Dusting Off A Song of Blades and Heroes

It’s been a long time since I posted twice on the same day, but it made sense to me to split the Armies for Kids post from the report on a recent game.

Our roleplaying group has been playing the current edition of RuneQuest for the last 18 months or so, and we have been considering the question of whether it might be time to switch things up a bit.  We know that we are looking for something with a tactical combat system that can resolve fights fairly quickly, and my list of possible candidates includes Tales of Blades and Heroes, which is based on the Song of Blades and Heroes fantasy skirmish rules.

Ultimately, I’d expect to run some sort of one-shot adventure with Tales before we make any final decision, but I thought that it might be a good idea to dust off Song to remind myself of the basic mechanics.  Therefore, I volunteered to run a game this past Monday. 

Battlefield overview; the objective was the town on the far right

Most of the action ended up centered on the bridge

I decided that I would use the 1/72 Portable Fantasy Game box for this one.  The backstory of the scenario, drawn from the campaign map, is that an orcish raiding part in boats landed on the west bank of the river and hurry inland to raid a small town.  I set up a simple mat, with the river on one edge, and the town in one of the far corners. Two warbands were organized for each side, of a notional 300 Song points. As things worked out, the orcs were having a terrible time with their activation rolls, and eventually the defenders of the town slew the orc’s troll and routed one of the orcish warbands, so we called it a day. 

As expected, it took a little while to become fluent with the rules again, but we eventually did, and things moved along more quickly.  I was reminded that one of the things I like about the rules is that you can read the situation from the board; you don’t have to remember anything about how you got to this point in previous turns (e.g. no need to remember that some figure ran on his previous activation and is therefore entitled to a dodge modifier).  I was also reminded of a recent discussion I was part of regarding points systems; while I used the game’s point system to speed up the set-up of this scenario, I will note that the orcs have a considerable losing streak against the humans.  This is attributable to the humans’ “quality” advantage (a game statistic that governs how successful a figure is in taking actions), and I would suggest that the point system does not accurately account for the difference (i.e., a balanced game would seem to require more points for the orcs than for the humans).

In the interest of getting home quickly I did not pack the game properly back into its box, so I finally got around to getting it all properly stowed away this morning. 

Handling the troops, I wondered just how long it had been since they had been on the table, and how long it had been since I had played Song.  I reviewed the game log and found that the 1/72 fantasy individuals hadn’t been out for a game since May 2023, when they were used for a test game of Knyghte, Pyke, and Sworde  while accompanying my wife to a singing competition.

The last time I had actually played Song of Blades and Heroes turned out to have been in December 2022, when I took the boxes on the road and staged a game at a friend’s house as a demo for his college-aged son.

It was nice to get the rules and figures back on the table.  It probably would make sense if I spent more time playing and painting fewer projects (i.e. gaming minimalism), but that is a post for another day…

HAWKs Armies for Kids Painting — That’s a Wrap

Seven HAWKs gathered yesterday to finish painting the figures for the 2026 Armies for Kids (AfK) giveaway. Historicon is now just two weeks away, so I suppose one might suggest that we cut it a little close, but even a simple paint job on American War of Independence figures has taken a bit longer than last year’s Spanish-American War figures.

We save the best for last; the final batch was a mass of American militia (mostly the old Accurate figures) painted in a very non-uniform way.  The project coordinators can now finish up the basing and load the figures and other gear into the boxes.  Next year’s AfK project is expected to be 1/72 American Civil War, so that should be a little easier to paint.

Getting Re-Organized

 I have not been doing well with my resolution to blog more, but, here we go …

The HAWKs have been busy painting 54mm plastic American War of Independence figures for the annual Armies for Kids give-away event at Historicon, now just a few weeks away.  We are giving away six army sets, each consisting of 6 American units, 6 British units, plus a gun and crew and a mounted officer for each side.  Units are just four men, so every kid is due to get about 55 painted figures this year, including one Indian unit in each British set. We usually get together as a group for the painting, but I wanted to give the Indians a little extra attention so I volunteered to do the 24 of them as homework.  I also had extra spray paint and volunteered to do the six 4’x6’ground cloths.  

