'Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,' the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. 'Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.'

-Robert E. Howard
Beyond The Black River

Corrupt Cliffs

Corrupt Cliffs
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Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Song of Blades and Heroes. Neither 15mm nor SciFi.

Over Christmas I learned that my girlfriend who had never played anything to do with miniatures liked the parts of fantasy computer games that dealt with combat. The parts played out on a battlefield.  These are simple computer driven miniature combat in essence.  With this knowledge and a copy of A Song of Blades and Heroes, I felt I could introduce her to the wonderful world of wargames and miniatures.

Problem was I had zero fantasy figures.  My solution was to buy a bunch of Pathfinder booster packs and use them to stat up a couple of 200 point warbands. 

We had a "Fire" force and a "Forest" Force.  We played a find the magic item scenario on an aproximately 3'x3' surface with some pretty basic terrain (I really need some hills)

Roughly the sides were:
Fire: Fire Giant, Fire Elemental, Wizard and a Sin spawn (undead) type
Forest: Forest Drake, Boggard, Wizard and a hound beast.

The battlefield was an road between 2 hills with a stone arch causing a choke point along the road.

The first few turns were spent running our forces to the two closest possible magic locations.  She arrived first and rolled that it was indeed the magic item giving her an easy 3 victory points.   Once she had the magic item her drake flew over the hill and attacked my forces.  Nothing serious occured in this engagement.
 
However I took the opportunity to try and outright kill the drake and moved most of my units into hand to hand combat.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to kill the drake and it flew away to attack one of my more isolated units, the fire elemental.  I survived the initial attack but was pushed back leaving the Drake in the open. 

I cast transfix on the drake and succesfully held it.  My fire elemental closed and won combat, removing her biggest threat.


I then failed my next activation, trying to play too cautiosly and her hound kept my fire giant and sin spawn busy long enough for her boggard and wizard to eliminate the fire elemental.

 
The fire giant moves in while the sinspawn deals with the hound, elminating it from play.  During the next few rounds the sinspawn closed while the giant fought for his life.  He became transfixed at one point, and had a hard time breaking free of the spell, and truth be told we screwed up once here.  Missing a quick kill on the giant.  That being said the Boggard was killed leaving only her mage

 
The sinspawn and fire giant attack the final member of her warband, the sinspawn dies in the exchange leaving only two.....
 

With a swing of his fire club, the mage is knocked down and....
 
 Crushed under the feet of the giant.

Even with her three additional victory points, I managed to win by 1 or 2 points, only because my giant was the only one of my units left.  If it had died and my sinspawn had lived, I probably still would have not managed the victory points.

Overall the game went pretty smoothly.  She was brand new to miniatures and I had never played the rules before.  She enjoyed it and I think will play again.  I will need more miniatures though.

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