Orcs? Schmorks! How bad could they- Ow! Hey! Leggo!

Every once in a while, there comes a rude reminder that almost all of us (you newbies excepted) started gaming with D&D, where orcs were the common cannon fodder of every evil wizard, bandit lord, or gang leader. As such, we all knew that orcs were only minor threats, and could be slain by the dozen by even low-level parties of adventurers (especially ones with a Sleep or Fireball spell handy). It has occasionally occured, then, that we are surprised by the discovery that they can fight in some newer systems, such as GURPS. We re-learned that lesson this week, as we continued our scouring of the elf-woods.

This week, we were all still fresh from our very one-sided fight from the previous week, and our characters pushed on into the forest of the elves, looking to kick some more orc butts. After some walking, we came upon an orc/worg hunting party, and discovered that they were hunting us. You could almost hear the contempt and overconfidence in the party as we advanced to close range, blithely assuming that "we [could] take 'em". It ended up that they had some footmen (footorcs?) and some archers, and a leader-type with his own pet worg, and they were just as happy as we were to get in some action. Our centaur deliberately drew their initial attention, and got mauled for her trouble. Our bard, who was relying on her to hold the front, quickly became the front line. If not for quick work from Dave's reptile man and Jeff's giant-kin merc, it might have gone badly for our heroes. The best moment of the night was Craig's elf flicking a magical dagger into the eye of the orc leader and then following on with a deadly thrust to the vitals in a daring but crazy all-out attack.

Next week, we reassess our tactics, and I plan to whine about how they never swing at a centaur's legs in Narnia.