The Indians; project organizer will do the basing

As of Friday, I finished this task up after much procrastination. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I am procrastinating on a particular task (e.g. painting) I usually will fill time with something completely unrelated (e.g. bicycling), because I feel too guilty about almost doing what I am putting off.  

Three ground cloths starting with tan felt

Three ground cloths starting with green felt

The ground cloths, by the way, turned out to be more of a challenge than I had expected, and I can tell that I am getting old, as my forearms were sore and fatigued the next morning after a couple of hours with a succession of spray cans. Nevertheless, by Friday morning everything had been dropped off to the Armies for Kids coordinator and I was free to paint whatever I felt like without guilt.

I noted to the painting group assembled on Friday that I have been spending too much time watching hobby videos on YouTube rather than actually doing hobby activities. (There’s probably a blog post in that …) One of the channels I subscribe to is the Medieval Wargamer, and he posted a video last week debating the perennial topic of whether this hobby is getting to be too expensive.  (That’s probably a post by itself too … ) I was reminded that Uncle Atom of Tabletop Minions had posted a video back in 2023, and I had taken up the $100 challenge, deciding to build a medieval skimish project starting with an Italeri 6108 “Medieval Tournement” (sic) set. 

The figures I’d finished in 2023

I had only finished 9 of the figures, but had left another batch on tongue depressors in various stages of painting. 

The next batch, left in progress

In an uncharacteristic fit of organization, I had sequestered all of the materials for the project including the paints, brushes, and bases, in an 11-liter Really Useful Box. I remembered that I had put the “in progress” tongue depressors into the RUB later, but not all at the same time.

The sorted project box

Enjoying the lack of guilt over the Armies for Kids I pulled out the Tournament project box yesterday and decided that it would be prudent to count the miniatures and make sure that I had actually gotten everything stowed away properly back in 2023.  According to my blog post (linked above), I was looking for 55 foot figures and 20 cavalry figures, and I could only find 51 of the foot figures.  Three hours later, after moving and looking into every RUB full of half-completed miniatures in my basement, counting four times, and comparing the sprues from the box with an intact set of sprues twice, I concluded …drumroll please…that I had miscounted or mistyped back in my 2023 blog post, and the real answer really was that I had 51 foot and 20 horse.  So, the good news was that all figures were present and accounted for, but that bad news was that I had run out of energy for the day to actually do some painting.  Oh well, better luck today…

French and Indian War

I'm behind on blogging, as usual, but I've gotten the 40mm French and Indian War stuff out today for a trial game using A Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles.

2025 Year in Review

 I retired as of the 1st of January 2025, so I have been fortunate enough to have some extra time on my hands this year, as planned.  My wargaming goal going into the year was not to turn down any offer of a game unless absolutely necessary.  The HAWKs have had a regular retirees group for some years now, and I was happy to be part of it, starting with the first meeting in January. I’ve also gotten games days with my sons, and made it to a few conventions this year.  As a result, as of the 15th of December, I’ve logged 67 game sessions this year, with only a slender chance of getting any more in before the 1st of January.  That is a new record, and has been the best part of the hobby year.

A Fantastic Battles Game with My “Myzantine” Forces

As gleaned from my log, which I keep on paper in a notebook, being somewhat old school, here is a complete list of those games, arranged by frequency:

Miniatures Games of 2025

9 x Combat Patrol (7 20mm WWII, 2 25mm WWI)

6 x DBA (20mm)

5 x Fantastic Battles (4 6mm*, 1 25mm*)

4 x Dragon Rampant (3 20mm*, 1 25mm*)

4 x Look Sarge, No Charts (10mm WWI)

4 x 15mm Napoleonics home rules (3 different sets)

3 x To the Strongest (10mm ancients)

3 x Fistful of Lead (F&IW, 2 40mm*, 1 25mm)

