5-way Fight with Song of Blades and Heroes - Chaos!

 I got a bunch of my gaming buddies over for an afternoon to try out Ganesha Games' Song of Blades and Heroes fantasy rules. These have been around for many years now but, although I've played several different rules that use the SOBAH mechanisms (Fear and Faith, Mutants and Death Ray Guns etc), I'd never played the original set before now. 

A couple of the players hadn't met each other before, so I thought this was a good opportunity to do some networking and introduce them. A put together a selection of 300 point warbands and allowed everyone to pick which one they wanted to use.

Kirstie chose Orcs, Mark Dwarves, Ross Wood Elves, I took Lizardmen and Ian had a mixed group of adventurers (based on our Sellswords party from pre-covid campaigning).

I stole borrowed the idea for this scenario from an absolutely superb mini campaign I had found through the Lead Adventure Forum https://necedemalis.org/hunt-for-the-barrowland-act-one/

My take on this for SOBAH is below.

CURSE OF THE BARROWLANDS

The skalds speak of the lost barrows of Sianwon in hushed tones, speaking of a kingdom long thought lost to myth. Some believe it was the place where the dream of undeath was first discovered, for from its, now-buried, sepulchres and tombs the dead first emerged to walk the earth again. Others say it is a place cursed by demons. Either way the legendary treasures rumoured to be buried there have enticed many an adventurer to risk life and soul to explore the grassy mounds. Few have returned to tell of what they found there. 

Objective: To search the barrows and find as much treasure as possible.

Searching a Barrow: Once in contact with the entrance, it takes two consecutive activations to search a barrow, roll 1d6 (a barrow will only contain 1 treasure).

1= Creeping Terror, the model flees one full move away from the barrow.

2-3= Dust and Ashes, nothing but you can try again in another turn.

4-5=, a 1 or 2 value chest.

6= Ancestral Treasure, Either a 3 Loot chest of gold or a relic* (players choice).

*A magical item, counts as 2 Loot, but does not slow the bearer.

Eternal Guardians: Each time a barrow is searched roll 1d6

1-2 Nothing happens

3-5 A barrow guardian awakes, place 1 next to the entrance.

6 Two barrow guardians.

 Name                                  Q C PTS TRAITS

BARROW GUARDIAN 3+ 3 36 Undead

  Carrying a treasure chest reduces the models speed by one band (Medium becomes short etc).

Ross got off to a quick start, advancing his elves across the table.

Kirstie's orcs were a bit more reticent, we said they were paddling and building sand castles on the riverbank.

Most of Ian's adventurers rushed up to the river, but the wizard and dwarf lagged behind.

My Lizardmen also spread themselves out as they advanced. mark's dwarves hardly seemed to move at all (I know they have only a short move, but even so!).

Ross' fast moving elves were the first to get into contact with a barrow.

Ignoring the two laggards at the back, Ian waded across the river, towards the nearest barrow.

Getting there ahead of my lizardmen.

The two parties clashed in a brief, inconclusive skirmish. Then Mark's dwarves attacked Ian from behind and my lizardmen took the opportunity to move on to another barrow.

As the elves had looted one barrow, after dealing with an irate guardian, and were moving on to a second, Kirstie decided to ignore the barrow and cross the river to cut off the elves' retreat. Let the elves do the hard work and mug them on the way home!

Things were getting nasty between Ian and Mark's warbands as my lizardmen quietly moved away and looted the next barrow, which didn't have any nasty surprises!

Eddie the wizard got halfway a cross the river, when the dwarf archer started shooting at him. The couple exchanged arrows and fore bolts for the next couple of turns, with inflicting serious damage.

After a few turns of combat both warbands had lost 3 of their number, both were now at half strength!

Having looted two barrows, the elves decided to head for home, only to find the orcs blocking their way.

If that wasn't bad enough, my lizardmen can charging up from the other side.

Deciding that arrows were not working, a dwarf rushed towards the wizard, intending to try splitting his head with an axe. Eddie concentrated and froze the dwarf on the spot, halting his advance (deciding that fire bolts hadn't worked, Ian decided to try a Transfix spell, which had the desired effect).

As the elves dropped under the combined assault, an orc grabbed one of the looted treasures, whilst a lizardman grabbed the other. Having lost two of their number, the lizardmen now retreated with their treasures, pursued by the orcs. Two acted as rear-guard, while the third carried off the loot.

Back in the river Eddie the wizard took careful aim and loosed a fire bolt, killing the transfixed dwarf.

Now, with only 1 character left each, Mark and Ian made a truce. With the orcs acting as a distraction, they would gang up on my treasure carrying lizardman and rob him!

Having lost a couple of orcs to my lizardmen, Kirstie decided to call off the chase an loot the final two barrows instead. The first they entered had shiny things inside, but also a guardian, which promptly laid out the first orc to rashly enter. However they ganged up on it and despatched the undead creature.

Whilst the orcs were now off looting, the other two lizardmen were able to come to their fellow's aid made short work of the two would-be robbers.

After a lot of fun, laughter and banter, aided by beer & snacks, the final result.

