Scuffle at the Great Stone Head

Chris Palmer came by yesterday for a session of Song of Blades and Heroes. The forces were composed primarily of Reaper Bones miniatures, although I did have a couple of Reaper metal figures in my warband.

I set up a basic terrain layout, with a two-contour hill topped by a couple of ancient statues. While we didn't have a narrative in mind, it appeared after the fact that my team of adventurers must have showed up looking for treasure, and found the place infested by undead and magical creatures. My 300pt warband consisted of a leader, a magician, two elite archers, a barbarian, and two basic warriors.




For the first game, Chris's band consisted of a spectre, a ghost, a fire elemental, and four skeleton warriors (including two archers). The ghosts and element are among Chris's more recently painted figures, and he wanted to give them a try.




The great stone head, by the way, is an antique piece of plaster scenery from the 1980s, from a long defunct company called "Otherworld Artifacts", not to be confused with the current Otherworld Miniatures.




Chris and I are still learning the tactics for Song of Blades and Heroes. The first game started with a little back-and-forth struggle, and I thought that I was about to lose when I rolled three ones in an activation to attempt to get one of my rangers to stand up and avoid being slain by the spectre. However, Chris's luck was running even worse than mine, overall, and the ranger both survived the situation and eventually slew the spectre. Some close-in sword work dispatched the skeletons, and it was time to reset for a second game.




I figured that I was doing well with the human adventurer, so I re-used that list, and Chris replaced the undead with a band of savage orcs lead by a warlord. The situation the second time around went downhill quickly when I inflicted a gruesome death on the lead orc, which caused a morale check which sent three figures, including the warlord, fleeing off the table. The next casualty caused another morale check, and that left no orcs or goblins on the table. We decided that it was time to call it a day.




Chris commented that he should probably shape his painting queue with an eye toward tactical utility. I suspect that increasing familiarity with the rules will change our ideas of utility, as well...