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!

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.

5150 New Beginnings: Play-by-Play Battle Report

 

This Black Friday, I splurged and bought a bunch of titles from Two Hour Wargames at 50% off. Great deal! In particular, I bought 5150 New Beginnings as well as its companion books. I was inspired by Andy Slack's blog about Arioniad using these same rules and figured, at this price I couldn't pass it up.

I quickly rolled up my first character, named after our new feral kitten, Svengoolie or Sven for short. I'm probably going to re-roll this guy up at some point, this is just so I can familiarize myself with the rules. All encounters will be the race "Basic." Here's a brief overview:

Sven

Name: Sven

Profession: Mercenary

Rep: 5

Weapon: P-1

Attributes: Nerves of Steel (random), Crack Shot (chosen)

Pep: 5

Savvy: 4 

Upkeep: Home 0d6 \ Space Ship: 0d6 \ Vehicle 0d6

Lifetime Rep d6 Level: 0

Future Shock! Halloween Special!

Good evening, ghouls and ghosts! Tonight, a very special session of Future Shock filled with shambling hordes of zombies and spookiness! The scenario is very simple, survive the night (8 rounds!) or else be overwhelmed by the hordes of zombies. I'll be using the solo rules found in the Crushpop FaceBook page in the files section. The zombies will be assigned the "aggressive AI" but will not go for cover. I designed my own rule (since there are a lot of zombies!) they activate three at a time and move as a group.

From left to right: Officer Grimes, Charisma, Holly, Steve, and Tito

Future Shock! Thrashers in the Desert

 

I came across Future Shock while perusing Wargames Vault. At $0.99, I figured, why not? Looks like it might be good time for a buck. If you're interested, read more after the break!

Warstuff, First Impressions

Warstuff is a completely genre neutral wargame for quick battles from OnePageRules under their "One Off" games section. You can play virtually anything with these rules. From dinosaurs to futuristic space battles, it can be done with just one page of rules. On the second page, it has unit creation rules with abilities. They are also free!

Random Warband Generator for Song of Blades and Heroes Engine

For use with SBH or any SBH rule system

Want a little spice in your solo/solitaire Song of Blades and Heroes games (or other games using the same rules engine)? Try this! I cooked it up in a few minutes so it might not be all that great. This can be used for solo and cooperative games.

Random Warband Composition for

Song of Blades and Heroes Engine Games

-Build a warband for yourself of any point value

-Roll 1d6:

1: the enemy has 50 more points than your warband

2: the enemy has 25 more points than your warband

3-4: the enemy has the same amount of points as your warband

5: the enemy has 25 less points than your warband

6: the enemy has 50 less points than your warband

-Roll on the enemy roster until you meet or exceed the total point value above

Sample enemy army list

Roll 1d6 for the overall commander

1-4: Orc Boss Q3+, C3 Leader pts 60

5-6: Orc Shaman Q4+, C2 Magic-User 38

Roll 1d6 on this list until you meet or exceed the point value of your band:

1-2: Orc Warrior Q4+, C3 pts 23

3-4: Orc Archer Q4+, C3 Shooter: Medium pts 29

5: Elite Orc Warrior Q3+, C3 pts 30

6: Orc Savage Q4+, C3 Savage pts 27

As I said, this is just a draft. Add profiles to your liking, 4-8 is probably the butter zone with a 1d6 or 2d6. Please enjoy!

All Things Zombie: Evolution Quick Preview

I'm currently experimenting with round "tokens" for my games when I don't feel like busting out my miniatures. Even paper minis take time to set up! I figure I could just rip some art off the net and pop it into PowerPoint and punch them out with a 1" hole punch. So here is the test.

I ran this game strictly by the rules as a one-off. Our hero, Zach, runs a defend encounter. Here are the results.

Strolling down the street, Zach noticed something odd (rolled a 1 so had the advantage) . He also passed the Zed or No Zed test.

"That's a freakin' zombie!" He pulled out his pistol and fired, right in the head. Zach was a good boy and watched many zombie movies and shows. He was ready for the zombies or was he... Gunfire attracts other zombies. Did you forget, Zach?

He got the drop on them before the zombie could approach. *Bang* Another dead zombie. Good going Zach, you survived your first encounter. Welcome to the Zombie Apocalypse!

Overall, I like the tokens! They look good on the battle boards. Cheers!

Age of Fantasy Skirmish: First Game

These rules are free!

I ask you, fellow bloggers, do I need another skirmish set of rules? The answer is...yes! If you're like me, you are looking for that one set of rules that rises above the rest, is simple to play, and provides just the right amount of challenge without taking hours to play.

