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I've heard a lot of mentioning of this skirmish game by Ganesha games, and was wondering if you guys can elaborate more about it.

Never heard of them

A very cool little game. There are several threads in this section about it, check them out. The rules can be had for $5-$8 from several places, and are totally worth getting.

As far as the game...its a fantasy skirmish game. Fairly simple rules, but not dull or boring at all.

Song of Blades and Heroes is my favorite game. A bit about it from the "Games you might enjoy" thread, with my comments in italics and also below

Game: Song of Blades and Heroes
At least one link it can be cheaply bought from: http://www.ganeshagames.net/index.php?cPath=1_6&osCsid=iriu2jre595eg1uo9cjvu2ddm7
Cost of entry (minimum to play) and likely future costs: 8 dollars for the rules. If you have no fantasy figs, expect to drop 20-40 bucks for a warband, otherwise, you can play with what you have. Expansions cost about 8 bucks each.
minimum players: 1
recommended players: 2-6 (I find this to be a bit optimistic. you can play up to 4 players, but it works best with 2)
Recommended ages: 10 and up (I've actually tested this at a convention and kids and adults were able to learn the game quickly)
likely time to run a game: 60 minutes
What's to like: Very fast playing ruleset, Uses any brand of figure, allows you to stat up your own units. Very well supported by a yahoo group and expansions.
What you might not like: Has a unique activation mechanic that may not be to everyone's taste. Is Warband size (like Mordhiem) so it's hard to play with more than 18 figures a side.
Bottom line: A great Fantasy Warband skirmish game. A really good excuse to buy those cool fantasy figs that you've been eyeing but didn't have a game to play them in. Supported by a large line of expansions and similar games that are equally inexpensive an use the same basic game engine.

SBH is my favorite game because of the way it balances really simple mechanics with tactics and customizability and a set of expansions that really expand the options for different kinds of gameplay. With SBH I have the option of stating up any fantasy figure that I want and I can place that figure in a warband and know that it will be relatively balanced.

The unit creation mechanic (like all such mechanics) can be broken by WAAC players so it is relatively important that the players all be on the same page in terms of what kind of game they want to play. In our club we banned the "savage" rule because it was possible to overuse it and imbalance the game, but we've done very little else and found that the game itself has tended to rein in those among us with what we might call more aggressive list-building tendencies.

Also, SBH allows for inclusiveness in that everyone doesn't have to agree to one company's minis. In our club we have a similar laid-back mindset about playing, but our taste in miniatures varies quite a bit, so SBH was a great way for us all to pursue our own miniature collecting and painting hobby while being able to play games together. Our game tables often have 8 or more brands of figures on the same table, many of them really great sculpts from defunct games or companies that make figures but not rules. Without SBH, these great figs might never see the tabletop! It also is great for bargain hunters. Many of our warbands are made from figs that cost a buck or two a piece! With SBH there's actually a gaming reason to buy and paint up that really cool fig that catches your eye at the swap meet or FLGS bargain bin. Even if budget isn't a priority for you, it's shocking just how many amazing figs are being produced that most us don't realize.

SBH is also very fast playing. An average warband is only 5-9 miniatures and most encounters resolve in under an hour. SBH (and especially it's expansion Song of Deeds and Glory) offer a great campaign mechanic so that in one night you can link together several scenarios and watch your warband grow. We average 2-3 battles/encounters a night on our campaign nights.

Lastly, it is the SBH activation mechanic that really sets it apart. Each figure has a quality number (lower is better). To activate that figure you must roll equal to or over that number. You are allowed to roll 1, 2 or 3 activation dice, but the trick is that if you roll two or more failures play passes to your opponent even if you haven't activated all your figures. This "gambling mechanic" as I call it means that every activation has consequences.

-Do you roll more dice to try for more actions, or less dice and play it safe?
-Do you activate a better quality model first, or the lower?
-Do you go for what might be an easy kill or try and bring up reinforcements first?
-etc, etc...

If the idea of Mordhiem or other "Warband Skirmish" games appeals to you, but you don't want strict IGOUGO and would like more freedom than GW allows, I highly recommend trying SBH. The $8 rulebook is all you need to play and you probably already have miniatures that would work well in the game. For those commited to a mass battle game like WHFB, LoTR, 40k, FoW, etc. SBH can also be a nice cheap diversion to add some variety to your gaming and painting without commiting to another expensive game.

A few helpfull links
Ganesha Games webstore:
http://www.ganeshagames.net/index.php?cPath=1_6&osCsid=iriu2jre595eg1uo9cjvu2ddm7
SBH online warband builder:
http://www.ganeshagames.net/extra_info_pages.php?pages_id=17
Ganesha Games Yahoo Group. The owner posts often and there's alot of free and usefull files.
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/songofblades/
My club's blog has quite a few SBH battle reports. We've been playing for years and are currently in the middle of an SBH summer campaign.
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/

Let me know if you have any other questions, I'm happy to help.

