Sword Weirdos

Last night Victor came along to the Gong Garage Gamers and introduced us to Sword Weirdos. This is a newish entry into the fantasy skirmish arena dominate by Song of Blades and Heroes, so we were interested to see how it worked.

A warband is around 4-6 figures. Each has a Speed, Might, Defence and Will characteristic. Speed is the number of move actions the figure can make in an activation (1-3), whilst the other stats are expressed in terms of dice - either 2D6, 2D8 or 2D10. When you roll against that stat you use those dice and total them, looking to beat the opponent's score. So, for example, a figure with a Might of 2D8 rolls those when attacking, and their opponent with a defence of 2D6 rolls 2D6 to oppose the attack. Some effects give you modifiers to the roll; a shield gives you a +1 on defence rolls, for examples. Some modifiers increase or decrease the dice type. So if you outnumber an opponent, for example, you go up one dice type when attacking them. In the example above, if the figure with a Might of 2D8 has a friend in contact with the enemy then they would roll 2D10 for their attack.

Any hits roll on a damage table, with modifiers for particular weapons or circumstances. With low rolls the opponent may get a counter-attack, otherwise the opponent can be pushed back, knocked down, stunned or put out of action. There are no wounds or anything like that and even the puniest weapon can, potentially, kill the mightiest of warriors.

Sides alternate moving one figure at a time, and each figure gets three actions. If one side has more figures then the remainder act once their opponent has activated their last figure. 

Each side also have a number of maneuver tokens depending on how many points were used to build their force. These can be used to perform special actions, mainly with weapons. The token supply is refreshed at the end of each turn

Unlike regular Song of Blades and Heroes, Sword Weirdos has a list of weapons. Most have some inherent ability and most has some extra ability that can be unlocked by spending maneuver tokens. For example, and axe can always make a more powerful blow by the wielder spending extra actions. By spending a maneuver token you can also use it to attack every figure in contact with you using a Sweep maneuver. 

Building the figures is simply a matter of looking at what they're armed with and statting them up based on that. Each figure is assigned a class, which dictates what types of weapons they can use and gives them some find of additional ability. Each warband has to have a leader figure, who can purchase two classes. As an option each warband can be given a trait based on its type and each leader an additional ability. These options are free, but obviously both players must agree to use them. So you can give warbands and leaders a character of their own.

We played a four-player game with two sides each of two warbands. Ed has some orcs (classic pig-faced orcs in fact) whilst Caesar had hobgoblins led by a gnoll. They both had four figures each. Victor has Jason and his Argonauts (two of them, anyway), with a couple of allied harpies. I used my kobolds. They are puny but I got seven of them. As an example here's their warband:

Kobolds - Small Folk, Majestic Leader
1 x Leader (Commander, Fighter) - Slashing Sword, Buckler - Sp2 Def 2D8 Mgt 2D8 Will 2d10
1 x Bodyguard (Fighter) - Axe - Sp 2 Def 2d6 Mgt 2D8 Will 2d6
3 x Rabble (Fighter) - Dagger, Buckler - Sp 2 Def 2d6 Mgt 2d6 Will 2d6
2 x Skirmishers (Fighter) - Javelin, Buckler - Sp 1 Def 2d6 Mgt 2d6 Will 2d6

The scenario involved capturing and holding objectives; there were three on the board and at the end of the game an objective would be held by the side with the most figures within a certain distance of it. 

Here's my mob of kobolds.

I quickly sent one of the rabble forward to take an objective and the skirmishers forward to throw javelins at Ed's advancing orcs. They had no effect, rolling only a puny 2d4 for their attacks.

Victor's Argonauts and Caesar's goblinoids got stuck into each other in the centre, with the mighty gnoll taking the lead.

A single orc came forward and drove off the skirmishers. But the rest of the kobolds were looking as fierce as kobolds can, and were massing for the attack.

The gnoll was knocked flying!

Jason rushed in to try and finish him off, but couldn't manage it.

Another orc came up and the kobolds moved into the attack, using their numbers to get a bonus in the combat.

They killed an orc! The orc leader came up to see why his warriors were doing so badly.

The third orc warrior came up.

The kobolds killed him too, then swarmed the survivor. He had an axe and attempted a sweep maneuver which allowed him to attack all four kobolds in contact with him. He missed all of them.

The orc leader retired to hold an objective near the ford.

In the other fight a hobgoblin had been killed, but so had a harpy. The other harpy engaged Caesar's archer, close to the third objective.

The final orc warrior was mobbed and killed.

Lots of fighting close to the third objective.

But each scenario has a time limit, and we reached ours. Thanks to some judicious scuttling I'd got kobolds close to all three objectives, so our side controlled the lot. I hadn't lost a single kobold either.

Reading through the rules there's a couple of bits I'm not sure we played correctly, so I've asked about them on a forum. But on the whole I think we got the hang of the game. The different stats and abilities take some getting used to; more so than SoBaH's traits. But as a trade-off there's more chrome in this game and a bit more character to the figures. It's something I would like to try again.

Thanks to Victor for putting the warbands together and keeping the game running.