4th adventure Sunday 24 July 2011:

"The Princess is in Another Castle"

- Dino & Hippo chilling at home
- A knight rides up (playmobil mongol horseman figure, hence his name Gengis Khan)
- "My Princess, your friend (see 1st and 2nd adventure) has been kidnapped by the bad guys, and is being held prisoner in a castle"
Note: We had changed the toy heap  from Lego to the Playmobil castle, hence change of tone/enemies

- "will you help?" "Yes!"
- All 3 together walk to the castle (have learnt to stick together/not rush ahead alone)
- Start frontal assault (5 defenders on ramparts - note that 11 defense takes a while to crack)

- Once Dino and Gengis have the first two opponents down, and the remaining 3 tied up in combat with Genghis and Hippo:
- "Hey Dino - where is the princes?" "at the back of the castle.." "Is is there a back doorway?" "Yes!" "Would you like to sneak around?" "No - wanna fight!" Damn - well, I managed to talk him round eventually
- To knock out back door, Dino just did attack rolls vs 10 defense , but upon success I let him shoot the door with the cool playmobil cannon :- ) Pic see below

- Meanwhile at the front, Gengis was taking a pounding, so I let him take a step back and use his bow instead (same attack stats for now) Setup for cool action below
- Hippo also down from 8 to 3 HP, after some prompting ate the banana for full heal. Dino was only down 1 HP but wanted to eat his too, took a bit of convincing for him to keep it (should have let him - oh well)
- After back door blown out, the 2 remaining attackers broke combat and started rushing across the inside of the castle
- Gengis tried shooting one through a suitable window (kids get line of sight concept automatically - nice) but misses
- Hippo and Gengis rush to support DIno at back door
- Dino bites through rope tying princess (took 3 attacks vs 10 defense to land one hit - perfect!)
Note: I only mentioned rope, kids immediately handed me a piece of scrap paper tape that was lying around to actually tie her up

- Dino spontaneously says "princess should ride on my back" (nice!), but this slows his movement down to 3 = to give the opponents a chance to catch up
- as the Chief opponent passes under the trapdoor with a sitting rock on it above back gate (cool playmobil castle thing), Gengis shoots the handle (2nd attempt) and succeeds in tripping the door - awesome!
- Hippo reaches same level as fleeing DIno, and after only a little prompting decides to "turn sideways to protect Dino and Princess" (yessss! awesome)
- Gengis asks Dino for his banana to heal "No, it's mine!!", after some haggling and intervention of big sister, he grudgingly gives a hlaf :) (hadnt thought of that option)
- Using Hippo as cover, they keep retreating, Gengis takes out 2nd-to-last guy with arrow
- As a reward for playing the Dino so well (not much combat while going round the back), I let DIno take an actual shot at the remaining leader (no roll, actual aim with cannon) - takes him down on 2nd attempt, couldn't have choreographed it better if i tried
- Even though there were no more opponents, they would have voluntarily walked all the way home (at least 6 turns) by sticking to the max movement rule - I said "it's OK, you just get home and heal - jubilations all round"

Duration: at least 45 minutes, amazing, 3-year old exhibiting slight loss of interest in last 10 minutes, successfully compensated by physically shooting cannon
Note: I let the kids do some of the actual rolls for Genghis, it helped shorten the waiting for them, must remember that (will probably only do for allied NPCs, otherwise too schizophrenic)