Song of Blades and Heroes - first game

[tim in saskatoon]

I recently picked up Song of Blades and Heroes and finally got around to having a (very) quick game with the kids yesterday afternoon. Everyone had a lot of fun and the game looks like a very promising replacement for my previous go-to skirmish game... A fun report of the ensuing shenanigans and a bunch of pictures of the action can be found on my blog:

http://saskminigamer.blogspot.ca/2014/02/a-song-of-blades-and-heroes.html

Here's a few of the pics:



The boy's Lizardmen versus the girl's Amazons.



The first knock-down! Ouch!



The Lizardman leader charges in! GrrrAAAaaarrrr!

Check out the blog to see how it all turned out!

[phreedh]

Curious to hear your take on this in comparison to Savage Worlds (Showdown), as I'm looking to do the reverse switch - from SBH to SWS. =)

It was actually your blog that got me back into miniatures gaming a long time ago, in combination with my discovery of the SBH rules. Back then I used prepainted D&D minis. Fun to see how things go full circle... =D

I won't go into details on what reasons I have for looking at alternatives to SBH, but lack of granularity and the way combat is resolved in a sometimes very abrubt manner are key factors. I suppose the simplicity lends itself very well for gaming with kids.

[tim in saskatoon]

Curious to hear your take on this in comparison to Savage Worlds (Showdown)...

Wow... That might require a rather lengthy explanation... I'll try and do the best I can with a short one!

I suppose the simplicity lends itself very well for gaming with kids.

This has a lot to do with it. Simplicity. And Time. Time to play a game - and even time to prepare a game.

I don't doubt that due to that simplicity there will be some limitations on what we can do with SoBH. But at this point I'd rather get a game in that has some limitations than not get around to playing any games at all because it's too much of a hassle to get set up and we won't have time to play it to it's conclusion.

Also I like that there's a bit of movement and some decisiveness in the combat (in SoBH). In Savage Worlds there's some moving around until figures get into combat and then they just stand there going at it, toe-to-toe, and can stand there for many, MANY turns not doing anything to each other - especially if they are fairly evenly matched.

Maybe I just need something new. Something fresh to blow the cobwebs out of my head and stave off Alzheimer's?

Definitely give Savage Worlds a try. It does have a fair bit more detail, if that's what you're looking for, without bogging stuff down too much. I have had a lot of fun playing it - pretty much exclusively - for about eight years.

[M.P.]

Nice set up

[phreedh]

What bugs me the most about SBH is how poor quality troops (4+ or worse) end up being fairly useless on their own. It's hard to do classic orcs justice, for instance. Most of the time, they just hang around and pick their noses. Same with skeletons or zombies... Since everybody one-shots everybody (except Tough models), you can't win a game by attrition (ie one side with lots of poor monsters, the other with a few high cost adventurers). All your opponents are either minty fresh or dead. We mostly play "adventure games", ie I'm playing the NPC bad guys and other people are player character adventurers. In SBH it's hard to nail the "oh, we got by by the skin of our teeth" feeling of old-school gaming... Either the players steamroll through their opposition or they're pasted. It's a very binary system that way. It works reasonably well if you do a "best out of three" set of games though, where both players play to win. That's not really what I'm after though.

I have my eyes on a few other systems, but Savage Worlds have the (theoretical, at least) benefit of being suitable for anything from scifi shootouts to fantasy slugfests without being a brick of a rulebook. Haven't tried it yet, so who knows - might not be for me. In the end, maybe we'll just end up playing SBH with even more house rules or we get in on "Tales of" instead.

[Momotaro]

Savage Worlds also suffers from the same problem, though not as much as SoBaH.  Tough monsters (especially in fantasy, where you lack firepower) can be really hard to take down - then a single hit with a few raises takes out a fresh character.  It's definitely NOT a D&D-style war of resource attrition.

Theere's a PDF on the Pinnacle website on SW combat tactics.  Sometimes you need to go for an aimed strike, or taunt them/trick them to get them shaken before you wound them.  Big monsters are hard to take down without a bazooka

You could try D&D itself or Pathfinder?

Tim - good game report and a nice setup!  I played SoBaH with my kids when they were small and they loved it.

[tim in saskatoon]

We mostly play "adventure games", ie I'm playing the NPC bad guys and other people are player character adventurers.

That's pretty much exactly how I ran most of my Savage Worlds games. It worked really well. If things were going to easy for the PCs I could throw in another squad of baddies. If things were going tough for the player characters I could "forget" about some of the baddies abilities or have some reinforcements for them arrive.

I really don't think Showdown worked all that well as a you-bring-500-points-and-I'll-bring-500-points player vs player game. Too many big broken beasties you could bring to the table that were simply untouchable.

I've picked up Tales of Heroes and Blades and am hoping I might be able to do something similar with that - but I haven't had much time to look at it yet.

[LeadAsbestos]

I had several games of Song of Arthur and Merlin. one where Lancelot hacked his way thru a horde of Saxons to save a knocked down Arthur from certain death, only to be hacked down tragically, leaving Arthur and the remainder of his force to mop up, forcing Mordred to flee w/ his tail between his legs when morale broke.

Needless to say, a deeply satisfying conclusion. I really enjoy the game.

[Faust23]

Hey Phreedh, you should use Brink of Battle. The fantasy book is out in March. You won't be disappointed. 

[Jevenkah]

Great battlerep! I love the hot-pink cloak on that Amazon. 

Looks like lots of family fun!

Jevenkah

[phreedh]

Hey Phreedh, you should use Brink of Battle. The fantasy book is out in March. You won't be disappointed. 

I know Bob! I really should! =) The draw of SBH (and Savage Worlds) is the size of the book. They're pretty slim volumes. BoB is rather hefty in and of itself, and with a fantasy expansion (I have the ashcan, you know) it might turn into a bit of a much for me. I really can't get into big-book games nowadays. That being said, I did thoroughly enjoy BoB when I played it - but we never got any melee in in that game. I'll have to revisit it.