Three games of Song of Blades and Heroes at Graham's

"Right lads, the aim is simple; we sneak ups on 'em, we jumps them, we wins!" My orc boss giving his lads a pep-talk before game 1.

Graham/Sunjester invited me round for a game (or three) of 'Song of Blades and Heroes' and presented with multiple warbands to try, I plumped for his beautiful Ral Paths orcs, while he chose his gnolls. Mine were better fighters, his were more motivated. This was an interesting mechanism, which would add definite flavour to the groups of warriors.

Aim for game one, was simple, I had 8 orcs in some kind of ambush, could I get him, before he got me?

The gnoll warband brings an ogre as muscle!

A couple of turns later, my lads obviously unable to hide in bushes without lots of "Shhh, be quiet!" "No you be quiet!" "Stop giggling, they'll hear us!" The Gnoll warriors and ogre charge in. However, one of my savage orcs lands a 'gruesome' injury on the ogre before the behemoth can get a charge in, and it's head bounced off in a separate direction to it's body, freaking out a couple of nearby gnolls.  My boss stands there, being 'encouraging'.

A gnoll warrior downs one of my archers. Meanwhile, one of the gnolls is shoved over by an orc warrior, who then does the only decent thing, and stamps on his head, causing one of his team mates to step away in disgust!

Graham's gnoll boss isn't so sure of himself, and fluffs his activation.

Which allows my brave orc to shove over another gnoll warrior.

And jump up and down on that gnoll's head too!

The gnoll boss takes umbridge to this sneaky tactic, and tries to charge in, but misses.

Especially for Orcs/Mark, just to prove Graham can throw bad dice, fluff his activations as his boss attempts to go first!

In fact, his boss did this twice on the trot, quite the turning point of this game l 

A savage orc is downed by a gnoll warrior, one of my best fighters, oh no, what a shame. Never mind, millions more where they came from. 

But another savage orc blow slashes a gnolls in a hideous manner, causing morale effects in all the nearby gnoll, and scatters the gnolls towards the nearest table edge (including Graham's boss), like we were bowling for buzzards!

My boss claims to 'bravely' wanders through the back field nearer to Graham's boss, (actually, the real reason was to give the two nearby orcs a morale boost in their activation by shouting at them) and my last hidden orc jumps out of ambush to attack the boss gnoll. Only he was promptly run through by Graham's boss, My sneaky head stomping warrior then jumps Graham's boss, killing him.

Which causes Graham's last two gnolls to retire, quickly! 

So quickly,you could hear the sonic boom! 

The field of devastation.

With three kills, including Graham's boss, my star player is lauded by the others. "Commenced victory dance!" I got massively lucky, taking down the ogre and several fighters, mostly by lucky knock-downs that allowed stomping afterwards, while only losing three of my Boyz  

Game 2 was hunt the treasure. No photos as it was over in three turns, if which my gang refused to move three times, leaving Graham's gnolls a clear run at the bounty! No casualties, so Pterry would call it, a no score win for both sides, just the Gnolls would have had their pockets jingling!

Game three was a scenario called ''Place of Power". Meant for aspirant Mages, (which neither of us had), an ancestral burial ground where orc heroes have been buried for thousands of years has been desecrated by Gnolls, who claim that their holy burial ground of thousands of years has been desecrated by orcs. You get the idea...

We both used group moves to surge out grunts forwards while the bosses moved up cautiously.

And then it all fell apart! This time Graham couldn't miss. Within a turn, nearly half my band had been splattered with no returns. 

Forcing my orcs, including my boss, to make a series of involuntary tactical retreats. 

 

To the point where the majority of the survivors legged it off table, giving Graham a clear win! 

 Three top games. The balance of the warbands was very different. IF mine hit, they would cause massive damage, and with some in armour, could survive some damage, but they were ofetn reluctent to commit to action, as orcs should be, often giving Graham the tactical adantage with the better motiated gnolls. Really enjoyable, and I will definitely dabble again.