Altared space: A Tribal playtest AAR

Last week saw one of those frequent collective brain farts when someone asks a simple, innocent question and someone else shouts out, "Look! A shiny thing!" And then everyone goes crazy. Or maybe it was just me.

On our NHMGS chat group, Brian Renninger asked whether anyone could recommend a good set of rules for tribal warfare because he'd just ordered some figures—produced here in Seattle by Paymaster Games—for Pacific Northwest tribal warriors.

I (1) immediately recommended the rules Tribal by Mana Press in Australia, (2) ordered figures from Paymaster Games, and (3) ordered the 2nd edition of the Tribal rules.

Kevin Smyth followed on with actions (2) and (3) above. There was also a flurry of some interest by others that may result in a new new thing or it may just be another idiosyncratic enthusiasm by Kevin and Dave. Or just Dave.

Tribal is a set of rules I bought as a PDF (which may have been the only way they were available) maybe 4 years ago, certainly pre-pandemic. I looked at them as an option for playing with various tribal/prehistoric type figures I had (or wanted to have). Back then, I looked them over, thought they were interesting, but then never did anything with them. The thread Brian started just spurred me to action, because I can never have enough hobby irons in the fire.

With all this self-inflicted mania, I was eager to give Tribal a try using my beloved 40mm Bronze Age Europeanoids and Wes Rogers jumped in and volunteered to be my fellow test subject. We met at a very crowded Zulu's Board Game Cafe in Bothell on Saturday. I was only just able to reserve table space in one of the basement rooms where we normally play. 

On my way out of the house, I had a serendipitous moment in regard to previously unstated action (4), which was buying a 3' x 3' Tablewar F.A.T. Mat because Tribal is played on a 3' x 3' space and my game mats are 3' x 4' or 4' x 6'. I ordered it on Wednesday from Noble Knight Games in Wisconsin because Tablewar was sold out. I was just about to drive off when I realized I'd forgotten my printed copy of the rules. I went back in, got the rules, and when I exited my house I saw a slightly longer than 3' long box containing my F.A.T. Mat on my porch. Plan A had been to use a 3' x 4' mat, but then Plan B serendipitously happened.

Downtown Bothell, once literally nowhere, has seen a renaissance of late and become a hub of activity with the consequence that anytime after 9:00 am, there's no parking anywhere. I managed to snag a spot among the few spaces in the out-of-business bank across the street. Wes, I believe, parked just beyond the county line and hiked in. When Kevin and I play at Zulu's, we have a 10:00 am start (right when they open), arrive an hour earlier to get parking, then go eat breakfast at Alexa's.

I set up the game—3x3 is a surprisingly small play space when you're used to 6' x 8'—ordered some beer and food, and we got right to it. 

The scenario we played was something I came up with by drawing on a few scenarios in Tribal and its two supplements, Primeval and Brutal. Three characters were around an altar set amidst some stonehenge-y uprights. The goal of the game was to capture the characters and dominate the space around the altar.

Rather than go through spending honor points to buy units, heroes, and skills, I just created two equal sides of four 5-figure warriors, one 5-figure missile unit (Wes had bowmen; I had slingers, of course), two heroes, and a chief. No skills were employed. We each set up one card length in.

I spooked the cultists around the altar on my first move and they bolted to safety. For the rest of the first turn, it was Wes and I alternating sprinting our units towards the center jockeying for the best position.

Wes loved moving his minis through the uprights.

Tribal uses regular playing cards for everything. Movement is done in increments of card lengths (long edge) and widths (short edge). Sprinting is done using two moves on the long edge, one after the other. It didn't take much to get into engagement distance of each other.

On turn 2, I managed to snag the prancing priest before he could bolt any farther. Wes captured the two priestesses (or whatever they were), Stella and Ursula. 1 honor point to me, 2 to Wes.

Honor points are the sole determinant of victory in Tribal. No matter who dies or lives, honor is everything. If you go out in glory, you may wind up with more honor points than your opponent who killed you and thereby win the game. Honor points are gained from winning rounds of melee or from other objectives. When you win a round of melee, you get an honor point from a common reserve. When you completely eliminate an enemy unit in combat, you get one of your opponent's honor points—or two if it's his chief.

I managed to score a point for controlling the altar space at the end of turn 2. Thereafter, the space was in contention except for one turn where Wes controlled it and the last turn when I did again.

