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

Top-down view of the battlefield

Wagon full of goodies!

Turn 1: Opening moves. Vikings move across the board, while the Saxons only activate two of their men.

Turn 2: More Viking spear men move up to the tower. The Saxons roll an immediate turnover!

Turn 3: The Vikings move in further and the archer looses an arrow but misses. Meanwhile, the Saxon hero defends the wagon of goods scoring a gruesome kill, which also causes a spear man to flee the battle! The rest of the Saxon defenders engage in melee. The archer shoots but misses (I don't know if there is a rule for higher ground or not but didn't see it on my little cheat sheet. Nevertheless, I wanted the game to keep flowing).

Flesh rending sounds!

Turn 4: The viking leader moves up to support his troops but none engage in melee. The Viking archer shoots at the Saxon in the tower but misses horribly. The Saxons manage to knock a Viking down but cannot finish him off before the turn ends.

 

Turn 5: Little did the Vikings know, this would be their last turn! The knocked down Viking was able to stand up but I chose not to have him melee due to being in base contact with too many Saxons. I did have the axe man move into position to over power a Saxon by doubling up on him...It turned into a gruesome kill on the Viking axer and a chain reaction of fleeing began! There was mass bloodshed and, long story short, the vikings were either killed and fled the field of battle. Saxon victory!

Squishy guts sound!

"Run for it!"

"Run away, Viking pigs!"

Thoughts: Firstly, I made the mistake of only having 2 spear men heading towards the tower. Didn't realize my mistake until I had already deployed...It didn't really matter but, next time I'll pull my head out, hopefully.

I thought the Vikings would get an easy victory at first with the turnovers the Saxons got. Alas, not the case. That's why SBH is an excellent solo game, turnovers can turn things around or not. It's always a push your luck game. I'm 1 win and 2 losses since I started playing again!

I recently bought the Northern Settlement from Battle Systems and it is a great set! I was able to assemble all of the scatter and the two huts over my days off and still had time to cut out some minis for a change of pace. With all my recently acquired goodies from Battle Systems, I'm running out of space in my cabinet and need to reorganize stuff.

I also added some 3d printed scatter from EnderToys to my collection. The barrels and stuff in the wagon were just two pieces in the set.