In which some of us play Song of Blades and Heroes

[PeteMurray]

By way of background, it turns out there are at least three wargaming clubs in Maryland, all of whom get along about as well as the Zealot mobs in "Life of Brian." So naturally we started a fourth: The Maryland Wargamers and Chowder Society. We are now an official organization because we have a Yahoo group. This will allow us to record our inability to gather for all posterity, rather than having to find everyone's e-mail address in our crowded inboxes.

And, sadly, this will be a battle report without pictures because I can't work my new fancy Sony camera in dim light. Sorry in advance.

There were four of us last night, and we picked Song of Blades and Heroes because (1) everyone is playing it now and (2) the rules are cheap and (3) games seem to wrap up quickly, which is good. There were four of us and none of us had played the game before.

Big Huge Doug used samurai. He had three light infantrymen, a cleric, an assassin, a heavy infantryman, and a light cavalryman.

Our very own tbroadwater brought a caseload of figures - and they are as beautiful in real life as they are in the photos. He used undead: A lich, a wraith, a zombie lord, two ghouls, and a zombie.

Illumisar had Dwarves: One dragon slayer, one dwarf cavalryman, and eight crossbowmen.

I brought my orcs: Eight regular orc infantry, one shaman, and a boar-rider.

This worked out to about 250 points per side. We were going to play "King of the Hill" but got distracted and combat dropped to Big Huge Doug vs. Me, and Tbroadwater vs. Illumisar.

Song of Blades and Heroes does not lend itself to normal battle reporting. It plays very quickly, and the success/failure mechanism can mean your turn ends on your first roll, which happened to me, twice. We came away with the following impression.

1. The game allows for a surprising depth of tactics for being relatively simple. By the end of the game we all had some better notion of what we would have done differently. Todd, for instance, found that his undead were very good at terrifying downed enemies to death, but his zombies were too slow and dumb to keep up with the more clever ghouls, wraith, and lich.

2. The element of risk in possibly losing your turn right when you most need it makes the game very dramatic. I failed to finish off Big Huge Doug's samurai because my Orc failed to activate - all that was left of his side at that point was a cleric who had lost his religion and a transfixed heavy infantryman.

3. Magic is wonky. Magical attacks are pointless unless the target is already knocked down or transfixed. Transfixing an enemy is pretty cool.

We called time at 9:15. Illumisar and I tied for points remaining on the board. Big Huge Doug was essentially out of it, and tbroadwater was down to his lumbering zombie lord.

All in all, we were impressed. Game play flowed well from player to player. The rules aren't entirely clear as to what to do in some cases, and some of them seem destined to be house-ruled into something else, but by and large it was a fun way to spend a couple of hours.

It was nice to meet tbroadwater in person for the first time. He kind of looks like his icon, only not so zombiefied.

[JollyBob]

Good to hear someon elses feedback from this, I bought SoBaH and the expansion a week or two back, and am quite impressed with it from reading through so far.

I like the way things seem to work (I say seem, I've not played it yet) and the fast resolution it promises.

I also noticed that magic seems to be a bit pointless, as it is almost exactly the same as making a ranged weapon attack. Not sure if this is a good thing or not yet, as the absence of game winning uber-spells is refreshing and it makres you think more tactically, but conversely, there doesn't seem much point to having it at all, really.

The only thing I didn't like was the lack of points for attributes etc to allow you to make up your own troop types. I'm sure I could work it out from the ones provided, but y'know what? I'm lazy.

There's an XL file on the Yahoo group that allows you to do this, but as my pc is currently refusing to run XL, I can't comment on how well this works.

Overall, I'm still impressed with it, and I'm looking forward to seeing the propsed Superhero, Pulp and Gothic Horror versions.

Thanks for the report though Pete, it inpires me to get on and play it now.  

[Plynkes]

Sounds like an interesting concept for a game. I am only dimly and vaguely aware of this product, though. Is this the thing Matakishi was speaking of a while back? I'm fairly sure it's nothing to do with Rattrap. I would be right in that I think, yes?