I think I was the one who initiated the first melee. Melee uses a combat hand you deal out from your card deck. The number of cards in your combat hand is equal to the number of figures in your unit or the remaining wounds for your heroes and chief. A combat round is played out in one to five exchanges. Cards have their standard values 2-10, with JQKA being 11, 12, 13, 14 respectively. Jokers are 15. Unless they sprinted into contact, the attacker has the advantage, meaning that the player being attacked has to play the first card in an exchange, unless they have a skill that gives them the advantage. Thereafter, the winner of an exchange has the advantage in the next exchange.

Black cards are strike cards, you can only inflict wounds by winning an exchange with a black card. The black suits are also tied to the type of weapon you're using. Clubs are tied to hand weapons like swords, hand axes, and clubs. Spades are tied to long weapons like spears. If you play a card tied to your weapon you get +1 to your score. Also, longer weapons win ties if opposing a unit with hand weapons.

Tripling an opponent's score causes two wounds for long weapons, but hand weapons only need to double the opponent's score to inflict two wounds. For warrior units, each wound removes a figure. For heroes and chiefs, wounds are tracked using a die. I used my nifty viking hand-carved bone dice. They were perfect for the setting. It's good to have a dice fetish.

Red cards are feint cards. They don't cause wounds if you win with them, but they have other properties. If you win on a heart card, you can change the suit of the card you play in the next exchange. For example, you could change a King of Hearts to a King of Clubs, which would make it a strike card causing wounds if you win and adding +1 if it ties to your weapon type.

Diamonds allow you to change your opponent's next card to any suit. For example, if he plays a black Joker, which can be nasty, you can change it to a red Joker, denying him the ability to inflict wounds on you. This can come in handy if his card is twice or three times the value of your card. He'd win the exchange, but cause you no damage.

A combat round lasts for as many exchanges as the number of cards in the combat hand of the player with the most cards, up to five exchanges max. Having more than five cards in your combat hand is possible. Chiefs have six wounds and get six cards in their combat hand. Some skills let you draw extra cards for your combat hand. The increased number of cards just gives you more options to play in an exchange.

If you run out of cards before your opponent does (for example, you might have a hero with only three wounds left, but your opponent is a full unit of five figures), you have to draw a panic card for the remaining exchanges. You can win an exchange with a panic card, but you can't inflict a wound. It's pretty disappointing to pull a black Joker as a panic card against your opponent's 2 of Clubs. It feels like a waste of a good kill card. You do however, survive and win the exchange.

After the last exchange, whoever won the most exchanges wins the melee round, gets an honor point, and the loser retreats to one long card edge distance away.

It's not uncommon to come out of a fight badly battered, even as the winner. It's also possible that after five exchanges, you fail to do any hurt either way. My heroic slingers came through the fight unscathed, despite being charged by one of Wes' warrior units.

Missile units aren't melee-worthy. They don't draw a combat hand; they can only draw panic cards. If you win enough exchanges on your panic cards, you win the melee round and get an honor point. Which my slingers did.

I don't know how many turns we played. We weren't keeping track. The game went back and forth with honor points lost and won. In the end, Wes lost all his units, heroes, and his chief. I still had five remaining: two battered warrior units, one fairly intact hero, my much-battered chief (whom I moved out of harm's way after he had only two wounds left), and my pristine slingers, who didn't even break a sweat but repulsed a charge and took out three figures with their slingstones. Honor point tally was 10 for Wes, 20 for me. The last few turns of wiping out the battered remains of his units took several honor points from his pile and put them into mine.

The game was easy to play after a turn or two. I had to correct a few errors in understanding as we went. For example, I had us dealing out activation cards blindly to each unit until it dawned on me that I may be wrong about that. From turn 3 on, I think, we did it right where you deal out a hand equal to the number of surviving units you have, then you look at the cards and assign them as you want. That way your chief's activation card isn't a 2 of Hearts.

The game played quickly. We probably got in six or seven turns, which is average length for a Tribal scenario. I enjoy the rules and I'm looking forward to getting the second edition next week (I expect). There are a lot of unexplored nuances to the game. Buying skills will also make a difference and enhance the combat prowess of heroes and chiefs. You can buy skills for your warriors, too, but with only 0-4 honor points to spend for skills, why waste them on mooks?

Despite its name, Tribal can be used for any pre-gunpowder kind of fight—although I believe 2nd edition has gunpowder rules—not just primitive warfare. The rules themselves highlight Vikings. That means that we don't have to spend time painting 30+ minis before we can play. Any of our Saga warbands can be used as Tribal warbands.

