A long while back I picked up a solo sci-fi wargame, 5 Parsecs from Home. I later found out a new edition of a fantasy version was in the works and scooped it up as soon as I could. 5 Leagues from the Borderlands (5LB) is a solo skirmish wargame with RPG elements from Modiphius. You gather a warband of six adventurers, selecting one as your avatar, and seek to cleanse the land of evil.

The campaign has 3 main threats set at different thresholds, and you are tasked with removing them completely from a region. By gaining adventure points through encounters, you acquire enough to attempt various actions to find their hidden camps and eliminate them. A departure from 5 Parsecs from Home is that you start with an actual region map. You’ll sketch out some features, leave some areas as unexplored wilderness, add a few villages, and finally sprinkle some locations of interest throughout the map. This will define the region you’ll be adventuring in.

The campaign turn follows a sequence starting with preparation, upkeep, travel, and finally a potential encounter with enemies. Generally preparation allows for 2 actions providing opportunities to gather resources, rest up, buy or sell equipment, or seek out quest rumors. The type of actions will be dictated if you are in a village or out at remote home camp in the wilderness. You have to constantly keep money on hand to pay your troops. Skip out paying your hirelings too long, and eventually they will become disgruntled and leave.

You direct your warband to travel, investigating unexplored locations, strike out at an enemy camp, or patrol traveled roads. During your journey, you’ll have various random events with some being boons and others complicating your efforts. These events can also dictate the types of encounters you’ll have when engaging the enemy. While out on patrol, you might encounter a befuddled scholar that seems friendly enough, only to find they were a scout for a band of brigands that ambush you. 

The types of encounters are split among a few scenarios, with some having defined defender and attacker positions. The enemies you encounter are determined randomly, rolling on different charts for the types of threats in the region. These threats broadly will align with particular enemy types such as undead, chanting cultists, ravenous beastmen, or even a spearhead of an invading army. Each encounter type will also have defined objectives. While it’s ideal to hold the field, a fair outcome can be to achieve the scenario objective and make a quick retreat. If things turn too sour on the battlefield, you can always call for the warband to retreat but expect more dire outcomes to your hirelings. Encounters can also encompass dungeon delves or attacks on monster lairs.

Scenarios run through several turns first starting with initiative. You will roll a d6 for each warband member, trying to not roll above their Agility score. You assign successful rolls to individual units that can undertake their full allotment of actions for the turn. Then enemy forces act next, and finally have your remaining forces act before the turn ends. A mode’s turn encompasses a movement action combined with an attack, some manner of a task action, or possibly a further dash of movement.

Ranged combat is rolling a d6 and trying to commonly roll over a 6+ or a 5+ (if the target is in the open). If the target is hit, a d6 roll is made to overcome armor and then an additional roll against the target’s toughness. If the total roll exceeds the toughness of the unit, it becomes a casualty. Rolls equal to, or less, result in the unit taking a wound and being stunned, with a second wound taking it out of the fight. Stunned models grant bonuses if in melee and are always treated as defending but the condition is removed at the end of the turn.

Melee combat is a little more involved and is fought over 3 rounds. Each model makes a combat roll trying to roll the highest adding their combat skill. After each round the defender moves back 1” and the attacker has the option to move in to continue the combat, or break off and end it. On ties, the attacker never follows up and the combat ends. If the attacker scores higher, they have a chance to inflict damage (resolved like ranged attacks). If the defender wins, the next round they become the attacker avoiding any damage for that exchange. Unlike ranged attacks, stuns only have an effect during that fight and are removed at the end of the exchange.

The player has as few tactical options when in combat, like whether to fight defensively or throw caution to the wind and fight wildly. Some weapons and positioning (such as being on higher ground) allow a model to counter attack, essentially being able to strike a hit while defending (instead of just being the attacker the following exchange). This special maneuver is avoided by selecting certain fighting tactics. So against particular enemies, or being at a disadvantage in positioning, you can overcome counter attack situations employing defensive tactics. Given you only need to exceed a model’s toughness to make it a casualty (with typical values between 3-4) being the attacker is ideal and combat can be deadly. 

Movement is pretty simple, doing so up to a model’s rate in inches, with a second move as a dash action. Most difficult terrain uses 2” of the figure’s movement for every inch on the table. Models cannot pass through each other and there are simple rules for climbing and falling. Terrain is fairly abstract with line of sight based on drawing unimpeded lines of fire from the attacker to the target. Inverveining features, models, or beyond 3” in area cover will block line of sight. At the very least most features will offer some manner of cover to the target.

Your warband is always striving to gain adventure points. If you win an encounter against an enemy you gain d6 adventure points, and some simpler missions like patrols will only earn you one point. Once per campaign turn you can expend them and roll a d6, trying to roll less or equal to the number of spent points. If successful, you complete a major campaign milestone. This can be finding an enemy camp, finding a hidden location, further developing a settlement, or if you are lucky after being victorious in battle, reduce that faction threat to the region. Regardless if you are successful or not, the points are spent. The campaign becomes a balancing act between taking major risks to get high adventure point rewards, to doing more mundane campaign actions gaining resources, heal wounded members, and prepare for more dangerous fights.

