Viv from Knights of Dice has been painting up a beautiful bunch of Hawaiians from Eureka miniatures in preparation for our game.
I chose to play with my Maori (as you would) and picked the Raid scenario from the main book - with Hawaiians as attackers and Maori as defenders. I had a lovely outrigger canoe that the Hawaiians could use to land on Aotearoa and grab their objectives.
I chose to play with my Maori (as you would) and picked the Raid scenario from the main book - with Hawaiians as attackers and Maori as defenders. I had a lovely outrigger canoe that the Hawaiians could use to land on Aotearoa and grab their objectives.
As the defender, I had 4 honour points to spare, so I invested in more Maori warriors. My strategy was to arm them with defensive weapons (taiaha), give my chief and heroes defesnive skills, and try and hold off the raiding party until Maori reinforcements arrived. I'd also seen pics of Viv's painted Hawaiians and knew he was bringing large numbers!
Therefore I purchased 2 heroes and 5 units of warriors in total. With the chief, that gave me 8 units in total, and I could have 4 defending units on the board from the outset.
Viv placed his objectives quite close together, 4 different Tribal chiefs. Presumably, given the fires by the Pa walls, these captives were about to go into the hangi. :p
I set up my chief, a hero with a taiaha, and 2 warriors units with taiaha - all nice and defensive, with good coverage of the board from the units of warriors.
Viv put his Hawaiians on the beach and ran them across the board as quickly as possible! I tried to delay them as much as I could. All I needed was to hold out until the end of turn 8, and he needed to spend an activation card standing next to one of the objectives.
I set up my chief, a hero with a taiaha, and 2 warriors units with taiaha - all nice and defensive, with good coverage of the board from the units of warriors.
Viv put his Hawaiians on the beach and ran them across the board as quickly as possible! I tried to delay them as much as I could. All I needed was to hold out until the end of turn 8, and he needed to spend an activation card standing next to one of the objectives.
I was doing pretty well in the first few turns, doing some nice damage with units. My reinforcements arrived on turn 3, and they were set up nicely to block any rampaging Hawaiians. Then the unthinkable happened - we both played jokers. This means something terrible happened (given this is Aotearoa, let us say it was an earthquake) and EVERY hero and warrior unit on the board took a wound.
This really threw me off, and I started to take heavy casualties across the board. My chief was gravely wounded and I lost two of my warrior units - a third reduced to a single survivor, who joined up with another unit.
A Hawaiian hero reclaimed one of the objectives. There were only a couple of turns left, so I positioned my units very defensively, around the objectives. Viv became desperate to get those objectives, he wasn't sure who was winning on the honour count. His warriors killed off my chief, and ran in to claim another objective. I counterattacked and just managed to push them off the objective before they could claim it.
In typical maori thirst for vengeance, a warrior unit chased down the wounded Hawaiian chief and beat him to death with their clubs.
In typical maori thirst for vengeance, a warrior unit chased down the wounded Hawaiian chief and beat him to death with their clubs.
And like that, it was the end of turn 8, and the game was over! We revealed our honour points and did a quick count... Viv had 12, and I had 14! Very exciting and probably came down to the last combats. Killing his chief allowed me to take 2 points from Viv's honour pool, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat!
Really good fun, and it left us making plans for more games in the near future... Might try out more of the scenarios!