2 x Fantasy home rules (1 25mm, 1 wooden “crafties”)

2 x Charge! (40mm NQSYW*)

2 x Square Bashing (25mm WWI)

2 x Chain of Command (20mm WWII)

2 x Medieval home rules (54mm*)

2 x Neil Thomas 19th Century Europe (20mm)

2 x Chosen Men (25mm Napoleonics)

1 x Rebels and Patriots (40mm NQSYW*)

1 x Turnip 28

1 x WWI home rules (10mm)

1 x British colonial home rules (25mm)

1 x Vauban’s Wars (15mm SYW siege)

1 x Don’t Give Up the Ship (Napoleonic Naval)

1 x Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles (25mm British colonials)

1 x This is Not a Test (25mm post-apocalyptic)

1 x Star Schlock (25mm SF)

1 x Thalassa (1/300 ancient naval)

1 x Battletech Alpha Strike (1/300 SF)

1 x De Bellis Fantasiae (20mm fantasy)

1 x Lion Rampant (54mm medieval*)

1 x Blood and Swash (25mm early American)

1 x Tanks for the Apocalypse (20mm post-apocalyptic)

——-

67 games

30 (+) different sets of rules

*17 games involving my own figures; 50 not involving my figures

Someone asked me recently on a hobby Discord what I typically play.  This year, there really was no “typically” about it.  Due to my acceptance of whatever was on offer, the most frequently played game was Combat Patrol, one of the many games designed by club member Buck Surdu. I played it both in the standard WWII version and modified for WWI. I personally only have one 20th century project in my collection at this time, a 6mm Spanish Civil War set which, according to my records, has not been used in a game since April 2005, over 20 years ago.  Due to club interests, I suppose I do end up playing a lot of WWI and WWII, but I enjoy the opportunity to play something without having to build up a collection myself.

Only 17 games involved any of my own figures this year using figures from 6 projects.  By my count, I have 16 projects that have “playable” levels of figures. I would have to say that my figure collection was a bit underused this year.

With 30+ sets of rules played this year (the uncertainty being how to count the home rules Napoleonics) it has been difficult to gain proficiency with any new sets of rules, and I have a stack of rules that haven’t been tried yet, particularly Hobgoblin and Midgard for some fantasy mass battles.

Some 40mm Prince August Infantry for the Not Quite Seven Years War

It has been a bad year for painting overall. I have scarcely picked up a brush since I finished a few Prince August semi-flats for the NQSYW in September. Other than that, I finished about 10 stands of various 6mm troops for Fantastic Battles and a handful of 25mm fantasy figures (also Prince August home cast).

I have been wanting to get back into blogging more regularly, and I can’t really say that this year was a success.  It took until September to actually buckle down and write something, and I did not match that pace for the rest of the year.  However, I did do some blogging, and I had three times as many posts as last year, so perhaps we’ll call that a draw.

I have usually done some solo gaming in the course of a year, and I have a solo campaign in progress, although it has been stalled since I played out the Battle of Newkeep in January of 2022. I know why the solo campaign is pending: I am stalled on building some buildings I want for the next scenario. However, I have not done a single solo game this year. I could have tried either of the new fantasy rules mentioned above solo, or done any number of other one-shots.  I would suppose that the availability of opponents this year has reduced my craving for more games, at least a bit.

Overall, though, it’s been a really good year for the hobby, even if some areas could be improved.

I haven’t actually written down my goals for 2026 yet, and I hope to blog a bit when I do. There are several ideas on my mind. March 2026 is the 50th anniversary of my involvement with Dungeons & Dragons, and I would really like to dust off the original rules for some retro-gaming. August will be

the 30th anniversary of the first NQSYW game, which is an occasion I will certainly wish to mark. I also want to play some games with some vintage rules. I haven’t had Knights and Magick (Heritage Models, 1980, review minus pictures here) on the table in a few years. We have always played K&M as 