Also, even though you already touched on the matter, I feel a certain Victorian author sums up the only drawback to this report rather well...

"...and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

[PeteMurray]

I also noticed that magic seems to be a bit pointless, as it is almost exactly the same as making a ranged weapon attack. Not sure if this is a good thing or not yet, as the absence of game winning uber-spells is refreshing and it makres you think more tactically, but conversely, there doesn't seem much point to having it at all, really.

Transfixing (a special form of incapacitating a model) is extremely useful. It's like knocking the target down with the extra bonus of requiring two successes to reverse. Any time you roll two dice, you risk losing your turn. And if you're luck enough to pull it off with three successes, your opponent will have to make three successes of his own to shrug it off - no mean feat.

But the ranged attack, much less so. We did figure out that a combo of transfix + attack would be pretty nasty, but risky to pull off.

Sounds like an interesting concept for a game. I am only dimly and vaguely aware of this product, though. Is this the thing Matakishi was speaking of a while back? I'm fairly sure it's nothing to do with Rattrap. I would be right in that I think, yes?

Yes, Matakishi uses it with his gang, and I can see why. It plays very quickly but with enough meat that you don't feel like you've been robbed (unless you blow your first activation rolls for two successive turns like I did) No, it has nothing to do with Rattrap. I do play other things from time to time.

Even if the camera had worked, it wouldn't have been an easy game to document. It flows fast from player to player, and the camera would make the game seem a lot more static than it ends up being. But I do feel vaguely guilty for the lack of pictures.

[Rhoderic]

How good are the rules, really, for adapting any miniatures you have lying around into a gameable faction? Say one guy shows up with Foundry Valkyries, another with Warmachine mechs, and a third with a horde of Nurglings? Or what if they show up with three different armies of Orcs (for instance, Otherworld's Pigfaced Orcs, Baueda's Trog Orcs, and Foundry's Mercenary Orcs) and want the factions to feel unique and different from each other?

[KeyanSark]

I'd say they are the most easily adaptable ruleset I've ever seen. Very easy to learn and teach, and interesting enough to play.

[PeteMurray]

I'd say it's pretty easy to adapt, super-easy if you get the spreadsheet unit builder and go from there.

Now the first case (Valkyries-Warmachine-Nurglings) is going to be easier to get different feels for than the second, since orcs is orcs is orcs as far as the game cares. If you wanted to separate the Baueda from the Foundry, you'd have to use the spreadsheet and model them slightly differently.

By point of comparison, Deathwing and his buddies played an all-undead game for their first test of the rules, and found the game stale and vanilla. Our observation was that undead seem to require a great deal of skill to use correctly, as they're loaded up with special abilities that you have to consider.

Considering it's only $4 for a PDF of the rules, it's a surprisingly good value. I wish I had written these rules - I don't know if I can give a better endorsement of them than that.

[Torben]

How good are the rules, really, for adapting any miniatures you have lying around into a gameable faction? Say one guy shows up with Foundry Valkyries, another with Warmachine mechs, and a third with a horde of Nurglings? Or what if they show up with three different armies of Orcs (for instance, Otherworld's Pigfaced Orcs, Baueda's Trog Orcs, and Foundry's Mercenary Orcs) and want the factions to feel unique and different from each other?

Well, in my opinion they'd be hard pressed. Songs of Blades and Heroes (SOBAH) doesn't do that individuality all too well, and the uniqueness will quickly wear off the different forces involved.

Mind you, it's not that I don't like SOBAH it's just that I prefer some more detail for my skirmish games. It would be wonderful for a big-battle game, akin to Warmaster Ancients or something of the like. The thing that rubs me the most is that you only have two values; Quality and Combat, and you use combat for everything involving - well - combat.

It's all fine and dandy, but the combat system, in my eyes, are not granular enough. Having Combat 2 vs. 3 is like trying to take down a red dragon with one arm on your back and with the sun in your eyes.

