First time Song of Blades and Heroes

[Braxandur]

After playing warhammer (again) for a while we wanted to play a number of nice fantasy skirmish games. After looking at a lot of diffeerent systems and looking around here , our choice fell to ""Song of Blades and Heroes".  While we have just tested the rules a bit but didn't do anything else with it, now is the time to try out a nice game.

I've written up a short scenario for our tuesday gaming sessions and look fowrd to playing it. I will bring a camera and try to get a battle report. However, before starting I thought it a wise idea to post it over here and see if some people over here could look it over.

We kept choosing the warbands simple and just keep to the stats in the pdf. I only have to figure out how to work the system with four players

following is the scenario
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The village of Bragta recently started having troubles with their dead. First small dead animals came back to live, but later a few dogs and a donkey that had died came back to (un)life. These creatures were easily put down and burned, but it was unclaer what was actually happening.

On an unrelated issue, a group of heroes was tracking down a chaos wizard that was doing his utmost best to obtain power. He had found a fogotten unholy site near Bragta. While the Wizard is tapping power of the land, some of this power leaks out from the site and is contaminating the local environment.  This power brings the dead beack to (un)life.

At the moment that the heroes have found the location of the unholy site, so much power has been let loose that the dead in the local cemetary are now moving around and start attacking the village. The heroes have choose between fighting the chaos wizard and protecting the villagers from an awfull death.

Rules:
In game term this means the following:
On the board will be placed, the village, with nearby the cemetary and somewhat  farther away on the table (at least 75 cm?) the unholy site. All of these at least 50 cm from the edge of the board

One player plays with the awakened undead (275 points) located at the cemetary.

One player plays with the chaos wizard and his henchmen (275 points), located at the unholy site. The unholy site acts as a place of power. (Quality +1 for magic users and they can never run out of power)

The chaos wizard can try to awaken a vampire starting from turn 4, needing 3 succes (using the summoning rules). The vampire enters play at the cemetary. As soon as the vampire is awakened, the chaos wizard has obtained all the power that he can take for now.

Two player play with the heroes (600 points) divided as they see fit, at the edge of the table.

The victory conditions are as follows:
The heroes win if they kill the chaos wizard and the vampire
The evil side wins if the vampire is awakened and the chaos wizard escapes.
Any other result is a draw, needing further scenarios to finish what has started over here.

[dusser]

Sounds like a nice scenario, I think it will work well for SBH.

Here's a few things to consider.

It can sometimes be difficult to cover a lot of ground in SBH, particularly for models with a high Quality rating.  You will want to keep the play space large enough to be a challenge for the heroes, but not so big that models are unable to get from place to place.

Also, you might you might want to rethink your victory conditions.  Since victory all hinges on stoping the chaos wizard the heroes can ignore the villagers.  Perhaps you can have victory points for saving/killing villagers and, in the abscence of total victory, the side with the most victory points wins a minor victory.  Their side would then gain some advantage in the next scenario.  This way the heroes can't just throw all their forces at the wizard, and the undead shouldn't ignore the village.

Looking forward to reading a report and seeing pictures of the game!!

[Braxandur]

Thanks for the suggestions,

I was already wondering about how easy a lot of ground can be covered, that's why I placed the village and the chaos wizard so far from each other. The idea is that the heroes at least have to split their group to be effective in going to both locations. Since it the first time playing, I had to make a few guesses in how effective everyhting is going to be.  :wink:

I was also thinking about putting villagers in the victory conditions, but I wasn't sure yet how to do that (actually the main reason for not yet putting them in is that I have no villagers painted up yet.  :oops:  Maybe tonight if there is some time...)

[Braxandur]

Report will be coming (hopefully) later this weekend when I'm finally back at home. A few day of being gone for work don't help writing up a report.

I can already say though that I made only real mistake during the game and that it did cost the evil side a lot. Ah well...  the system was hoewever for most players very enjoyable.

[DFlynSqrl]

Song of Blades is definately my Fantasy game of choice right now, although I'm really interested in Broadsword Adventures from Rattrap when it gets released.  Sounds like a fun scenario, look forward to reading your battle report.