Crystal Cave: A Sword Weirdos treasure scenario

Before the end of our winter holidays came to a close, and to kick start 2025, we spontaneously decided to get some Friday night Sword Weirdos going playing the Treasure Chests scenario. The rules for Sword Weirdos are available here.

Instead of playing a regular Kill’em All scenario, we wanted to try out a new scenario. David and I, both fielded our 125 points Adventuring Parties.

The idea was that my group of brave adventurers enter this magical crystal cave to collect as many crystals as possible. Unknown to them, Loosa’s Looters, a band of goblin gangstas, went in with exactly the same plan. Hence, the brave heroes very soon realized something smelled fishy as they entered the pitch black darkness of the mystical Crystal Cave. Also, according to folklore and fairy tales, mimics apparently roam the place. Rules wise, the more crystals, our heroes collect, the higher the chance of awakening one of these treacherous beings. Great! Not.

Setup

We set up a 3×3 “cave-like” board with a ritual square at its center. Then we deployed our warbands at opposite corners. As terrain, we used some rock formations, lava, and poisonous pools. The two kinds of pools were dangerous terrain, whereas the rocks were difficult terrain an provided cover.

Darkness

Since, we played in “darkness”, and yes, Sword Weirdos has even got rules for darkness, we decided to use randomly numbered tokens. This allowed us to represent our figures until they either were within 1 stick of an enemy, picking up a crystal, or if they used magic (like the invisibility spell in Frostgrave).

The hunt begins

Very soon, our respective warriors discovered their first crystals, rendering them visible, as the magical crystals glow up, once touched.

And, the legends of mimics turned out to be true …

Albundik, the goblin spear man was the first to be fooled by his treasure!

Fight for treasure … and survival

Very soon, my adventurers got company! And Archibald had a hard time fighting the vicious green tide.

Meanwhile. Goshgolov, the mighty Brabarian with his two-handed great sword, threw back a pesky goblin.

At the same time, Selestra, my wizard got attacked by the roaming mimic, from which the goblin got freed, thanks to Mungo’s teleport spell. Now she became the new target.

1 measuring stick away, my leader, Sir Valand II was having an epic fight/fail against Albundik, the goblin spear man.

First blood(s)!

First, Kevin, the wretch was killed by Klabba, who thoroughly looted his corpse and stole the precious rose quartz! Next, Bargosh, the Dwarf fighter, killed Loota, the goblin leader. Unfortunately the dwarven fighter went down staggered in the process, next to Goshgolov.

After our heroes got up, they realized, the goblins were fleeing towards the darkness of the cave with all their stolen loot!

Too late for our heroes!

Albundik, the goblin spear man, on the other hand, was still holding his position, like a real champion and poking at the heroes.

Victory

At the end of round 4, we declared David’s goblins victorious, as they collected and stole the most crystals. My heroes managed to seize only one.

This game of Sword Weirdos took us quite a while to finish, probably due to coming up with our tweaked treasure chests scenario. In addition to that, finding our way through the rules again, and our usual chit chat of course dint necessarily speed up things … .

But, all in all, it was enjoyable. Although, movement was a bit slow at the start. In my opinion the darkness rules make more sense on smaller boards, say 60x60cm, or even better, in a dungeon setup.

Being more fluent with the rules to start with, should also help to speed up game play. But, by round 3 we knew again how it works. They’re pretty straight forward. That one’s clearly on us. Our rules knowledge is clearly getting rusty … age and alcohol I guess …. .