Take the Field

## Battle of the Grudge

**Battle Type:** Synchronous

**Description:** Demoralize and force your opponent off the field by claiming more territory on the battlefield than your opponent.

**Deployment Zone:** Each player's deployment is the area of the Tabletop up to 12 inches from their table edge.

**Night Time:** This Battle uses the rules for Night Time.

**Game Turns:** 6

**Battle Type:** Tactical Maneuver

## Victory Conditions

The player who accrues the most Points during the Battle wins the game or the game ends due to Sudden Death.

## Points

Gain one Point during the Resolve: End Phase of each Game Turn for each Faction Flag belonging to your Faction you have on the Table-top fully outside of your Deployment Zone.

**Faction Flags**
In this mission, you and your opponent will be allowed to place Faction Flags using the Faction Flags rules.

**Flag in the Center of the Table**
One Faction Flag is placed in the center of the table. This Flag is not claimed by either player and can be claimed during the game by either player. It can never be destroyed.

### Sudden Death

When finished calculating points during the Resolve: End Phase of the Game Turn, if the point spread (the difference between the person with the highest points and the person with the lowest points) exceeds the number of turns remaining in the Game, the game ends with the victor being the person with the most points.

There are 6 turns in a Game. Thus, the following chart describes the sudden death rule for each Game Turn:

1. At the end of Game Turn 1, if the point spread is greater than 5, the game ends.
2. At the end of Game Turn 2, if the point spread is greater than 4, the game ends.
3. At the end of Game Turn 3, if the point spread is greater than 3, the game ends.
4. At the end of Game Turn 4, if the point spread is greater than 2, the game ends.
5. At the end of Game Turn 5, if the point spread is greater than 1, the game ends.

## Battle of the Grudge

In the year 333 AF, shortly after the end of the War of Kings, a secret battle was waged across the slopes in Hill Country, a region that then constituted the northern counties of the Republic, now the northern counties of the Remnants. This battle was kept secret by the Republic because it was waged between two counties of the Republic as a small, civil war. If word were to have escaped about this battle, the Republic would have looked weak during the critical time of reconstruction after the War of Kings.

An ancient feud, nearly 400 years old, rose to violence between the peoples of Gyanyi-lan and Toma-lan. These two counties, created with the Compromise of Spirits in 80 BF, had never truly come to terms with each other, and in fact, to this day, they still barely maintain civility. The War of Kings was expensive and drew the attention of the Republic solely to defending the eastern coast of Indagar, and the lack of strong government control allowed for the ancient feud to bubble up into violence, spurred on by what simply started as a drunken brawl between rabble-rousers in the capital city of Toma-lan. The majority of the armed forces for both Toma-lan and Gyanyi-lan were still slowly trickling back home after the war, and the ability of the governors to police their people was severely weakened. As such, as tensions began to grow and eventually boil, the people of both counties forged armies, under the leadership of rebel leaders and outside the control of their governors, and marched on each other.

What resulted is today known as the Battle of the Grudge, and it was to be the debut of one of the Republic’s greatest new military thinkers, Duan Xufeng. Duan Xufeng led the outmanned, out supplied, and out trained forces of Toma-lan at the request of a family friend who had become an uprising leader after his father was killed in the violence by bandits from Gyanyi-lan. When the forces of the rebel armies met on the sloping hills between Gyanyi-lan and Toma-lan, Duan Xufeng could clearly see that his forces were outmatched. Knowing that neither his forces nor the forces of his enemy were well trained soldiers, Duan Xufeng devised a strategy to break the enemy by crushing their will to fight.

What trained soldiers Duan Xufeng had at his command were sectioned into small groups which were to lead and ultimately be protected by mobs of civilian soldiers. Equipped with arcane technology, capable of spewing flames, a speciality weapon of the people of Toma-lan, he would use the fear inducing properties of such a horrific weapon to perform lightning strikes against the banners of the enemy, creating mass confusion on the battlefield. This would be a surprise to the enemy who would be expecting a traditional line battle. Indeed, the chaos that pushing small mobs of fighters around the battlefield would cause would induce his enemy to believe that his forces with completely undisciplined and in total disarray, causing them to jump at the chance to fight and ultimately break their own lines.

And so it was on that day that when battle broke out, the masses of soldiers pushed mightily in various pockets against the lines of Gyanyi-lan. Bewildered, the commanders of the Gyanyi-lan forces ordered their lines to envelop the pockets of Toma-lan soldiers, but as they did so, this allowed the strike forces to hit hard and kill or force into retreat the bannermen of Gyanyi-lan. Equipped with their own banners, they hoisted them high. After just an hour of fighting, with all the banners of Toma-lan hoisted high in the air, the untrained soldiers of Gyanyi-lan could see nought by the flags of their enemies. Believing themselves somehow surrounded, they broke into a full retreat, leaving the forces of Duan Xufeng victorious.

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