Bloody Work - ASOBH Battle Report

[affun]

Kaiser and I finally managed to kick off our medieval fantasy project with a proper game (formerly pseudo-100 years war/totally not GoT, but its taken a shift to be based on scandinavian history now. Casting me as evil swedes, apparently )

Our biggest hold up has been, I have to admit, my own inability to get my miniatures painted. But with a little restructuring and some good ideas I finally managed to field a painted warband to oppose Kaiser's.
The rules was of course our system of choice: Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes. We're both at this point very familiar with it, which makes it easy for us to come up with scenarios and warbands. And its always seems to give us tense and exciting games.

Bloody Work

A small retinue of a newly crowned king found themselves travelling a foggy road. The king was young and newly crowned, heir to a mighty warlord. He had much to prove, and already his retainers informed him that there were whispers of discontent amongst the nobles of the land.
All of this was on his mind when a muffled sound broke the silence. The sound of swords being drawn.

Overview of the battlefield and Kaisers first moves

The Men-at-Arms in the retinue quickly formed a protective circle around the king, and ordered their retainers to step forward into the mists.

Retainers move forward, revealing multiple ambush-counters. Sending the peasants first is a time tested and honored strategy amongst the nobles, afterall.

The retainers disappear into the fog. After a few tense moments, violent screams are heard, and a single man comes running back - his face gaunt and terrified. It was an ambush.
At this point Kaiser's retainers had triggered multiple ambush markers, revealing a huge group of ambushers at once. These then proceeded to gruesomely murder the exposed archers, sending the shieldman fleeing back towards the main retinue.
At this the retinue decided against following the road further down, and instead the men-at-arms grabbed the king by the shoulder and ran into the rough terrain to the side. They left behind one fighter though. Hilde, the Kings Blade, stepped forward with her sword drawn, hoping to buy the king time to escape.

Further movements. The king and his guards decide to try and move around the main ambush while Hilde steps forward to tie down the main group of ambushers in combat.

Seeing the solitary woman stepping forward, one of the ambushers moved in to attack. A burly and bloody looking man hefting a massive axe, and wearing heavy armour. Alas -

- A quick stab to the face catches him by surprise and ends his life much to the dismay of his companions.

The would-be king slayer is swiftly dispatched.

The ambushers were cowed by this display of swordsmanship, making them unwilling to challenge Hilde. Seeing the morale of his men wavering, the leader of the ambushers cursed their resolve and went to challenge the Kings Blade himself.
Clad in shining plate and swinging a fearsome warhammer he rushed forward and -

- was immediately slain by a precise murder stroke.

I'd been rolling quite bad for my combat rolls, and Hilde just seemed to keep pumping out 6'es.

The loss of my leader was quite a serious blow, as I not only lost ground when the ambushers retreated, but it also made it significantly harder to activate anyone. This allowed for Kaisers warband to outmanouvre me handily, even though I still at this point had an advantage in numbers.
I guess the lesson is to never expose your general. Something I seem to keep getting wrong. 

Hilde and the rest of the retinue reunite in a small copse of trees.

At this point all of my strongest fighters have been killed off by the meatgrinder that is Hilde and my strategy devolves into a series of increasingly desperate forlorn hopes, while I try to wrangle the remains of my now very unmotivated warband into somewhat useful positions.

There's a bit of back and forth, as the ambushers form up something resembling a battleline, sending a hail of poisoned arrows towards the retinue. They all miss though, either getting caught in the foilage of the trees or harmlessly pinging off of plate armour.

A lethal assassin who had been keeping in reserve rushes forward, seeing a chance to quickly dispatch Hilde and thus leave the king open to further attack but -

- Hilde spins around and in a sweeping motion beheads the man, causing the rest of the ambushers to further retreat and break up their formation.

With the morale of the ambushers failing the kings men-at-arms see an opportunity to break through and make good their escape. Only, a well-armed man blocks the way.

The illusive tripple 1. A crucial blunder at a critical moment. I had hoped to get the ogre into the retinue and buy myself some time to try for the kings life, but it was not to be.

When a thuggish ogre blunders, stumbling and failing as it tries to charge, the Men-at-arms grab the chance. Again Hilde rushes forward.

With this final death what little resolve the ambushers had left evaporates and they scurry off.
The king is safe.

Hilde with her kills.

A great game with some very tense moments. My main failure was that I kept sending people in to get chopped to bits by Hilde. Loosing the leader that early to some unfortunate rolls coupled with a rash decision to bring him in to fight, was especially bad. It meant I had to play on the back-foot for the rest of the game as my warband became very hard to activate.
Any engagement after that happened piecemeal, which meant all of my specialised assassins got chopped up by men-at-arms they were not at all suited to dealing with. Coupled with some careful use of terrain on Kaisers part which meant I never really got to use my missile troops, and it ended up with a sound beating. Thus, to the surprise of both of us, the king actually managed to survive.
The next step will be for the king try and find out who exactly is plotting to off him, and to track down the rest of the assassins.

