Burrows and Badgers

Today, Alex and I met for a game over at our local hobby shop with Alex volunteering to bring his collection of Burrows and Badgers miniatures for us to play a game with. 

I had seen B&B advertised in miniature magazines and read a review of the second edition but I had never played the rules nor really understood the concept. For those unaware, B&B is described as a "skirmish game of anthropomorphic animals". It seems like a fantasy medieval setting with animals taking on the role of humans, e.g. a Robin bird takes on the role of Robin Hood. etc. 

I was to take command of the "royalist" faction and in those scenario, my company was working for the authorities to interdict a smuggler's wagon from crossing one side of the board to the other. The smugglers were a family of weasels comprising of a father with crossbow driving the wagon and his two sons pulling it. The weasels would have henchmen arriving to help them out in later turns. most of these henchmen were feisty but tiny shrews.

My forces consisted of a brawny beaver, highland fox, fox mage, a canine paladin and a kingfisher bird. Pictured here are the beaver and fox mage.

In this scenario, none of the animals would suffer fatalities. A sect of  shrew clerics (shown above) would come along and heal the fatally wounded back to some semblance of health.

The canine paladin and the kingfisher managed to knock the weasel family from the game. The bird isn't much of a fighter but he can fly which makes him a handy quick reaction force of sorts. The canine outclassed the weasels with his armor, shield and sword. 

Alex's shrew henchmen put up a fight, especially the shrew paladin on beetle mount. The shrews have a pretty impressive attack but their durability is another matter. Ultimately they succumbed to the Beaver and Highland fox. 

With all of the weasels and henchmen defeated, my royalist forces were victorious. I enjoyed the game with Alex, it was a nice departure from the normal wargame and I managed a very rare victory. The game mechanics were easy to grasp but had some nice nuance to them. Abilities for different traits were portrayed by the type of dice (D8, D6, etc), weapons, traits and situations provided modifiers to the dice result (e,g, +2 for axe, +1 for strength and +2 for charge, etc.).. 

I'm not sure I would ever collect the miniatures and rules myself (I have enough to paint in my queue) but I would definitely play this again. It was good to see Alex and I look forward to our next game.