Thanks for the info. I've seen it on Wargame Vault for along time now for $5.00US, and have always been curious.

That's the same book as the one I linked too. I forgot that WGV still has it for the original price.

One other neat thing to note. When you buy a Ganesha Game (ether from them or from WGV) you get free upgrades when a new edition is released. In the past few years I've gotten free new versions of 3 of my Ganesha products.

A new version on SBH is rumored for the future, so if you buy now (the price will probably go up with the new product) you will get the next edition free!

That's pretty cool on the updates direction. I may have to get it to play skirmish games with my Confrontation PPP miniatures (rather than the homebrew-kitbash my buddy and I are making from the official rules), plus my bud has tons of DnD minis from GMing our games.


Are all the additional books beyond SoBH recommended, or just some of them? I read that several of them have things like terrain rules and campaign rules in them.

AegisGrimm wrote:That's pretty cool on the updates direction. I may have to get it to play skirmish games with my Confrontation PPP miniatures (rather than the homebrew-kitbash my buddy and I are making from the official rules), plus my bud has tons of DnD minis from GMing our games.

We have some Confrontation and D&D figs in our games. When I first started playing SBH all I had was D&D prepaints with flock glued to their bases and alot of us were using Heroscape figs. Since then I started painting fantasy figs (never done much of that before then) but I still have quite a few mixed in my SBH warbands. When rebased it's even harder to tell them apart from regular minis.

Can you spot which two are stock (rebased of course) D&D prepaints and which one is a repainted D@D prepaint?

AegisGrimm wrote:
Are all the additional books beyond SoBH recommended, or just some of them? I read that several of them have things like terrain rules and campaign rules in them.

I recommend all of them (there's a nice bundle available via Wargames Dowloads. However some are more usefull than others depending on what your needs are. I break all of them down in the last three posts on this page:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/460457.page

If you do decide to get SBH (and you really, really should) I would buy it direct from Ganesha Games, partly because it maximises the amount Andrea gets from the sale (and he's running a 1 man operation, needs all the cash he can get) but also because of the free upgrades it nets you. There is a revised SBH version due out soonish along with some expansion books for specific fantasy races (no solid release dates yet) and if you join the official Yahoo group a number of the rules tweaks from the next book have already been posted for people to start using.

One other thing to note is that if you do like the simple-but-tactical core game mechanics (gambling on your activation rolls and opposed combat dice rolls) then Ganesha do an ever increasing range of genre specific games based around the same rules mechanic (modern warfare? horror? swashbuckling adventures with pirates and musketeers? post apocalyptic mutant gangs? napoleonic skirmish or massed combat? steampunk adventurers fighting crab-men in mysterious undersea caverns? giant monsters destroying tokyo? American civil war? gangs of angry woodland creatures? Victorian teddy bears fighting dinosaurs? All currently available).

A final point is that out-the-box it's designed for 15 and 28mm scales but would be trivially simple to run at almost any figure scale, you just need to make 3 measuring sticks of appropriate lengths. Got action figures? They'd work.

Like I said before: Great info.

I think i might have to give it a try, with the thought that I may eventually pick up Deeds and Glory, along with Wind and Water for any of our games.

Splintered lands sounds interesting seeing as my group are already running a game where we are all sentient animals. I cringe slightly at the furry aspect of it, but not only am I an old reader of the Redwall books, I am essentially running a zany Kobold (the lizard version, not dog-like) character, so it's all good fun.

I've had the rulebook for a couple of weeks now and I'm just going to get my first game in tonight. I'm definitely looking forward to it. As was mentioned the activation system is very cool and rather unique compared to UGO-IGO, card based or even figure-by-figure activation.

AegisGrimm wrote:Like I said before: Great info.

I think i might have to give it a try, with the thought that I may eventually pick up Deeds and Glory, along with Wind and Water for any of our games.

Splintered lands sounds interesting seeing as my group are already running a game where we are all sentient animals. I cringe slightly at the furry aspect of it, but not only am I an old reader of the Redwall books, I am essentially running a zany Kobold (the lizard version, not dog-like) character, so it's all good fun.

Happy to help.
As for SSL, if you buy the other 5 books you will have all the special rules contained in SSL. However, it does have a bunch of fluff, a nice campaign track and some interesting primitive fortification rules. Also, even though you can stat up things anyway you like with the online warband builder, it does have alot of nice premade rosters.

