Five Leagues from the Borderlands

What is Five Leagues from the Borderlands

Five Leagues from the Borderlands is a solo and co-op fantasy wargame by Ivan Sorensen, published by Modiphius. Modiphius calls it an “RPG-lite adventure wargame.” You command a warband of hard-bitten adventurers, and the book generates the campaign around them: the map, the jobs, the enemies, and whatever goes wrong on the road.

Your warband is four heroes and two followers. Each hero is human or one of five other origins, and the game tracks their story as they gain experience, find loot, or die in brutal combat. Battles come out of over 100 enemy types, 17 unique foes, and 6 scenario types.

The first edition came out in 2018 from Sorensen’s own Nordic Weasel Games. The Third Edition (2022) is the current one and the first in print: a 232-page hardback with conversion rules for returning players. It’s the sister book to his sci-fi game Five Parsecs From Home, and it runs over 50 pages longer.

How it plays

Roll for initiative every round. Roll a d6 for each of your figures and hand the dice out. A figure that gets a die at or under its Agility acts in the Quick Actions phase, before the enemy.
Quick, enemy, slow. The round goes Quick Actions, then Enemy Actions, then Slow Actions for everyone who didn’t make the cut. Everyone acts every round. The roll only decides when.
The enemy runs itself. No opponent needed. Enemies act on their own in their phase, and morale can send them running.
Three-step combat. Roll a d6 plus Combat Skill to hit, then beat the target’s armour to hurt it. Match the armour and the target is stunned. Beat it and you roll again against Toughness.
A campaign turn between fights. Prepare, pick an adventure, travel (one roll for random events, however far you go), fight, and deal with the aftermath. Settlements give bonuses when you visit.

You need six-sided dice, a pair of percentile dice, paper, and pens. Any fantasy miniatures work.

How to start

Get the Third Edition. £20 for the PDF or £40 for the hardback, from Modiphius. North American buyers can use the Modiphius US store.
Find six heroes. Use whatever fantasy figures you already own, plus a handful of enemies to fight. A typical game has 12 to 15 figures on the table.
Clear a small table. 2 × 2 ft is enough. 3 × 3 ft works too.
Want more after that? The Compendium (£40 hardback, £20 PDF) collects the first two expansions, The Ancient Land of Dust and Paths in the Wilderness, plus Deep Below, a standalone game about delving underground with a six-person warband. Characters can move between Deep Below and the main game.