It does, however, open up a lot of possibilities for primitive type minis I've looked at longingly online but couldn't figure out what to do with them. Go Tribal, of course.

Bronze is brilliant!

I pulled out my beloved 40mm Prehistoricalistical Europeanoids (a.k.a. North European Bronze Age) minis for a game on Saturday. My last game with them was in 2016 with Kevin Smyth and Phil Bardsley, when we adapted Osprey's En Garde rules to ca. 1800 BC. It worked OK, but rules for dashing swordsmen ca. 1650 aren't exactly suited for bronze age warriors going at it with axes, spears, swords, slings, and arrows. So, I went back to Ganesha Games' Song of Blades and Heroes, which is the rules set I used when I started with them almost four years ago. There's an advanced version, which I purchased after our game (see below).

So off we went in the Wayback Machine to the Bronze Age. Why? Because bronze is brilliant!

The players were Mike Lombardy, Troy Wold, Ralph Holloway, and I. Troy and I were the defenders keeping the forces of Mike and Ralph from disturbing the religious rites being celebrated at the stonehenge-ish site. It gave me my first opportunity to use the mini stonehenge I bought from Daryl Nichols at Enfilade! earlier this year.

Protecting the shameless naked cavorting at the megaliths

The forces were all roughly equal and I used pretty generic characters. Each warband had a leader figure with the values Q2:C5, plus special rules "leader," "Hero," and "tough." Our leaders all got into combat, but no one got killed. The rest of the forces were swordsmen (Q3:C4), spearmen (Q3:C3), Slingers (Q4:C3, medium shooter), and bowmen (Q4:C3, long shooter). Troy and I also had standard bearers who were like swordsmen (Q3:C4), but had the "tough" special rule. Each warband numbered 13 figures.

Separating our warbands was a mostly dry river, whose wet bits were impassible (but bridged). On one end of the table, Troy and Mike squared off, while Ralph and I went at it on the other end.

The field of battle, Mike and Troy at one end

Mike started out with his figures in two groups and used his leader's "leader" rule to move them forward. Troy and Ralph did similiar.

Ralph's boys start off in neat groups

I was just scattered all over and came at Ralph piecemeal. Why be methodical in my mayhem?

Dave's boys running higgeldy-piggeldy across the terrain

My initial clashes against Ralph did not go well. I was down three swordsmen before he'd lost anyone. He was able to get 2:1 and 3:1 against some of my figures. Being on the ropes, I started concentrating my forces and finally got methodical with my mayhem.

Mike started initially getting badly hurt by Troy's forces, but the worm eventually turned. Both of them fought in tight opposing lines. Ralph and I were more scattered with little clumps fighting in various places.

Ralph's initial successes left him a bit scattered and vulnerable for counterattack. A few good activations later and I was on him in force.

The axeman cometh

The first tough clash is known in my tribe's lore as the "battle by the tree near the swampy bit." It was here that I took my initial losses, but by bringing more warriors to bear—and my hero leader—I turned the tide. My leader exerted only moral force by the tree; when it came time to kick some Bronze Age butt, I rolled two failed activations with him. I just repositioned him with my one action and the battle by the tree near the swampy bit resolved itself when I brought my standard bearer into it.

My leader weighs whether to join the fray (he didn't)

My standard bearer shouting his enemies to death

The fighting was pretty hairy for a bit. Two of my swordsmen held off four of Ralph's spears. It started with just one.

2:1 in my favor and no luck

My failure to kill the lone spearman, however, drew in the rest of Ralph's spears. Another swordsman came to my help and I was then 1:2.

Suddenly a wall of spears!

I got one of my swordsmen killed (and one of Ralph's spears), which left the odds still decidedly against me.

Now 1:3...

However, the lone swordsman prevailed. I'd like to claim skill, but it was just lucky dice. Try as he might, Ralph's attacks were foiled by low scores which left us tied (no result) or had me pushing him back or knocking him down. Once down, a figure is pretty vulnerable to kills or the dreaded GRUESOME KILL (of which we had none this game).

Whittled 'em down to two and soon to none

I lost several chances to kill Ralph's leader. I engaged him with my leader and managed to have him at 2:1 and fallen, but only managed to wound because of the leader's "tough" special rule.

So close...

The "tough" rule helped Troy also, whose standard bearer (a.k.a. "Penis Man" due to the ithyphallic deity totem he carried) was knocked down and wounded multiple times, but survived the game and was standing proud by the megaliths at the end.

I get knocked down, but I get up again...

