rather large predators to the area.

Science mice whip up a super strong batch of moose sent, a loremouse locates pack of wolves in the wild and then the wolves end up devouring all the yummy weasels they can.

These ideas of course lead to other problems entirely especially if they fail!