Wednesday Game: Songs of Blades and Heroes.

After a three week break, our Wednesday group reconvened. The game of choice for the next few months is Songs of Blades and Heroes by Ganesha games. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30804/song-of-blades-and-heroes

We have been looking for a fantasy skirmish game that does not tie us to particular range of figures. In the past we have found that having selected a set of rules, the length of time it takes to source and paint up the required figures leads to a loss of enthusiasm and unfinished products.

The Songs range of rules do not require a specific range of figures and will allow us to use our eclectic extensive collections of figures.

SOB&H is designed to be scenario based. But to get our head aroubd the rules, we decided on a free for all with 300 pt warbands.

The initial terrain set up. David had found an inn model that he had built some years ago for Mordheim. In the end, it did not play any part in the game, but was nice to look at and may feature in future games.

The basic engine of SOB&H is based on rolling d6 against a figures quality stat. Rolling equal or greater to quality means a pass: a pass means you can take an action. For each figure you can throw up to three dice. If you pass, great, three actions. You continue activating your figures till you roll two failures, the turn then passes to your opponent. It takes an action to move or make an attack (some attacks take up two actions). Magic is treated in the same way as combat. Your wizard must anounce if casting a spell. If three fails are rolled while casting a spell, magic ability is lost for the rest of the game.

The three forces: Del's Dirz; David's Barbarians and my Elves. I cobbled together a force from my D&D miniatures plastic figures.

A few pictures to give a flavour of the game. A notable event was Del's wizard losing his magic as he threw three fails (three 1s!),

Another notable event was the death of my hero at the hands of David's. This was a gruesome kill which meant all my remaining figures needed to take a morale test. Two failed, and ran off the table, ending my involvement. David and Del fought themselves to a standstill.

All in all a good first game which allowed us to use most rules. We will not play to many free for alls as this game will be much better if it is scenario driven.

I am working on an Orc warband. This will not be ready for the next game, so I will have to improvise.

Rick, if you are reading this on your travels: Happy Birthday!