Ian TPK (Total Party Kill)

Mark TPK

Ross TPK

Me 4 Loot Points

Kirstie 6 Loot points

I will be trying another multi-player game of SOBAH next week, with different players. My intention is to run a campaign next year for a group of 4 of us who get together regularly once a month.

Refighting the Battle of Bosworth with Midgard

 This week Colin and I got the opportunity to play test James Morris' Bosworth scenario, after I had franticly finished basing more archers. I was Richard III and Colin took Henry Tudor.

It was a fun game, but felt quite one sided. Colin must have committed some transgression against the Dice Gods recently. I tried to play it historically, advancing Norfolk's battle first, whilst engaging in long range archery duels else where and manoeuvring Richard and his bodyguard around to be in place to charge down the hill towards Henry Tudor. Due to an appallingly unlucky sequence of dice rolls at the end of turn 3, the Stanleys turned their back on the Tudor upstart and joined in on the side of the true king of England. If the Stanleys remain neutral Tudor is in trouble, but with them against him it was all over bar the shouting.

We are going to try again in a couple of weeks, it was an exceptional sequence of dice rolls, so I doubt it would repeat in a dozen or more games. (Famous last words anyone?).

Here are some photos from the game.

The battle deployment from Richard III's perspective. The Duke of Norfolk's battle on the right, The Earl of Lincoln on the left and Richard with the cavalry reserve on the hill. In the distance, The Earl of Oxford is on the right and Henry Tudor on the left.

On the other flank the Earl of Northumberland Battle hang back and the Stanleys mass ominously on the far hillside.

By some miracle of luck, I managed to get Northumberland's archers to advance as far as the marsh by turn 3!

Richard II leads his bodyguard around the back of his lines to be in position to strike at Henry Tudor.

Tudor had kept his troops back, just sending the archers forward to shoot at the enemy.

Norfolk was struggling in his advance, caught in a crossfire with his archers on the verge of collapse, although they dished out some punishment to the enemy archers in return.

It was looking quite historical, in the battle Norfolk was killed leading his attack and his troops pushed back early on. But that didn't matter because the battle was decided else where. Henry and his knights were now outnumbered 5:2 with enemies charging their flanks - a foregone conclusion really.

A win for Richard III, let's see how the refight goes.

War of the Worlds Survivors - The Final Game

 Our Martian Invasion campaign concluded with an intense encounter in the sewers, where the Martians had installed some puzzling machinery that the players needed to examine. To achieve a full victory they needed to get an engineer to study the machinery in order to fully understand it's complexity.

The photos are a bit haphazard, several were too blurry to use and at a critical point I forgot to take any pictures!

The Martian machinery, the objective for the players.

Assorted shades are wandering the tunnels.

Mark and Colin advance quietly, trying to avoid their presence being noticed.

Henry, on the other hand, rushes forward and starts shooting. The sounds of his gunfire echo ominously through the tunnels! This triggers more shades  from all sides. Also two Martian machines make an appearance, a scuttler emerges close to the machinery platform and a Stalker arrives just ahead of Mark's party. Due to the height of the tunnels the larger machine cannot move out of the water.

The Stalker shoots a black smoke canister at mark's advancing group, who are find themselves envelope in choaking gas! Fortunately they all pass their poison rolls and fall back out of the cloud.

Mark sit's out the next couple of turns, waiting for the gas to disperse.

Henry gets involved in a firefight with the scuttler as more shades press towards him. A lucky shot knocks the machine over.

A carefully aimed shot hits a vital spot on it's underside and the machine bursts into flames!

But the delap has allowed more shades to move up and block Henry's advance.

Almost unnoticed, a strange creature stirs amongst the machinery, a Martian technician.

Clutching a strange, tubular weapon, the creature positions himself to watch the approach to the machinery platform. At this point the smoke clears and Mark advances three of his party, right in front of the Martian. It fires and the three are engulfed in the beam of a heat ray! (I rolled high for the Martian firing, mark rolled two 1s and a 2!) 

Mark's surviving characters rushed forward, where the tunnel walls blocked them from the Martian's sight. Seeing a shade closing in on one of Colins's party ahead, mark let fly with his shotgun, knocking the shade down. But he had "forgotten" at that range the shotgun blast spread, so he hit Colin's character as well (but missed!). But now another stalker showed up, immediately behind Mark! Karma??

They exchanged shots, but then, Mark's rifle jammed! The next shot from the scuttler downed the character with a shotgun. In the next turn another pack of shades arrive, who overran the surviving characters and tore them to pieces! (Again, rolling 1s and 2s in combat is never good, especially when outnumbered!).

Elsewhere, Colin and Henry had partnered up, combining their firepower to blast their way through the shades opposing them. They each managed to get a character onto the weapon platform. The Martian's heat ray was a deadly weapon, but not suitable for close range use. Once the two humans ganged up on the Martian in melee, it was all over!

At this point a called it as a human victory. With the Martian dead, the shades had lost his psychic control and would only activate on a roll of 5 or 6. Any close to the machinery were dead, so there was no way I could prevent Henry getting his engineer up (who he had carefully kept at the back of the party, out of harm's way.

A much bloodier game that usual, with a lot more Martians and shades for the players to content with, but then it was the campaign finale! But the human resistance had succeeded with the loss of only 5 characters (all Mark's!).

Great fun all round!