On the periphery, the missile troops plugged away at each other. I tried a long shot at Ralph's hero, but the odds are so far out the best I could hope for would be a "fallen" result, which I didn't get. However, Ralph and I each took out two opposing missile figures.

Bronze Age firefight

Both Troy and Ralph had to make morale checks for losing more than half their initial force (more dead than alive). For Ralph, this affected only his leader, who scurried back one move. The rest of his force stood their ground.

By game's end, Ralph had four survivors: His wounded leader/hero, one intrepid swordsman, a slinger, and a bowman. I had my leader/hero, my standard bearer, three swordsmen, a slinger, and a bowman.

My men glower menacingly at Ralph's survivors

Troy was on the ropes, pretty much a mirror image of Ralph's situation, but Mike was almost as badly beat up. We called the game for the defenders. The henge ceremony went on without further interruption.

And there was much rejoicing (and gratuitous nudity) at the megaliths

It was a good time despite the pain (see postscript below). I really like my 40mm figures and need to get more—although they're not really available right now, but there is hope...


Final thoughts: Song of Blades and Heroes (SBH)

I like SBH as a system. The game moves along quickly and the back-and-forth can be tense. They're also great for limited numbers of figures. We each had 13 figures in a warbands. We could easily have handled more—if I had more.

They are, however, not quite what I want for the period.

SBH was created for fantasy skirmish battles. I use about 40% of the rules for what I do with them. They don't take into account weapons and armor and there are no rules for my big 40mm scale chariot. The other 60% of the rules cover fantasy rules staples like monsters and magic.

There was once some development on a set of rules to be called Song of Spear and Shield (SSS). I had some correspondence with Andrea Sfiligoi about them going back to 2014. They seemed to be always just on the cusp of being released, but other projects kept getting precedence and they're not even listed in the Work in Progress section anymore. As recently as a few days ago, Andrea confirmed that they will be released, just no indication when. Needless to say, I'm a bit flustered. Patience has never been a virtue I was overly supplied with.

However, I just got the PDF download of the Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes (ASBH). It has a bit more of what I want (and a bit more of what I don't). The only armor rule is the same as what was in the standard SBH, i.e., "heavily armored," which adds +1 to your combat score if you're beaten, i.e., it can be decisive in turning a kill into a pushback. It's kind of moot for the Bronze Age, though. I have figures in cuirass and helmet, I have figures with bronze chest discs, I have figures with just shields (small and large), I have figures with nada but a weapon. It would be nice to have varying degrees of armoredness.

ASBH adds "reaction" to the options for players. It basically works that when a player rolls dice for activation, any failures can be rerolled for an activation attempt by the opposing player before the first player conducts his actions (if any) or rolls his next activation. If two dice fail in an activation attempt, which normally ends a player's activations, the opposing player can choose to have the normal turnover or re-roll the two failed dice as a reaction, which keeps the first player the active player. I can see a lot of advantage in this.

Weapons have been added in some way. Long spears, for example, can benefit from the "long reach" rule, basically letting you attack through/over a friendly figure. I'd give this to my spear figures. There are also rules for heavy weapons like two-handed axes (I only have one figure with that).

All in all, ASBH looks promising—but I'm still eager to see SSS released!

Postscript: Ouch!

I tweaked my back as I was loading my car to head out to The Panzer Depot. By the time I got there and was unloading, I was suffering. I made it through the game, but was only able to load up for the return trip with the help of Mike, Troy, and Ralph. It's Sunday afternoon now and I haven't unpacked yet. In fact, I've been resting since I got home yesterday, groaning every time I have to move.

I've been downing ibuprofen and applying heat and cold alternately. I'm barely mobile, but still able to sit and bash this post out. I'm about to go back to resting with the hope that by tomorrow, my back will be better. It's not spinal, it's a muscle spasm of some kind, just on my lower right.

Post-postscript: Grrr!

I went to work on this blog only to find that all the pics I took with my iPhone came out as HEIC files (i.e., Live photo). This is what the iPhone camera keeps defaulting to. Photoshop can't read that format, so I had to monkey about with a conversion utility just to get everything to work.

Apparently you can set the iPhone camera not to default to Live, which I thought I'd done, but it still defaults to Live. I wish I could just disable it.

En Garde! in the Bronze Age

Kevin Smyth, Phil Bardsley, and I gave Osprey's recently-released En Garde! rules a first play on Saturday at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland, WA.

