Vanguard: Seeking Sanctuary - Chapter 4: Reinforcement

 "Having reached The Resting Stone, the mercenaries start training the civilians, teaching them the basics of moving in armour, thrusting and parrying, and enduring hits."

Training at The Resting Stone. 27 potential soldiers.

But even this place is not safe from the deadly horde. The day always comes when the training has to be put to the test. Today is that day! The scenario ends when all surviving civilians are trained (must be adjacent to a mercenary who uses one action to roll a die, turning civilian into soldier on 6's). My strategy going into this is to keep the mercenaries out of the fight and using as many actions as possible to make soldiers who will do the majority of the fighting, hopefully.

Turn 0:

Just as suddenly as ever, doom crawls out of the ground. An elite to the left of the training dummies (top). A grunt appears in the middle of the training ground and another just behind the archery targets. One more elite at the bottom of the pic.

Turn 1:

One of Katya's pupils rushes the nearest grunt and knocks it over.

A strong young lass from Thorval's group readies herself for an attack...

...and successfully defends against it. The grunt by Katya's group recovers, but can't land a claw on its assailant. More monsters come.

Turn 2:

No new civilians step out to try their hand at facing the monsters.

This grunt scores the first civilian casualty of the day.

An elite sneaks behind the practice dummies and scores the second.

Turn 3:

A bunch of civilians snap out of the shock of it all and engage!

One from Ivor's group joins the young lass and they knock down an elite. (I think the grunt in the back fell over on its own.)

Emeralda sends a recruit over to take on the elite that snuck around behind the dummies.

Another graduate from the Katya school joins in, this grunt is out!

Elan sends one forward in the nick of time!

Fenrir spurs on a civilian turned soldier and they rush to help two others. Alas, they are too late for one.

Turn 4:

Some help arrives for Fenrir and Co., but a boss is approaching too.

Elan graduates another as well, and he bounds off with the first to dispatch this grunt.

Ivor has another one trained and he immediately turns to knock down this boss! What spunk! Unfortunately, the boss gets up and returns the favour later.

Meanwhile, to the north a bit, another boss is spawned. Our brave lass, takes out another grunt though, how many notches for her sword now?

That boss by Fenrir's group? It easily casts aside that soldier come to help.

Oh yeah, and there's still an elite up by the dummies. Two soldiers have been trading blows with it and they're all taking turns being knocked down.

Turn 5:

An elite materializes by Katya's group. Elan takes some shots, but they are deflected.

Up by the dummies, more grunts have emerged as two soldiers team up to kill the boss.

And that elite finally goes down permanently.

Katya is having trouble building courage in her group as it gets targeted by the elite that Elan could not bring down. The first of her group falls victim to ravaging claws.

Fenrir and the soldier he trained go down to an elite and a boss. Fenrir will recover, but not his fellow.

Turn 6:

About the only good news this turn, Elan manages to bring down the beast that's been bothering Fenrir.

Things are getting messy up by the dummies! Everyone picks an enemy.

Not much better over at Katya's either, though Thorval and a couple others come to help.

The boss didn't get him and Fenrir ran to group up with Ivor, but this elite followed and Fenrir falls for the last time. Along with the others who perished this day, it will be prayed and hoped that his soul finds rest at The Resting Stone. Meanwhile, this other boss got through the some soldiers and is facing Ivor directly.

The boss that was after Fenrir? The one that Elan shot? It wants Elan now. And her two recruits are still busy behind the targets, not really making much headway either.

Turns 7 and 8: (The pictures I took were just confusion, easier to just describe the general happenings of these turns!) 

The boss and elite over by Katya are joined by a couple of grunts and make things rather difficult for everyone in that section, killing a couple more civilians and soldiers. Katya manages to train another soldier and Thorval kills the boss. 

Up by the dummies, a couple of soldiers fall, but our lass and a couple others take care of all the grunts there. 

Ivor finally kills the boss he's been trading blows with, but at the cost of losing the last two civilians in his group to the elite that got Fenrir. Ivor runs toward the dummies. Back behind the targets, those two soldiers have held off a bunch of grunts whose numbers are growing faster than the soldiers can shrink them again. They decide it's time to abandon their post and join up with a bigger crew.

Turn 9:

It was all fine that those grunts all got killed up by the dummies. The bad news was that they got replaced by elites, which pushed Ivor, the lass, and others back in among the dummies as they try to buy time for Emeralda to train the last two civilians there.

Turn 10: Pretty much everyone who can is headed to the dummies to consolidate their force.

Ivor gets one trained in the dummies. Those monsters are pushing in though!

Some who fought so bravely get taken by the horde.

Turn 11: The final civilian is trained! The monsters seem to sense that their prey is not so easy any more. They seem to melt away as though some unhearable call orders them back underground.

The aftermath: 

Of the 29 civilians who started, 11 new soldiers are born. One mercenary dead. Over half our initial force did not survive. But there is a glimmer of hope! Learning how to fight has improved their chances of survival and Ivor feels that with this new help, they might be able to solve the mystery of the sudden appearance of these monsters.

Emeralda sends a magical summons to an old comrade of the group. If they still live, they are sure to come and take Fenrir's place in their small band...