Great stuff - I love the sketches!
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:
Indeed. And we see those tropes at play in my folly in this game as well. In pure mechanical terms, my leader was basically as proficient a fighter as everyone else (being a capable mercenary with high quality equipment). But Hilde also made short work off all the other proficient fighters
To me it makes a lot of sense that you wouldn't really want to commit your strategic mastermind to frontline fighting. And I really like the way it plays out in SoBH, both in the narrative sense (of it reflecting my idea of "real world tactics") and in the mechanical sense, where it adds a lot of interesting game play. In this case, I basically took a risk that blew up in my face catastrophically. In real terms, I imagine a commander, perhaps nobleborn, might have gotten cocky and ended up catching the wrong end of a weapon they really shouldn't have.
History is full of this sort of thing. If I remember correctly, its what ended up happening to a lot of Penda of Mercia's opponents during the 7th century.
Anyways, I guess the point is that I continue to immensely enjoy SoBH.