These rules are a variation on the author's earlier Ronin rules. The game engine is pretty much the same only the game is moved from feudal Japan to 16th-18th c. Europe (or places where Europeans trod in that era, for example, the Americas). Kevin and I are working on Aztecs and conquistadors for these rules, as well as for a variation of Lion Rampant. In lieu of any figures for the period, we reached back into the Bronze Age for our play test and used my 40mm Monolith Designs prehistoricalistic Europeanoids for the game.

The game

The rules work for this era without any variation required; the technology is all there. I made up some character sheets for Bronze Age warrior types and checked to see who I could sucker in. Only Phil and Kevin were takers, so we played a 3 against 3 scenario (theoretically, that is. The game wound up as 2 against 1 with me being the 1).

Splitting my forces, a great tactical maneuver in the Custer tradition

I have myself to blame for the 2-1. In every cutthroat kind of scenario, I instinctively split my forces assuming—incorrectly—that my two opponents will also split theirs. This is the reason I hate playing Risk. I always wind up being the muggins who gets wiped out first.

Kevin advances into the woods—against me

I was in a big field, while Kevin had a wood to hide in. I ran my two bowmen out to start taking pot-shots at his open flank.

First shots of doomed men

Kevin, however, ran a couple of his slingers against me and soon knocked me silly. Being a confirmed slingophile, I should like that, only it was me on the wrong end of the lithic trajectory.

Phil's band cowering behind the hedge

Phil ran his warband up to a hedge in the assumption that I would attack him across it. In a rare impulse of good sense, I decided to go around the hedge instead, prompting him to change front. It also gave me the option of getting a brief 3-2 advantage against him.

The 3-2 advantage worked in my favor. I managed to put two of his warriors hors de combat before he brought the rest of his warriors, including his champion and chieftain, against me.

Bardsley, last of his tribe, steps into the open

Kevin and I wound up fighting in the woods. I had a bit of an advantage, but wound up getting my champion killed, my chieftain wounded, and my other warriors killed too.

I wound up with 50% of my war band killed off and had to check morale, which I passed easily. However, we called the game since it looked like certain doom for me (Kevin and Phil operating under a truce).

Evaluation

The game played very well. The rules are pretty simple, once you get the habit of them. We did one thing wrong. I assumed that combat results went either way. Instead, an attack that fails spectacularly is just a failed attack; the attacker suffers no adverse effect. My chieftain was lightly wounded as a result of a  poor die roll against one of Kevin's schlub warriors. The result would have been grievous if not for the chieftain's armor.

In making the character sheets for the war bands, I gave the slingers a 2 shooting value because I feared that they would prove to be anemic otherwise. I got that wrong. Kevin's slingers were death-dealing sharpshooters. My bowmen, with only a 1 shooting value were outclassed.

We each had nine figures in our war bands. Handling them was no problem. We completed the game in just over an hour, though it might have gone longer if we played it out to the bitter end.

Kevin, Dave Schueler, and I are planning another En Garde! game at Meeples in West Seattle later this month. I'm hoping to have some conquistadors, Aztecs, and Tlaxcalans ready to roll by then.

Dice fetish update

We used my newly-acquired 3/4" vintage bakelite dice for the game. I got these just this last week from an Etsy shop. This purchase may just satisfy the bakelite phase of my ongoing dice fetish. I rolled consistently badly. Phil and Kevin tended to roll much better. My evaluation of the shooting may be skewed by Kevin's hot-dicing me in the missile exchange between his slingers and my bowmen.

Original box

The dice came in their original box from the 60s.

Looking all vintage-y

The bakelite dice have that wonderful ivory-like patina that yellows with age. They also have a denser feel than the plastic dice that are all that's available today (except for metal dice, which are too dense).

Song of Blades and Heroes: Mayhem at the Megalith

[Disclaimer: I know, I know. I promised to blog every week. I haven't. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. I started this post in February, I think, and am just now finishing and publishing it. Enjoy.]

We recently played out first game of Song of Blades and Heroes at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland, WA. It was Phil Bardsley and I against Bill Stewart and Dick Larsen. We used every figure I have painted so far of my 40mm Bronze Age Europeanoids (except for the four-figure hippie cult group—maybe next game...). I also got a chance to use my nifty Jelling Dragon bone dice (I have 20 now) for the first time.

There was no subtlety to the scenario. Just set up and have at. Dick and I faced off over a stream and Phil and Bill contended for the Bridge of Sorrows (Bill's sorrow, as it turned out).

Face-off by the stream

The sides were more or less even. We each had a hero, some warriors, and a couple missile troops each. I used minimal special rules just so we could get through the game quickly and get the basic game down pat.

