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| Yes, I used this picture last time, but I hate to post without ANY images at all |
No photos, I'm afraid, but I popped over to Chris' place today to play a few games (his first) of Song of Blades and Heroes. I set him up with the starting list of knights and retainers that I used so successfully at school a couple of weeks ago, while I took my halflings, purely for speed of setup as both of us were on limited 'child-free' time. We had been going to play outside but it was so hot that the resin river pieces got too hot to touch and (boo-hoo!) the grass sheets on my gaming boards started to peel off, so we decamped into cooler conditions.
We played each game as a pitched battle (my turnip-munchers defending their fields from human imperialism) so Chris could get the hang of the rules (he's a more experienced gamer than me by far but this was his first stab at SBH). We slapped down a bridge in the centre of the table and extended river pieces to the edges, a couple of hills and woodland pieces and then went at it. It turns out that my previous pondering on the ineffectiveness of missile combat were utterly mistaken. The key is group shooting. Frankly, it's marvellous :) I had five archers alongside my Leader and we raked that bridge with a storm of arrows as Chris' knights tried to establish a narrow front to counterbalance my numerical superiority. In the first two games I managed to cause gruesome kills through shooting which broke his position in the resulting morale cascade and allowed me to gang up on his separated fighters. The bonus for being on horseback also proved crucial, as did the poor dice that reliably appear when his wife appears mwahaha!
One thing that Chris remarked upon (quite correctly) was that I almost always knocked him down when I won a combat, whereas he almost always pushed me back which gave me much more opportunity to kick him when he was down.
In the third game, a couple of failed moves combined with Chris carefully trapping my leader in unadvantageous combat and causing morale check after morale check as he brutally slew my leader and took my numbers down. So, it finished 2:1 to me and a fabulous time it was too.
We were left with a couple of questions, which I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on:
- Supporting figures - do all adjacent fighters contribute bonuses, or only 'unengaged' ones?
- Negative combat scores - we played it that if modifiers took your score to zero or below, you were automatically brutally killed
- We played that prone fighters cannot assist in combat (heritage of our bloodbowl gaming, I guess), but it seems that was wrong
Rab
Great fun it was too! SBH is a very cool game and one I will be creating a small troop for very soon!
ReplyDeleteMy summary of the games would be:
Game 1: poor starting positioning by me lead to a proper shoeing by rab. I was out played and soundly beaten.
Game2: I was in a strong position on the bridge but by rolling a 1 for the group shot at my spearman (the only possible result which would cause a gruesome kill) shattered my attack and then the placing of the bridge very near a table edge was fatal!
Game 3: my wife went out, the dice turned!!! Some very good activation rolls for me and a school boy error in leader positioning by rab, lead to a right mosh pit! Still very close until his leader fell to a well supported knight. This sent is turnip eating midgets into disarray and allowed me to mop up any that hadn't run away. Final blow went to my leader knight, who slew a sole halfling archer with the support of 4 of his subjects. His only kill of the game!
Cheers for the game rab! Next time I will have my own force prepared!
Glad you enjoyed it, mate. I look forward to seeing what troop you produce. Don't forget you can stat. your own figures so they fit your idea of how they should perform by using this tool:
Deletehttp://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/wIISUH4QgvXxc34gpfiivI7Xdua4PS5QeQ5BYa55-fkeTy0Fp0CiLSEqipQ87TaPcIyjxRURTt7JjIsFirFWhu-AKnH2Tmfpyo8vFy8/SAMbuilder.html
Got this from the game's author, Andrea, over on the Ganesha Games Yahoo group:
Delete"Regarding your questions on the blog:
1. Supporting figures - do all adjacent fighters contribute bonuses, or
only 'unengaged' ones?
All figures contribute a modifier
2. Negative combat scores - we played it that if modifiers took your
score to zero or below, you were automatically brutally killed
Official rule is that a score below 1 is treated as 1 for purposes of
doubling and trebling
3. We played that prone fighters cannot assist in combat (heritage of
our bloodbowl gaming, I guess), but it seems that was wrong
Yes they can contribute and they can attack also (but remember the opponent
has +2 and they are killed if beaten so generally you do not want to do it)
Andrea"
So, there we go!
Interesting clarifications. Look forward to testing them out.
DeleteSo you went down the S&W route? I picked up Labyrinth Lord about four years back, but have never run it.
ReplyDeleteYup. Dead-tree version arrived today and I wasn't able to resist rolling up a cleric character. I've been pondering whether it's possible to run a game using Hangout on google+ to overcome travel time eating into gaming time.
Delete