Song Of The Yokai

I played some more Song Of Blades And Heroes over the weekend, trying out my Yokai warband. I've not used SoBaH with these before; they were built during my Battlesworn phase and were very much designed around those rules. It's true that I could have had a go at Sword Weirdos with them too, but I didn't have the time this weekend to sift through the rules and stat up the warband. SoBaH is quicker in that respect.

Here's what I used:

1 x Tengu - Q2 C4 - Flying, Combat Master
1 x Giant Oni - Q3 C4 - Big, Heavy Weapon
4 x Oni - Q3 C3
1 x Dorotabo - Q4 C3 - Undead, Slow

For the first game they were fighting the Dwarf warband Catherine used the other day. I played the Treasure Hunt scenario; there were three counters on the centreline which had to be checked for two actions. One of them was a treasure that had to be carried off the board.

Both sides split into three forces to go and check out the counters. One was in a small wood in the centre of the board. Thanks to rubbish activations only The Dwarf chief went to check it out from their side. Meanwhile the Yokai had both the Tengu and an Oni rushing in to have a look.

The counter turned out to be a phony.

The giant Oni was attacked by a couple of Dwarf warriors near one of the other tokens.

Amazingly they drove it back and one of them checked out the counter, revealing it to be a dummy as well.

The Tengu and Dwarf chief had a scuffle in the woods.

The Dwarves and the giant Oni continued their fight.

Meanwhile another Oni was sitting on the treasure and just had to recover it.

The Dwarves were badly out of position and since they had a slower move than the Oni were going to be hard pressed to catch it before it got off the table.

The giant Oni scored a gruesome kill.

There were not really any Dwarves in a position to stop the Oni with the treasure (left) escaping with it. Unless it failed some activations.

They Dwarves did bring down an Oni though ...

... and kill it.

The Oni with the treasure made a run for home, but didn't quite make it.

The Yokai concentrated their efforts on the Dwarf missile-users as they would be the most likely to be able to stop the escape. The Tengu killed one.

The Oni had to make one move to escape. It failed.

It simply chose to taunt its pursuers.

The Tengu attacked the Dwarf Chief.

He was knocked down and the Dorotabo finished him off.

A Dwarf arquebusier was gruesomely killed.

One Dwarf got close to the escaping Oni ...

... but not close enough.

To add insult to injury the Tengu cut the Dwarf down.

So a fairly easy win for the Yokai, who lost a single Oni. The Dwarves were slow to activate at the start so when the treasure was found they weren't in a position to hinder its escape.

For the second game I pitted the Yokai against the Uruk Hai. This was the same force that I used last week except that I dropped the Long Reach trait from the pikemen and gave them Dashing instead. Long Reach seems very underpriced for what it allows, although maybe not so much in Advanced SoBaH. Dashing gave them a +1 if they moved into combat.

The terrain was more open for this game. I also changed the scenario. I had three objectives along the centreline as before. However for two actions a figure in contact with it could claim an objective for their side. The game would end if one side fled or if one side controlled all three objectives. The objectives were in the two small woods and on the rock-pile in the centre.

Early moves saw both sides moving towards all three objectives. The Tengu quickly flew to the one in the centre and claimed it.

The Tengu and an Oni knocked down an Uruk Hai warrior, but seemed unable to finish him off.

The Uruk Hai chief moved up in support. The warrior would survive a couple of attacks before finally getting up.

An Uruk Hai pikeman ran one of the Oni through, whilst a warrior claimed the objective in the woods. They warbands were at one objective each.

Three Uruk Hai faced the giant Oni. But one was pushed back.

The Tengu knocked down the Uruk Hai leader ...

... and, unopposed by any enemy, the giant Oni rushed over and brained him whilst he was down.

With their best fighter gone the Urk Hai redoubled their efforts.

They knocked down and killed one of the Oni.

And, elsewhere, rushed one of the others, getting three-to-one odds on him.

The Tengu rushed over to the central objective to stop an Uruk Hai warrior from grabbing it. This left the giant Oni facing two Uruk Hai; having captured an objective and with no Yokai near it, warriors were moving from the other flank now.

On the flank an Oni killed one of the Uruk Hai, forcing the others to take a morale test. One of them failed and fled the board.

This left the remaining Uruk Hai outnumbered.

