Song of Blades and Heroes with the Lad...

Song of Blades and Heroes, by Ganesha Games is a relatively simple skirmish game. With slightly more than half a dozen figures per side, and only a couple of game stats to worry about, it plays quickly, but manages despite its simplicity to remain an engaging and tactical game.

Tonight my lad wanted to turn his hand to playing a miniatures game, bless him, and Song of Blades and Heroes was my immediate thought. I didn't expect him to immediately grasp the subtleties of how to push your actions or combine the use of your figures, but I did hope he would have a fun time pushing miniatures around, and he certainly did.

In Song of Blades and Heroes each figure can be activated with one, two or three dice. For every result above the Quality stat of the figure, you get one action. But if you roll two fails (below the Quality stat), play turns over to your opponent. This core activation mechanism contains a neat element of 'push-your-luck', with the desire to get more actions balanced against the risk of prematurely ending your turn. Combine this with various tactical bonuses and penalties, and an array or little special abilities, and you have an engaging but straight-forward game experience.

It's a great little game, much valued for the low miniature count, the fast game-play and the ease of rules. It also throws in some fun twists via the special abilities, such as the Leader ability, which allows for group activations, moves and firing. In short: it is fun.

In quick order I dashed off a couple of army lists, got out some miniatures and, with the help of the lad, set up the board. We rolled the Magic Item scenario - which would see our warbands searching for a special item from several possibilities on the board.

In all the game was a lot of fun. My son chose to continually push his luck by rolling three dice every activation, but that is to be expected. As we play more, his choices will grow more tactical. He did manage to knock off a couple of my warband though, so I can't be too critical!

In what I hoped would be a decisive move, my Mole with a Quality of 2+ managed to throw this turn, he fell to bow fire shortly after this photo was taken...

The miniatures are by Splintered Light, from their Woodland Warriors range, and paint up very nicely. The buildings are from 4Ground's 15mm Dark Age range, and look great.

I really do enjoy Song of Blades and Heroes, it's a thoroughly enjoyable and easy to get into miniatures game, with rules that are simple in play, but provide a solid depth of choices. Well worth checking out!