“miniatures agnostic”, but a couple of years ago I thought that it might be fun to see if I couldn’t assemble a couple of forces using contemporary Heritage figures (currently available from Classic Miniatures), either vintage or new castings, and I have acquired more miniatures for this recently. I acquired a set of

Warhammer (1st edition) rules during the pandemic which I still haven’t tried, despite the recent release of a video series on the topic. I’ve been accumulating Citadel Dark Ages figures to provide a couple of appropriate armies, just for fun.  Never having been a Games Workshop fan, the Dark Ages figures and the early Citadel ranges such as Fantasy Adventurers and Fiend Factory, which were licensed to Ral Partha for production in the US, are the only Citadel minis in my collection, so I decided I’d try to build on that a bit.  And…if I’m going to dig into Warhammer, it might be fun to break out Warhammer Ancient Battles for a Dark Ages game or two. More to follow on those ideas…

Meanwhile, I wish all of you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Barrage 2025 After Action Report

 The HAWKs staged Barrage XXIX (really, 29?) on 26 and 27 September, at the Havre de Grace Community Center.  Things suddenly got busy after that, so this has taken me longer to write up and post than I had hoped.  I have been finding that things have expanded to fill most of my available time in retirement, so I’m not sure how I used to find time to go to work and still get anything else done. But here we are … 

Since we became a 2 day convention a few years ago, we now set the hall up on Thursday night.  We generally have about 20 tables set up for gaming in the main room, and there’s also a side room that gets used for an Art de la Guerre tournament on Saturdays.  I believe there were about 50 scheduled events and we had about 190 attendees overall.  

I had the opportunity to play in one game on Friday, a session of an ancient naval game using the Thalassa rules and some 1/300 scale 3-d printed ships, hosted by Walt Leach and a couple of his friends.

A convention is always a nice opportunity to play some games I wouldn’t have time to prepare myself.

Both of my sons came up from the Washington D.C. area on Saturday and helped me run a 40mm Not Quite Seven Years War game with Charge!. Once we had it set up we had a little time to spare, so Norman set up a quick game of DBA using his most recently completed armies, and William and I played it out.

For the NQSYW game this year I dipped into my standard resource, C.S. Grant’s Scenarios for Wargames, and selected Scenario 15: Reinforcements in the Defense (On the Table), a scenario I have used many times before.

The attacking force was provided by the Pragmatic Coalition (forces belonging to myself, Norman, and William) and the defenders by the Northern Alliance (forces belonging to Chris Palmer and Duncan Adams). 

The defenders occupied a large hill, seen here in the far center of the photo, and the attackers need to clear it before reinforcements arrive. As is common in this scneario, both side’s cavalry ended up in a scuffle in the clear area on the near side of the hill (from the point of view of the photo above).

The Pragmatic assault eventually carried the hill, but not without ferocious casualties. 

Everyone agree that the Pragmatic Coalition would not be able to hold the hill against the counterattack from the Alliance reinforcements which had deployed:

I did get a chance to add my most recently completed unit to the Alliance defenders, seen here shortly before they broke:

A few musketeers of the North Polenburg Queen Jennifer Regiment have become intermingled with them in the swirl of the battle.  Overall, it was an unusual run of this scenario; the forces on the hill held out longer than expected, and my sons and I were discussing the possibility of doing a little mathemtical modeling to see how unusual that was, but we haven’t done it yet.

I had good luck with the flea market this year.  I sold almost everything in the three boxes of stuff I brought, and went home with a few books and a couple of small bags of Airfix figures to add to projects befopre actual and potential. 

Now it’s time to prepare for Cold Barrage in March …

All Based and Ready to Go (NQSYW and 54mm Fantasy)

 It has taken a few days since my return from visiting my father to finish up what I had painted, and I also had three more of the NQSYW figures which needed basing.

That brings a Charge! company up to full strength, so I will need to find a way to get it on the table this Saturday.

I also finished the one witch.

Next up on the painting table will be a few more 54mm fantasy figures.  I’m trying not to look too far ahead, so I won’t predict what might be after that.