After-school gaming 1

Last night I hosted the second of what is turning into a half-termly gaming evening at school for some of the 6th formers I teach. Their enthusiasm for the gaming was only matched by their desire not to be noticed geeking away as the Battle of the Bands was also taking place and there were plenty of 'cool kids' mooching about. Window blinds down and the glass pane by the door covered, and we were good to go!

We started with three side-by-side games of Songs of Blades and Heroes (SBH) by Ganesha Games. It was the first time I'd played and brought out my very newly acquired Copplestone halflings (still only undercoated, so no pictures to show the shame of playing with unpainted figures).

I, um, borrowed, the pictures below from the prolific and well-written A League of Ordinary Gamers blog but they're the same lovely figures. I filled out the ranks with the old Grenadier models carried by em4 miniatures and also sculpted by Mark Copplestone.

As for the game, I got utterly massacred by a small but deadly dwarf warband being run by a sixteen year old. The shame! I realised a bit too late in the game (first game, remember?!) that, with so many of the halflings needing to be in the same place to have a chance, I should have done all my initial manoeuvring using single dice activations. I ended up spread thinly and thereby chopped into small pieces by the high Quality and Combat dwarfs. Lesson learned. I did enjoy the quickness of the game and the simplicity of it and it's resparked my interest in fantasy skirmish gaming. Simple without being simplistic - I'll definitely play again :)

We then played the second chapter of Quest as the snow fell outside, but I'll save that for the next post.

Happy geeking,
Rab