So what's the next possible rules set? Enter Age of Fantasy: Skirmish. It's part of the One Page Rules family, which consists of five sets of rules for big battles and skirmish battles of both fantasy and sci-fi, all free. As you probably guessed by the name, all the core rules are printed on one three column sheet. Basic special ability rules are printed on a second page with army specific special abilities on each army sheet. There's also an AI system for playing solo/cooperatively and a campaign system. All of this for FREE!? Yep. I advise you to drop what you're doing and go check it out!...Well, after you read my play through post below.

So first we need two armies. I decided to go with the classic orcs and dwarfs match up. I will be using the AI rules.

"Rally ho!"

Dwarfs (played by me):
Engineer (1) equipped with a rifle
Marksmen (3)
Iron Warrior (1)
120 points

"Orc smash!"

Orcs (played by the AI):
Boss (1)
Orcs (3)
Orc Archers (3)
125 points

Five Parsecs From Home: Gladiator's Campaign Turn 2

The religious artifact the crew must liberate.

I had to use the special card "Have you met my mate?" in order to scare up some help. There are five one use cards you can use in a campaign. This one in particular lets you get a crew member whenever you need one, even during a battle. Pretty powerful so I'm a little reticent to use it on the second turn. The alternative is to only get one recruit so I opted to use it so that I can recruit two new members and go into battle with four characters.

Note: I did kick Hattie and took her shotgun. She was bad luck anyhow!

Anyway, the campaign turn consisted of Katsuda and Skeet recruiting one member each (total of 6 upkeep). No enemies tracked me down so I had to do an "opportunity mission." I decided on the statue since I wanted a cavern theme.

From left to right: Katsuda, Skeet, Grenda, and Gort.

My opponents: Four vigilantes armed with rifles and the leader with an auto rifle.

The scenario: Locals have hired Katsuda's crew to root out their place of worship, a statue deep within a cavern. Vigilantes have decided to make it their base of operations. The townsfolk have little in the way of weapons, being a peaceful people. Naturally, they have to hire some muscle to take care of their problems once in a while.

Strategy: Try and keep out of sight or at least in cover and close as everyone of my people have 12" range.

The set up

Turn 1:   Quick actions went to Gort who dashed into cover. Katsuda moved into range and opened fire! She hits her man and he's stunned but being a terrifying weapon (probably super loud, especially in the cave), he has to take a morale test at the end of the turn.

Gort makes his move but is out of range with his hand gun.

Katsuda opens fire!...Even if she wasn't supposed to!

The enemy take over and run for cover. The victim of Katsuda's cling fire pistol crawls to relative safety while the leader of the vigilante group and his lackey level their rifles at the blue beauty. Being in cover, the bullets bounce harmlessly off the stalagmites. A few yards over, Gort is fired upon by a vigilante behind the statue but the he's saved by poor marksmanship.

They never said anything about collateral damage to the statue!

Grenda joins the battle with a wild shot after she too moves behind a stalagmite. Skeet dashes up behind cover.

(At this point I realized you can't shoot after dashing. As Katsuda dashed and fired, I decided it wasn't such a terrifying shot and didn't make them test morale. Oops!)

Turn 2: No quick actions this time. Things go very wrong.

Fire erupts once again inside the cave, Katsuda is injured and goes down! Grenda is targeted but the bullets miss. Gort, unfortunately, isn't so lucky. He crumples to the ground!

Uh oh...

Alien down!

The good guy's turn sees Grenda fire again but miss. She's a hacker who lived on a space station after all! Skeet makes a wild charge to one of the bridges hoping for a quick action.

Skeet's last stand.

One morale failure for the good guys!

Turn 3: One quick action goes to Skeet who moves into firing position (1" of extra movement is pretty nice!). He fires his shotgun at the woman behind the statue. One vigilante down!

Skeet caps the lady behind the statue.

Enemy take aim at Grenda and she's not very lucky! She gets shot by the boss man's auto rifle and goes down...Game over! Skeet beats feet as he lost his morale roll. If it's worth anything, the vigilantes also lose their roll. *Sigh*

Post Game:  We got paid 1 credit from the locals. A "thanks for trying" gesture, I guess.

Injuries: Katsuda was just knocked out! Grenda minor injuries and would spend one turn in the tank. Gort suffered a leg wound dropping his speed from 5" to 4.5" and missing one campaign turn.

Experience: Katsuda leveled up! I put the +0.5 into combat. Gort and Grenda each gained 1 exp. Skeet also leveled up! Decided I'd also put 0.5 into his combat score. I think combat is a good stat to dump points in for now since you add your combat score to your shooting dice.

Shopping: I spent 2 creds and got a brutal weapon.

Campaign event: An admirer! I've gained one crew member if I choose but they're unarmed and have no skill advances. I'm guessing they can still get stats from their background rolls? I'll take them as I can always dump them, I suppose.

Character event: Gort got +0.5 reactions as he was taught to always be on the lookout. He may have lost a leg but he gained in wisdom!

Well, that was campaign turn 2! Next turn will see the return of Jibril and Tereg. I can finally do some activities other than recruiting. Until next time!