I hope you enjoyed the read!
Cheers
~affun

[Comsquare]

Great report, enjoyed reading it 

Where's Hilde from, by the way?

[affun]

Great report, enjoyed reading it 

Where's Hilde from, by the way?

Thanks

It's Jeanne from hasslefree. Really neat miniature. I have one waiting to be painted myself, but figured Id push it back in the queue since Kaiser picked it up at about the same time.

[Comsquare]

Thanks

It's Jeanne from hasslefree. Really neat miniature. I have one waiting to be painted myself, but figured Id push it back in the queue since Kaiser picked it up at about the same time.

Was wondering that, thanks to let me know.

Guess I have to pick her up myself, especially now that I know what she's capable to do 

[kaiser]

Nice write up, man. I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the scene where Hilde kills your leader, well done Still can't belive King Henrik managed to survive, but it's nice, that I get to use him again. Btw, I just finished two memebers of Hilde's retinue 'the Golden Roses'. Not sure, when they'll appear in the story as I thin I'll hold them back until they're all finished. Love the drawings.

[kaiser]

And you can totally be pseudo french, if you want

[Dilettante Gamer]

Fantastic narration. Love the story board art!!

And, if there's anything I learned from watching "Pelle the Conquerer" with Max von Sydow, Swedes are sub-human to Danes, even though you lot look and sound identical to the rest of us. 

[SBRPearce]

Are those your own sketches? They're wonderful!

Great AAR

[Devoted of Slaanesh]

Great job mate. Your pics are ace and ad so much to the report!!!

[Steam Flunky]

Entertaining report and great sketches!

[The Bibliophile]

Would love to hear more details on how you handled the ambusher mechanic with the question mark tokens. It's a neat idea that I'd like to try...

[PatrickWR]

Yep, Song of Blades & Heroes is sliiiightly counter-intuitive because leaders typically need to "lead from the rear" to avoid getting slaughtered and triggering a loss of morale in your warband. Even if the warband stays intact, it suffers from reduced movement for the rest of the game, as you noticed.

I love ASOBH and am glad to see your project getting off the ground!!

[affun]

Thans for the nice comments all of you Certainly was a fun game, and its put some steam back into my fantasy painting.
Drawings are my own - I couldn't not draw the hilarity of my entire warbands fighters lining up to get murdered one at a time.

Would love to hear more details on how you handled the ambusher mechanic with the question mark tokens. It's a neat idea that I'd like to try...

It was a little underdeveloped, but served its purpose of obscuring deployment. Basically, the way we did it was:

We ruled that it was foggy, limiting all line of sight to 1 x Long. Then I numbered 6 counters, and took a piece of paper and wrote down which members of my warband was hiding under which counter (Keeping a few dummy counters with none, just to keep Kaiser on his toes).
Anytime a counter was within Long of a member of the retinue, it was revealed. Also, as the ambusher, I could move d3 ambush counters up to Medium at the beginning of my turn.
It should be noted that the ambushers had a few points more than the retinue (400 pts to 300 pts), both to force the retinue to try and evacuate the king, but also because the ambushers would be coming on piecemeal due to the deployment.

Oh yeah, and in the turn they we're revealed, the ambushers of course got the Ambush (+1 C( bonus to their first attack.

[The Bibliophile]

Interesting...I like the idea of the fog. I could see having the question mark counters for both sides until they see each other...interesting twist. Thanks for sharing it!

[Hobgoblin]

Great stuff - I love the sketches!

Yep, Song of Blades & Heroes is sliiiightly counter-intuitive because leaders typically need to "lead from the rear" to avoid getting slaughtered and triggering a loss of morale in your warband. Even if the warband stays intact, it suffers from reduced movement for the rest of the game, as you noticed.

One thing I like about that is it meshes well with a lot of old-school figures - not least the Citadel Regiments of Renown, where you have an "officer" and a "champion". I like the idea that the leader does a lot of barking orders and pointing while the champion does the real fighting. The orc profiles in the original SOBH rulebook suggest the same thing: the leader has better Q, whereas the champion has the Hero trait, Savage and C4.

To me, that sort of set-up is much better than the Warhammer notion that the leader must always be the best fighter. I think "leading from the back" is really the more natural thing, and we've just been conditioned by gaming tropes to think otherwise! Of course, ASOBH does have the Lead from the Front trait (and Discipline Master - the ultimate "leading from the back") to add variety.

If affun will forgive the intrusion, these old catalogue photos illustrate the point quite well. Note that the leaders are often less well armed and armoured than the champions, as if the former aren't intending to do as much fighting: