How does Song of Blades and Heroes compare to Mordheim

[The Red Graf]

Well, I think you guys have sold me. I have a lot of random miniatures and the ability to make up stats for any of them is really a selling point as is the idea of playing with my kids.

One last question before I get the book. I know there are a lot of books beyond the basic book. I want to check out the city warfare one, the name escapes me. For a fantasy player are there any other books I need to consider?

Thanks for the info.

[Hobgoblin]

I think that's Songs of Shadows and Dust (the Roman streetfighting one). I'm intrigued by it, but have yet to buy it.

The supplements are a kind of "as and when" thing. You can go a long way on the basic rulebook. The two main ones are Song of Gold and Darkness and Song of Wind and Water. I bought them both in PDF at the same time, so tend to confuse their contents. SGD has dungeon-exploration rules, while SWW has wilderness and outdoor rules. Both have lots of new profiles. Song of Deeds and Glory has campaign rules, while Song of the Splintered Lands is a specific campaign. They're all certainly worth getting, but I'd add them incrementally.

The others, as far as I know, are variants for different settings. Mutants and Death Ray Guns is an even smaller-scale post-apocalyptic game with a brilliant campaign system (food is as important as ammo, and that's pretty important), while Song of Arthur and Merlin is the SBH rules plus three Arthurian settings and loads of era(s)-appropriate rules and scenarios. I haven't played any SAM stuff out straight, but have adapted a lot of the ideas to a more generic setting. We've also mashed up MDRG with SBH quite a bit (aliens vs goblins and that kind of thing).

I can thoroughly recommend SBH for playing with kids. My son is hooked on the game (thanks in large part to the relentless success of his lizardmen). And it works well with more than two players.

[The Red Graf]

How old is your son? I have 7,8, and 9 year olds. My ex wife has them playing Hero Quest and the older two can hold their own in board games like Settlers of Cattan. They also play that Star Wars pre painted miniature game.

[Hobgoblin]

My son's six. I got the rules and painted some miniatures (the first in more than two decades!) for his birthday last September. Before that, he'd played Castle Panic, King of Tokyo and Settlers of Catan. I think all the games you mention are more mechanically complicated than SBH, so you'll be fine. Of course, skirmish games are more free-form, but I think that works better with kids anyway: "My guy's going to climb up there and shoot the ogre ..."

For kids, I'd recommend giving them smaller warbands of more powerful characters. These are easier to keep control of. Lizardmen work well, because with Quality of 3 (lower is better) and Combat of 4 (higher is better), they're both brave and tough. And they come in at 52 points, so you can just round off to 50 and work out simple warbands very quickly: six lizardmen for 300 points, etc. Elves are another good one: they have Q2 (the best possible) and C3. One of our favourite 400-point warbands is four elite elven archers and an elven bowmaster (stats from the rosters in the book). The bowmaster can fire multiple shots per turn, so there's a lot of opportunity to massacre opponents gleefully from afar.

One thing that makes the game easy for kids to grasp is the use of measuring sticks rather than tapes (as in these photos - devoid, alas, of much in the way of eye-catching terrain!). This makes movement really simple and intuitive: the figures just "leapfrog" the stick. And the Song of Winds and Water supplement has profiles for dinosaurs, which always go down well ...

[Faust23]

I wish someone independant who was a massive mordheim fan would do a review on all the campaign skirmish systems out there with pros and cons.

Brink of battle, Fanticide, DD: Warbands, etc. I would be very interested in that.

Here's a review of the fantasy supplement for Brink of Battle http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=72283.0

[The Red Graf]

Here's a review of the fantasy supplement for Brink of Battle http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=72283.0

That one sounds great as well, I got them both. Can't wait to try them out.