My hero steps forth all alone

The rules use an activation system whereby players attempt to activate a single figure at a time by rolling one, two, or three D6. The result is compared to the figure's quality rating (Q) with any result equal or greater allowing for one action. For example, a figure with Q=4 would get an action for every result of 4-6. So, a designated figure could get up to three activations or none. The trick is that any activation attempt that results in two or more failures ends the player's turn. 

I started by trying to advance all my men. The first out was my hero, who advanced to the stream's edge. However, my next attempt was an epic fail, so no one followed the hero. Dick, who probably threw 6's for 80% of his die rolls, quickly took advantage and forced my hero back to the dubious safety of being in company with his faint-hearted fellows.

Dick's boys edge up...

On the other flank, Phil moved out strongly against Bill, who was content to try to hold the trans-riparian end of the bridge, but not for long.

Bill's Bronze Age bad-asses

Phil's tallest hero on earth leads his warriors toward the bridge

Phil was soon contending the bridge and pushing bill back. Phil's hero, the tallest figure on the table and swinging a death-dealing axe, was in the lead. 

Horatius not holding the bridge

Bill's hero was soon struck down, but Phil's hero followed him to Valhalla shortly after. Nevertheless, Phil kept the upper hand—especially since he quickly waded the stream and came at the bridge from behind Bill's defenders.

Phil's hero gone, but Bill's annihilation is at hand

The combat rules are very DBA-like. A fight is always between two primary figures who compare their combat (C) values plus one D6. Extra figures in contact can affect the score by reducing the outnumbered figure by -1 for each extra figure he's in contact with. The modified results are compared and the higher score wins in one of four basic ways: 

1. A simple win with an odd die result pushes the enemy back one base depth. 
2. A simple win with an even die result causes the enemy to fall (fallen figures much more vulnerable to continued attack).
3. A win by twice the enemy's modified result (but not three times) is a kill. If the enemy is fallen, only a simple win is required to kill him.
4. A win by three times or more than the enemy inflicts a GRUESOME KILL (which we mark with a little Litko skull token). If the enemy has fallen then only doubling the enemy is required for a gruesome kill. A gruesome kill also spreads panic among the deceased's fellows, who must check morale.

First GRUESOME KILL of the game

The first gruesome kill was inflicted on me by Dick's hero and one of his mooks. I was only doubled, but my figure had fallen, making it more susceptible to a gruesome death. I checked morale for each figure within one long movement stick by throwing three dice per figure and checking the results against the figure's quality. A figure moves one medium move stick away for each fail, if there are one or two failures; for three failures, the figure just bugs out and is removed from play. The resulting morale chaos sent most of my men running one or two moves away (no one bugged out).

Dick's wayward warriors wade the waters

Dick mercilessly followed up on this advantage by pressing forward. Because he couldn't seem to roll less than 6 on any die, he easily made his activations.

A world of mayhem

Battle of the standards

I managed to inflict a gruesome kill on Dick at one point, which sent some of his men scurrying back. However, Dick's special talent for rolling high kept his force pretty intact despite their fearful revulsion.

Run away! 

Dick whittling me down

In the end, Dick managed to reduce my force to just a few figures while he remained mostly intact. Phil and Bill had chopped each other up pretty well, but Phil held the bridge with his remaining figures. The game probably took around 90 minutes, but that includes a great deal of chatter amongst ourselves and pauses every now and then for photo ops.

The rules play quickly and make for an enjoyable time. We used pretty generic values for the rank and file with special characteristics only for our leaders. Adding more detail and variety to the figures will involve adding name tags (and having to come up with interesting Bronze Age European names!) and tracking the characteristics on rosters. The special abilities will add more time to the game, but also more character.

I hosted two games of SoBH at our Enfilade! convention in May, including the hippie cult group as major players in the victory conditions. Both games went pretty well and the players had a good time.

Ganesha Games has a forthcoming set of rules called Song of Spear and Shield that are a more detailed set of ancient skirmish rules. I'm eager to see these published, but I'm not sure how much effort the author is making to releasing them. Ganesha Games is a one-guy shop and he has a lot of irons in the fire. If the rules are published this year, I'll be ecstatic. I won't be holding my breath.

I've ordered some 28mm Cutting Edge Near East Bronze Age figures from Warlord Games. I plan to play skirmish games with them and SoSS would be ideal for it, especially because they include rules for chariots, which SoBH lacks.