Either way, there's no rush as long as you have SBH, you've got enough to get started and keep you busy for a long time. You can add the others at your leisure.

bosky wrote:I've had the rulebook for a couple of weeks now and I'm just going to get my first game in tonight. I'm definitely looking forward to it. As was mentioned the activation system is very cool and rather unique compared to UGO-IGO, card based or even figure-by-figure activation.

Great! Be sure to let us know how it goes.

Just finished up my foray into SBH. My cousin and I played 3 games total tonight. Terrific fun, the activation system was great and we even had a few "first activation failures" that immediately passed the turn. We played two All Out Battles and an Ambush scenario.

I wasn't a huge fan of the Morale system, mainly because the table edges were SO CLOSE. We played 60cm by 60cm (as suggested in the rulebook), which meant even one Medium move was bound to take you off the table. So we either huddled in the middle or had half our force run away. The first two games were rough for this reason; losing my Leader then most of my force, then a bad Gruesome Kill that really split my team.
I also didn't like how heavily warband creation influenced the outcome of the game. For example my first warband was kind of...sucky? I just did a mish-mash of characters to match my figure case, and got pretty rolled. It felt like no matter what I did my warband was outmatched. Sure I hadn't done anything optimized, but I also wasn't blindingly bad.
Then I rebuilt the warband and rolled my cousin, as in tabled completely. I hadn't even built the warband to counter his, it was just a lot better based on what I had chosen.
So yeah, not a big enough sample size to tell, and obviously character choice has SOME effect, but it felt like some combos aren't entirely valid.
Oh and high cost models seem to be better than two lower cost models. For example a Minotaur Guard rocked socks for most of the game, and I don't think two 40 or 45 point models would have been comparable to that 90-ish point menace.

But that's all minor stuff, mostly from inexperience and just doing "straight up fights". A campaign might result in a lot of fleeing as soon as a few casualties are in, but that doesn't seem to be the case from your reports Eilif.

All in all super fun light skirmish game that I recommend to anyone wanting a light fantasy romp. I think the map based campaign approach is the best, where each round has a defined goal and objective and consequences. The SBH rules excel at a fast way to resolve a dispute, as compared to something like a 40k campaign where each conflict takes all night.

Hey Bosky,
Glad you got a chance to try the rules. Were you playing with 15mm figures and measuring sticks or 28mm?

I ask because the 60cm table is for the 15mm figures and sticks. The recommended size for 28mm is a 90cm table (about 3 feet). If you only have a small table, then it's best to declare opposite corners the "Flee to" point rather than a table edge.

You're right about the battles wrapping up fast though. A couple kills or a leader dead is often enough to end the game. Most of our battles end with morale checks that either run the figs off the board, kill them, or make it clear that one side would be better off quitting the field. One way to make games a bit longer is to try the scenarios like treasure hunt.

In our campaign it's actually quite common for players to quit the field when they realize the battle is going against them so as not to do too much damage to their warband.

As for big characters, they are definitely powerful. The key is to pile in 3 or more enemies to get the outnumbering bonus. SBH is really a game of "pile in on an enemy to get a kill" Taking out one big guy can often be 1/3 of an enemy's force and then you're almost all the way to a 50% casualty morale check. Did you use group activations?

Anywho, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

We used 28mm and measuring sticks. "Short Move" didn't seem so bad until you're struggling across the battlefield haha.

And yeah totally dropped the ball on the table sizing. We were both new to the game so mistakes were bound to happen, but yeah we played 28mm figures on a 60cm table instead of 90cm.

Yeah I had more luck taking down his Minotaur Guard once I had him knocked down and two figures constantly pounding damage on. Even with Tough his Quality keep rising and rising and I could eventually kill the Minotaur before it could even stand up.

Didn't use group activations or magic/Clerics, mainly because we didn't have enough "rabble" type figures to make it worthwhile. Plus after my first two routes I dropped my Leader (tired of Morale checks and instantly running off the table). With a properly sized table that'd be less of a problem.

Definitely going to give it another shot, either with my cousin again or maybe with some friends.

One thing to remember about taking on Tough models is that Tough doesn't save you from Gruesome Kill results, it just downgrades them to Killed so once you've managed to knock the Minotaur down and your attacks against him become Lethal, you can kill him outright by then doubling his combat result (doubled result with a Lethal attack = Gruesome kill).

Or take a wizard and transfix the big cow in place while your little guys poke him with sticks, for much the same result

If you take a pure undead warband in the current version you'll probably get tabled though. Undead is one of the rules getting tweaked in the new version of SBH to stop them being utterly annihilated by the first big morale check.

I'll check the rulebook tomorrow, but I think you still have to triple his score for a gruesome kill. Just because he's down, all kills do not automatically become gruesome, though the modifiers when attacking a downed opponent do make it easier to tripple their score.

The only exception is for "savage" creatures for whom any kill is gruesome. However we found savage to be so overpowered that we banned it from our campaign.

