Song of Blades and Heroes - An Experiment in Hand-Drawn Maps and Dice as Figures

Ganesha Games has been my jam for the last few months!

I came across a post recently on Facebook about a guy playing One Hour Skirmish Ancient & Medieval Skirmish Wargames. What intrigued me was that he did it all with pen and paper. I thought that idea was great, as I have been thinking of doing this myself. I think reading about it got me kicked into starting it.

Song of Blades and Heroes Solo Battle Report: Dark Ages on Fire!

 

 

 Don your helmets and grab your battle axes, it's time for another Song of Blades and Heroes (SBH) battle report.

Scenario: The situation is, a Viking raiding party (played by me) consisting of a berserk leader, 4 spear men, 1 axe man, and an archer are raiding a Saxon outpost. The Saxon defenders (played by my opponent, me, making the best moves possible) consist of a hero, 4 spear men, 1 heavy infantry, and an archer, situated on the tower. I rolled these forces up randomly and are more or less within 10 points of each other, with a slight advantage to the Saxons.

Win Conditions: The Vikings can win by burning down the tower (using the flammability rules in Song of Wind and Water). Each spear man carries a torch and will set fire to the watchtower on a 4+ attack roll. It must burn for 2 full turns after being set ablaze. A tie would be capturing the cart laden with supplies (being in base contact with it at the end of the game). The Saxons can win by repelling the attacks for 10 turns or eliminating/routing the Viking invaders. On with the show!

The Viking forces

The Saxon forces defending the watchtower

Song of Blades and Heroes Battle Report: Zombies everywhere!

 

About a week ago, I decided to play a solo game of Song of Blades and Heroes out of the blue. I have been working on cutting out paper miniatures for a few months, trying to decide on a scale and a set of rules. Finally, I made up my mind and brought forth SOBH to the table!

I waited until my son was about to get home from school to play so that he could possibly join me. He never did, so I played it out myself. I did get to try out some of my new terrain from Battle Systems, the graveyard set! I also bought the blacksmith shop and village. Pretty cool stuff!

Anyways, here's a quick battle report, as I like to make blogs about my hobby...It's a little hobby in of itself!

I came up with a simple scenario on the fly. The heroes must destroy the Zombie King breaking the curse on the graveyard. There were 11 zombies and 1 Zombie King. Their opponents were a group of heroes, consisting of a dwarf warrior, 2 human warriors, and 2 elf archers. I had played this same heroic group against some goblins the previous day, so just used the same band from that game (some pics of that game at the end of this post). All minis are either purchased One Monk Miniatures or free forum hoard minis in the downloads section.

A simple warband, not very well suited to take on the undead!

Notequest: Expanding the map with Orryn!

In the last couple of days, I've been expanding my map further and adventuring overland with my Gnome Cook, Orryn.

 

 

Notequest: Another look

After playing many dungeons with Four Against Darkness (4AD) over the last few months, I decided to try something a little different. I noticed in my downloaded files section, Notequest, which I had intended to try a lot more. So here we are again. My initial thoughts on the core rules can be seen here, about a year and a half ago.

Four Against Darkness: Adventures of the Forgeshields Volume 2

 

Welcome to another installment of the Forgeshields Adventures! Last time, we saw a couple party members cut down before seeing level 2. Surprisingly, the halfling and elf both made it out alive leaving their guild mates rotting corpses in the dungeon...So it's time to roll up some new characters!

Four Against Darkness: Adventures of The Forgeshields Volume 1

 

Herein lies another start of a guild named "The Forgeshields." It is a record of their adventures using the Four Against Darkness (4AD) rules system and any number of expansions that I feel necessary. So buckle up, and hope for no Medusa!

5150 New Beginnings - Sven in Space! Step-by-Step

 

One thing I never really got into with 5150 Maiden Voyage was space adventures. It just seemed like a lot of work. You had to make stat sheets for each ship when you encountered them in space, just seemed like a lot of bookkeeping. With 5150 New Beginnings, you have nice counters with the stats already on them, which makes bookkeeping pretty much non-existent. All you need to do is remember a couple things about the captain's rep and his attribute. The most you will encounter is 2 ships, assuming you just use one ship yourself.

This will be a test run with the spaceship rules, combat in space, in particular. I will restore Sven's rep to 5 (he lost one last episode!) but his other stats will remain the same, people 6, savvy 4, Crack Shot, and Nerves of Steel.

First, we need a ship. I think a trader would make sense, so I pop out the trader ship on the battle board.

Trader Spaceship token

5150 New Beggings - Break Ins and Grocery Runs

 

 

Sven

 Month 3:

Last month saw Sven rising in People skill to 6, the maximum you need. Why’d I choose it? Well, I think the interaction skill is paramount in the THW “interaction era” as I’m going to call it. Especially for this version of 5150NB as you’re constantly running into people and talking to them. You can rack up the IRD in this way. This is always handy when you have an encounter go south quickly or you lose rep when the dice gods frown upon you (read on, dear reader if you want to see them in action).

5150 New Beginnings - Brawling at the Bar

 

Sven

Month 2:

Pay the Man: Since I didn’t increase in rep/skills, I won’t list the stats. At the start of the month, you need to pay the bills with DRD (decreasing rep d6). Since Sven lives in low-income housing, doesn’t have a ship or vehicles, and has no band members, he gets 0 DRD.