Individual members of your warband will also slowly accrue experience. Earn a set number and they can advance, rolling to randomly increase a particular stat allowing them to fight more effectively, shrug off damage more easily, seize the initiative, or cover ground faster. They can also pick up skills that can help with particular campaign actions. 

5LB does have magic and one of your heroes can be a mystic. However that model is limited to 3 spells per encounter using a resource called strands, and its entire action is used when casting. The spells are more for hindering your opponent, or providing a temporary boon to your warband, rather than all powerful spells, like hurling bolts of lightning and fireballs. Spells have a target number to cast, rolling 2d6 and expending a strand of energy doing so. Fortunately if you fail, the strands of mystical energy are not lost (and only happens if you make an abysmal roll).

You will find yourself trying to maintain funds to keep your warband together, repair and improve equipment, and do tasks to discover enemy camps during the game. All the while, random events during travel and end of campaign turns will be constantly throwing curveballs at you. Most will put an obstacle or hindrance in your way, but a few events will offer boons to your warband. As mentioned earlier, you are constantly seeking to gain adventure points that are expended to complete major campaign milestones. Given that faction threats commonly have values of 5-6, it can take a long time to eliminate an enemy from the region.

There are quite a few different factions to fight against and also unique foes and monsters that your warband will meet. Encounters fall into five general scenarios and some incorporate some type of combat at a location that requires exploration. While clearing the enemy from the table is always an option, usually you are tasked with completing an objective. Given that combat is deadly, with a chance of casualty becoming a corpse, you find yourself trying to complete what objectives you can and retreating before events on the battlefield become too dire.

At the end of each campaign turn after an encounter, surviving warband members gain experience. After gaining a certain number they can choose to randomly advance a trait or potentially gain a particular skill. Skills crop up when attempting to do certain actions during an encounter, or trying to do a campaign action. So that hero effective at crafting might be able to repair equipment or gain a few marks to ease the burden of upkeep. You’ll find yourself trying to maintain equipment, get better gear, and also purchase items to mitigate obstacles that get in your way during travel and after fights.

The Good – 5LB offers an enjoyable narrative experience that fits within a region, providing an ever evolving story. The melee combat can offer a dynamic swing back and forth, as each side gains advantage after a round of rolls. You have some choices during melee either fighting defensively or maybe go with all out attacks. Positioning can offer advantage and sometimes it’s worthwhile to gain the initiative in a combat round only to break it off so you can extract yourself the next turn. You’ll find yourself looking over a map, choosing to explore locations, and strive to seek out the enemy in hopes of delivering a decisive blow or to gain treasure.

The Bad – Combat is brutal and fast. At times almost too fast. You might find yourself painstakingly setting up a table with gobs of terrain, only to have a fight last a few turns before your warband has to turn tail and run which can veer towards being anti-climatic. It could also be considered there are simply too many random events which can result in detrimental effects for your warband. So much so that you are constantly in a hole of debt, injury, and poor equipment, with the campaign spiraling slowly towards a disastrous end. 

Also, the accrue of adventure points can be ponderously slow where you can never seem to make any headway beating a foe. A typical campaign will have one threat with a level of 6 and the others with levels of 5. To lower a single threat by one level, you have to roll a d6 and score under a number of spent adventure points. Meaning to have a reasonable chance of defeating one threat, you’d need to get at about 8 campaign turns in. This can almost seem like an impossible task and is compounded some with outcomes of random events typically throwing even more problems at your warband.

The Verdict – I enjoy 5 Leagues from the Borderlands immensely. The combat is brutal and I do appreciate melee fights being a little more engaging over rounds of exchanges between figures. It can still provide some quick battles once things get going, almost to the point you spend more time setting up the table and combatants than running the fight itself. However the outcomes of travel, random warband events, and the push to achieve objectives in fights tends to offer a narrative tale for your warband. Losing a hero can hurt and there can be serious repercussions to fights. You are ever balancing maintaining enough resources to keep your warband afloat, and still try to make an impact on the region, dispatching enemies. 

I’ve stated this before, but 5LB has vibes of the old microgame, Barbarian Prince. You have this goal to remove evil forces from the region and are always trying to explore the lands, take the fight to the enemy, and maintain resources and equipment to keep your warband together. But things happen. You commonly will have random events throw wrenches into your plans, and once in a while maybe get a boon to help. All of this helps weave together this story of your warband over the campaign turns. I really enjoy it. It helps immensely too having a wide variety of foes to fight, from nameless undead, wily fae, viscous goblins, to monsters like wyverns and trolls. Being a miniature agnostic system, you really get a chance to bust out your collection and play with different toys.

So if you fancy a solo wargame with a fantasy theme, and can embrace the occasional dip into light roleplaying, certainly give 5 Leagues from the Borderlands a look. You’ll find a game that’ll offer an epic adventure campaign wrapped around miniature wargaming rules.