I'm asking these questions because I'm working on a scenario where there will be henchmen vs. henchmen and in the playtest, my 7 year old asked me these questions below that I suddenly hesitated on knowing the answers.

So, I've got 2 henchmen groups of skeletons vs. 1 henchman group of dwarfs.

Questions:

1. Does soak apply for EACH minion or just the group? For example: if my dwarfs do 9 wounds, and the soak of the skeletons is 4, is the soak applied individually to each skeleton, or is it only applied once? Does each minion take 5 points, or does the group only have one soak and the 9 is applied once?
2. Pretend both groups of skeletons are ganging up on the single group of dwarfs. Do I combine the henchmen as they get wittled down, or do they remain as two groups?

Thanks,

jh

1) The soak is one soak for the entire group. In your example the dwarf does 9 damage, it is reduced by the soak and toughness of the henchen and the remaining damage is applied to the group.

Say you have two groups of 3 skeleton henchmen. Each contains skeletons with a toughness of 3 and a soak of 4.

Each group of henchmen would have a wound threshold of 9 (Toughness of 3 x number of skeletons 3).

Your damage scenario would work out like this:

• The Dwarves put up potential damage of 9.
• The skeleton henchmen reduce the damage by 7 (Soak 4 + Toughness 3), leaving 2 damage.
• Skeleton henchmen Group 1 would take 2 wounds

This result would kill no skeletons. 1 skeleton would be near death, but the other two would be uninjured.

as for 2) I would combine like groups of henchmen as their numbers dropped.

The whole idea is that you have less things to track and keeping track of multiple lone henchmen is just more hassle. If you had two groups of seriously different henchmen, combining them is obviously a problem.

But to continue your example, let's say:

• The Dwarves shift targets and land a massive blow on Skeleton henchmen group 2 - potential damage of 13.

• The skeleton henchmen reduce the damage by 7 (Soak 4 + Toughness 3), leaving 6 damage.
• Skeleton henchmen Group 2 would take 6 wounds
• 6 wounds is greater than the toughness of a single skeleton (3), so one would absorb that damage and die.
• The remaining 3 wounds would be applied to another skeleton in the group, who would also die.

This would leave you with a single skeleton in that henchmen group.

As a GM - I would fold him into the original group 1 of skeletons, who would still have the two wounds.

So if the Dwarves managed even a single point of damage to the group, one of the skeletons would die.

Thanks Murph. I had to second guess myself when he asked, b/c I couldn't find any reference to this in the rules.

Yep, I agree with Murph on how its played.