A pikeman charged in on the Tengo and spitted him. 

He tried the same on the giant Oni, but was pushed back.

The outnumbered Uruk Hai warrior pulled back; things were looking better for the Uruk Hai in the entre now and they could always come back and claim that third objective.

And the fight turned quickly. A group of Uruk Hai brought down the giant Oni. This pushed the Yokai to 50% losses and forced them to take a morale test.

One of the Oni on the far flank fled the field. The other had engaged the Uruk Hai warrior, but was cut down when he tried to flee.

This left the Yokai down to one figure. That is until an Uruk Hai warrior chopped the undead Dorotabo down.

So in the end this was a convincing win for the Uruk Hai. They did a better job at the end of bringing their numbers to bear (they had a two figure advantage anyway), and took out the most powerful Yokai, leaving things very tricky for the Japanese monsters.

I shall now be looking at statting these warbands up for Sword Weirdos, and see how that plays out.

Pirate-Hunting

I wanted to set up another Earthsea game using Galleys & Galleons, but this time giving both sides a magic-user. I set the game during an anti-piracy campaign that forms part of the background of the short-story 'The Daughter Of Odren'. On the island of O the Lord of Odren assembles a large force of ships to extirpate pirates from the Closed Sea. It seems to be a long campaign, suggesting it's a series of small, isolated fights. This game represents one such fight.

Four ships from the Lord of Odren's force encounter three pirate vessels on the edge of the Bars of Uny. I randomised the terrain, wind direction and initial positions and the setup looked very much like an ambush by the pirate-hunters, as they had the weather gauge and we steering out of an area of islands and rocks. 

All ships had the same stats: Q3 C2 - Square Rig, Sweeps, Shallow Draft, Unarmed

The Pirates had Intimidating, so had an edge in close combat. Both sides had a magic-user on board one of their ships. That of the Pirates was a Wind-Whisperer (such as I used in the previous game). The Lord of Odren's magic- user was a Theurgist. In terms of the name it's not very Earthsea, but two of their abilities - that of repairing damaged vessels or helping their own side win boarding actions, fit the background. The third ability (attack vessels with ghostly or undead abilities) are irrelevant to this game.

Here's the ships set up:

Of course the Pirate's first response was to shift the wind to advantage their force.

The Pirates also steered for a narrow straight between two islands that would limit the Lord of Odren's ships from ganging up on them. As the two forces came close there was some ... confusion.

I'm not sure how to describe it in form of the narrative. But basically for the next few turns both sides failed their first activation. With their ships on a course for head-on collisions (ready to grapple and board) both sides completely lost control.

The first collision saw one of the pirate ships badly damaged.

More ships on collision course. If either side could get some initiative they could turn and board the enemy. But it just wasn't happening.

More collisions. The Lord of Ordren's ships got lucky in terms of damage rolls. The Pirates less so. Two of their ships were damaged and so far there'd been no fighting.

With what limited actions both sides had some things were possible. The damaged Pirate vessel initiated a boarding action and drove fiercely onto the decks of one of the Lord of Odren's ships.

The other two pirate vessels continued to collide, this time with each other.

The pirate-hunter's vessel rallied and forced back their foe, who surrendered.

The lead ships of both forces had grappled after colliding with each other. After a short action the Pirate vessel struck, depriving them of their wind-whisperer as well.

The third pirate ship came up looking for revenge and launched a ferocious attack on the lead pirate-hunter, crippling it.

Taking a risk the Lord of Odren's ship rolled for maximum activations, cut grapples and escaped, leaving the pirate ship downwind of all of the enemy ships.

The Lord of Odren's force started to turn back towards the fight; in the earlier confusion two of them had sailed right past and were very much out of things.

But outnumbered four-to-one the surviving pirate ship fled.

This was a short game. influence entirely by the several consecutive failed activations. Just at the point where either side could have seized the initiative, neither side could. And in the randomness of the collision rules, the pirates came off worse.

The wind-whisperer got to use his magic a couple of times, setting the wind to a favourable position, and making some minor moves for other ships. But the theurgist didn't really get any chance; the ship he was in was involved in a boarding action before he could use his magic, and magic-users can't cast in boarding actions. By the time his ship broke free the fight was essentially over. Had it continued he could have repaired the ship he was on.

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.