Oh and magic is pointless, as are most ranged attacks in the game.

Ah, sorry. It IS a good game, with a lot of really interesting concepts and it works perfectly for beer and pretzel gaming in my eyes; but somewhere along the road it just, well, doesn't work for me.

[Rhoderic]

Hmm... doesn't sound quite like the ruleset I've been wanting then. I'd love some sort of fantasy game that can engage an entire gaming club by letting anyone model any kind of warband they want (within a suitable fantasy setting) and have it feel unique in the rules. It'd be such an excellent galvanizer for people to buy all those varied warbands scattered about with different companies (eg. Alpha Forge Yagamuna, VOR Growlers, Black Orc Games insectmen, and countless others) and pit them against each other in a low-maintenance skirmish game. I do realize this is a bit of a Holy Grail, but the praise I'd previously heard of Song of Blades and Heroes made it sound like it had at least approximated the ideal. Not so sure anymore.

Also, I generally feel some resistance to games that try to solve everything with one single, be-all end-all stat. This is one of the reasons I can't get myself to like THW's Chain Reaction system.

Then again, if I can buy the ruleset for pocket change, I might as well.

[Torben]

Ah yes, that's probably also why I don't like the ruleset too much due to the end all, be all stats. It's clever, designwise, and it looks wonderful. But I often found that my games devolve into a dice-rollingfest instead of heroic battles with a narrow win.

I understand the praise it gets, because it's a cool system by the looks of it - and superb to teach kids how to play wargames. But in my opinion, that's all it's really worth.

However, mighten I suggest the following rules then:

http://www.wargamesunlimited.com/noquarter/index.html

They're free and do exactly what you want! And with some modification you might be able to scale it down to warband size instead of larger skirmishes. I personally find, for an enojyable game, that around 10-15 figures works superbly

[revford]

Hmm... doesn't sound quite like the ruleset I've been wanting then. I'd love some sort of fantasy game that can engage an entire gaming club by letting anyone model any kind of warband they want (within a suitable fantasy setting) and have it feel unique in the rules. It'd be such an excellent galvanizer for people to buy all those varied warbands scattered about with different companies (eg. Alpha Forge Yagamuna, VOR Growlers, Black Orc Games insectmen, and countless others) and pit them against each other in a low-maintenance skirmish game. I do realize this is a bit of a Holy Grail, but the praise I'd previously heard of Song of Blades and Heroes made it sound like it had at least approximated the ideal. Not so sure anymore.

A good alternative, if SBH doesn't work out for your could be GW's Lord of The Rings and this:

http://membres.lycos.fr/l01c/lotrcostcalc.html

A handy tool for creating new monsters or troops.

[Bob da dowg]

The basic problem behind all this is that you definitely won't be able to find a set of rules to cover everything you've got in mind. There will always be aspects you'd have to simplify or neglect to make it playable AND above all enjoyable.

After 30 years of gaming at different levels (friendly and competition games) I have settled for "simple" games like SBH for example. I really don't know why people are into the clonerehash of 40KWHFBWHALoTRLotoWNMGM (The last three are Necromunda, Mordheim and Gorka Morka - although I must confess and stand to it that I personally really LIKE these "specialist" systems). It's the same huge amount of dicing always disguised as a "themed" game-system. The reason a lot of screaming kids are into it doesn't prove it's the best.

As I said there are alot of rules on the market, a lot for free, that give you more interesting games to live out your own fantasies. Some sample are
Shockforce/WarEngine
THW-rules
No limit
.45/Gloire
SBH

All these works are labours of love to certain aspects of gaming and all are in their own way unique to give you enjoyable games. And they don't cost you as much as the aforementioned money-spinning product ranges.

Just have a go at them. You will find that for all of them there are widespread and very active communities to share their ideas and to further the possibilities of the appropriate game systems.

Simply enjoy them

Cheers.
JO