Eilif wrote:
However we found savage to be so overpowered that we banned it from our campaign.

I find that interesting. I still havent had a chance to play but Ive read the rules several times. Tough seemed like possibly the most OP thing in the base rules. Guess all things arent what they seem.

When I play my very OOP Chaos minis (like late 80s OOP) I was thinking of using savage for the Khorne champions, undead for Nurgle Champions, assassin for Slaanesh, magic user for Tzeentch.

Eilif wrote:
I'll check the rulebook tomorrow, but I think you still have to triple his score for a gruesome kill. Just because he's down, all kills do not automatically become gruesome, though the modifiers when attacking a downed opponent do make it easier to tripple their score.

It's on page 7 of the SBH rules under the entry for Fallen Models. "If a fallen model is doubled in combat its opponent has scored a gruesome kill".

I believe that Savage is getting toned down a bit in the new version - iirc the morale effect range is reducing to medium and you have to have LOS to the kill, just hearing the horrible screams doesn't count.

Mad4Minis wrote:

Eilif wrote:
However we found savage to be so overpowered that we banned it from our campaign.

I find that interesting. I still havent had a chance to play but Ive read the rules several times. Tough seemed like possibly the most OP thing in the base rules. Guess all things arent what they seem.

When I play my very OOP Chaos minis (like late 80s OOP) I was thinking of using savage for the Khorne champions, undead for Nurgle Champions, assassin for Slaanesh, magic user for Tzeentch.

I think the mediating factor for us was that "Tough" is a special rule that makes a model a "Personality". Since Personalities are limited to 1/3 of your warband, it's less likely that there will be more than one tough character.

Savage, on the other hand, has no such limitations so every character could be savage! We found that a warband with more than one savage character is truely fearsome and -IMHO- darn near game-breaking. I had a warband with two savage characters and it was laying waste to my clubmates, I downgraded it to one (a large ogre) and it still dominated, so I voluntarily retired it and we agreed to do away with Savage.

Do note though that we weren't upset by this. The very nature of open-ended (aka "Generic") game systems like SBH that allow you to create your own units inevitably lead to the discovery that certain combos are over-powered. There is no way I've seen to write a unit creation mechanic that can not be broken in the hands of clever players. We simply take it for granted that the tradeoff for creative freedom given by these types of games is that the players have to be willing to house-rule now and then to keep WAAC tendencies and overzealous list-building from becoming dominant.

WAAC and List-Building emphases are valid playstyles for some folks. They just don't work well with Generic rulesets where the unit options are not clearly limited by the ruleset.

larva_uk wrote:

Eilif wrote:
I'll check the rulebook tomorrow, but I think you still have to triple his score for a gruesome kill. Just because he's down, all kills do not automatically become gruesome, though the modifiers when attacking a downed opponent do make it easier to tripple their score.

It's on page 7 of the SBH rules under the entry for Fallen Models. "If a fallen model is doubled in combat its opponent has scored a gruesome kill".

I believe that Savage is getting toned down a bit in the new version - iirc the morale effect range is reducing to medium and you have to have LOS to the kill, just hearing the horrible screams doesn't count.

Looks like I was mistaken. Thanks for that!
I'll have to inform my group as I think we've been playing incorrectly for some time now.

I'm definitely looking forward to the new toned-down savage rule. I was very glad when Andrea announced that it would be fixed in the next SBH ruleset.

For those thinking about getting SBH don't be dissuaded because of a new version coming out. All Ganesha PDF purchasers get free updates. I've already gotten one SBH update and one SSL update since purchasing my first Ganesha game about 3 years ago. None of the updates was a huge change, but they all included nice subtle changes that improved gameplay.

 larva_uk wrote:

I believe that Savage is getting toned down a bit in the new version - iirc the morale effect range is reducing to medium and you have to have LOS to the kill, just hearing the horrible screams doesn't count.

Hmmm, that sounds easy enough to apply to the current version.

I got my copy from Wargamesvault, so no free updates for me.

 Mad4Minis wrote:


I got my copy from Wargamesvault, so no free updates for me.

Check your wargames vault account when the new version comes out and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I've gotten free updates for Mech Attack there, and I'm pretty sure that Ganesha honors their free policy upgrade via Wargames Vault and thier own site.

I think it's only the purchasers of print copies that don't get the free update.

Eilif wrote:

 Mad4Minis wrote:


I got my copy from Wargamesvault, so no free updates for me.

Check your wargames vault account when the new version comes out and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I've gotten free updates for Mech Attack there, and I'm pretty sure that Ganesha honors their free policy upgrade via Wargames Vault and thier own site.

I think it's only the purchasers of print copies that don't get the free update.

That would be great. Ill have to check for Mech Attack updates as well.