Song of Blades & Heroes - Village of the Dead.

Played our first game of Song of Blades & Heroes at the club (SEEMS) last night. We have been talking about it for a while but never actually getting around to it, as tends to be the way with us.

Making the most of the chance to attend the club a few weeks on the trot, Andrew took the bull by the horns a promised a game for the Wednesday evening. Very brave considering he volunteered to do this on the Monday!

A quick read of the rules and the selection of a few appropriate figures and we were ready to go. Below are a few blurry pics of the game, at least as far as we played - not really a Battle Report as it was only a test game.

The scenario involved a group of 'Brave Heroes' (Robafett and Laurie) being asked to check on a nearby village that nobody had heard from for some time...

Unbeknownst to them, a foul Lich Lord (me) going by the name of Oliver, had decided to ravage the village with a horde of zombies. Most of the buildings were now in ruins and the small population of villagers were either dead or cowering in fear at the crossroads at the centre of the village.

The Village of Hock - now a smouldering ruin...

When the band of heroes arrived, the Lich Lord was resting within the village cemetery. He had many of his zombie army buried around the town, which he could order from the ground at will (using an activation) - these zombies could attempt to activate on the first round they appeared but being slow moving (and with a Quality of 6) they were only ever going to trouble the heroes en-masse.

The Heroes - Cleric, Archer, Wizard, Barbarian, Paladin, Dwarf, Halfling.

The hero team were at first very cautious (probably too much so, rolling only 1-2 dice, not wanting to risk 2 failures) but they did make the wise decision to call out to the villagers to find out what was going on!

The hapless villagers of Hock.

They gradually made their way into town, keeping relatively close as they now had a better idea of what to expect. What they didn't expect was their enemy to suddenly appear out of the ground directly around them!

"They're coming out of the ground!"

The first group of zombies moved slowly towards the leading Dwarf, who had the Halfling and Cleric not far behind him. The Wizard (on the floor above them with the Elf Archer) tried a couple of spells with little effect. There was almost a palpable sense of panic when more and more zombies kept appearing around the heroes. At this point though, they didn't realise how slow (and almost ineffective) the zombies actually were.

Brave Dwarf.

The 'fighter' contingent also quickly found themselves surrounded by many of the shambling corpses clawing their way from the road beneath them. Surprisingly, I managed to roll a succession of 6's and several of the undead moved into contact with the heroes...but lacked the extra activation to actually attack them!

Surrounded?

Despite a few close calls (such as when the Dwarf was knocked to the ground and the poor halfling found several zombies surrounding him) the heroes confidence soon built and they began to play to their strengths (rolling 3 activation dice that were generally giving at least 2 activations, attacking fallen enemies, the Wizard using the 'transfix' spell and hitting with a Power Attack) - and despite there being nearly 20 zombies on the table (with another 6 to come, plus the Lich Lord himself) by the time we had to wrap up the game you could see the heroes starting to look like they could come out on top.

Fighting Men make short work of Zombies.

Although we didn't get a full game in we certainly got a taste of the basic rules and hopefully will play another scenario next week. I for one certainly enjoyed playing them!

All terrain and figures (apart from the villagers) supplied by Andrew, supplemented by a few trees (no, they were not Ents Rob) from the club.