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Author Topic: Chicago Skirmish goes back to it's roots. Song of Blades and Heroes!  (Read 1970 times)

Offline eilif

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2383
    • Chicago Skirmish Wargames
At the last club meeting we played a few rounds of the game that our club "Chicago Skirmish Wargames" formed around.


Yep, it's Song of Blades and Heroes! After 7 years, SBH still delivers a really fun game. 


Of course it doesn't hurt that our terrain and minis have improved markedly since then.



Batreps for the three games and a short nostalgia trip back to the beginning of the club are here:
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2017/05/24/aar-going-back-to-our-roots-song-of-blades-and-heroes/

Offline Dentatus

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2257
    • Stalker7.com
Most excellent! Thanks.

Offline eilif

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2383
    • Chicago Skirmish Wargames
You're very welcome. Glad you enjoyed it.

It's always a pleasure when an old game delivers the goods.

Offline kaiser

  • Scientist
  • Posts: 203
You guys have some cool looking warbands.

Offline eilif

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2383
    • Chicago Skirmish Wargames
You guys have some cool looking warbands.

Thanks!  You never know what you'll find when we get together to play SBH.  The Asian warbands in this game reflect a few member's recent interest in the game Bushido, but over the years we've had warbands of:
-Dark elves
-Orcs
-Black Orcs
-Kobolds
-Ogres
-Paladins
-Sentient Animals
-Non-Sentient Animals
-Crocodile people
-Celts
-Medieval warriors of several types
-Chaos warriors
-Several intterations of Dwarves
-The occasional RPG style mixed group.
...and many more.

Offline affun

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 616
    • North of Nowhere [Under construction]
Very nice read. Im always looking forward to reading about you guys SoBH campaigns, so its nice to see you getting some more games in.

Quote
Making any characters with a base combat of 5 "Personalities". This is  a clever rule that balances things by not outlawing hard-hitting characters but greatly reducing their numbers.

This is a rule we used when we held a local gaming day, which I think is very good. And it feels like a sort of unspoken rule between us anyways. In the scope of the kind of games we play and like, where a human soldier is between 2 and 3 C, a C 5 (or even 4) fighter *would* be a personality. And mechanically, even a C4 character is kind of a big deal in SoBH (as my own warband experienced in recent games).

Another similar rule we tried out (which I think works well in regular SoBH but not advanced which has more reliance on traits) is counting any character with *more* than 3 traits as a personality. The reasoning again being that anything with that many traits *would* be a "personality".
In game terms it shuts down the tendency to overload characters with traits. But that's mostly a personal taste thing: I like it when characters have very clear designs that are easy to read.

Apart from that I've found that playing scenarios that can be won without killing high C characters work very well. Its as you observed: It's very much up to the players to craft the gaming-experience they want.

SoBH continues to be a gem that, as you put it, almost always provides an entertaining game.
I've been on a bit of a painting low lately, but I guess Ill have to go and lob some paint at a miniature to represent that latest profile i wanted to try out now. Its inspiring to read other peoples battle reports, after all.  :D

Offline eilif

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2383
    • Chicago Skirmish Wargames
Thanks Affun,
      Good to hear that the rule works well in practice.  We don't field alot of C2 charachters, I think we've mostly used C2 for little things like goblins or Kobolds.   C3 is pretty common thoigh. 

As for the special rules/traits limitation I'm not so sure, but it would be a great way to reign in folks who get too competitive in their list-building.  I'm a fan of taking the various neutral or rarely-used traits that might not technically be "worth the points" in the long run, but sometimes end up being a good thing. 

In our battles, "Forester" is a good example.  It doesn't come into play all that often (especially when my favorite terrain set is medieval city) but it makes sense for the Wood Elves to have it. So I spend the points every game and once in a while it comes in handy. 

Of course "spend the points" is probably not a good way to look at building an SBH character.  I should probably banish that thought and simply stat the miniature as it appears.

Have you tried any of the scenarios from the Mordheim/WHFBSkirmish conversion to SBH?

Offline affun

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 616
    • North of Nowhere [Under construction]
We've used a few of them. I mostly use it for inspiration - I think most of the scenarios need a little tweaking to work properly with the nature of SoBH, but its a really great resource.
We tend to draw inspiration from all over: Last time we had a lot of fun with a scenario I lifted straight out of Bushido (having never played that game): 3 shrines in the middle of the table that it takes 1 action to control and 1 to "reinforce". You can strip reinforcement with an action and then take it over with another. At the end of each turn you get a point for each shrine you control: First to 8 wins.

Other times its just some narrative event combined with something we think would make a neat game. My approach is basically - Lift and steal from everywhere  lol

Quote
I should probably banish that thought and simply stat the miniature as it appears.


Yeah, thats the real thing. I find its a good thing to keep talking about the games you want to play, and adjust profiles accordingly.

Offline eilif

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2383
    • Chicago Skirmish Wargames
Yeah, thats the real thing. I find its a good thing to keep talking about the games you want to play, and adjust profiles accordingly.

That's a good way to put it.  The Scenario/battle should be the focus rather than army-listing for advantage.

 

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