Note: The product reviewed here was acquired with my own hard-earned gold coins. For me, there is something beautiful about the idea of Song of Blades and Heroes . Most of my. . .let’s call it “idealized fondness” for that quite venerable fantasy skirmish comes from the fact that it lets you build your warbands/retinues/parties as you see fit (mostly). For those who don’t know, SOBH basically says “hey, here’s a simple statblock: staple whatever traits you think help make your model come to life, and have fun.” Years before apps and doohickies made their way into RPGs and wargaming, SOBH was giving you an online statblock builder that let you, theoretically, make whatever fantasy character you wanted to. Again, my fondness is idealized . In practice, I’m not a huge fan of SOBH. The rules are too simple for my tastes, the rolls too swingy, and the whole “look dad, there’s two stats on my character sheet: isn’t that awesome!?” approa...
Right, so full disclosure: I’m still trying to find the optimal post length/style for battle reports, so we’re trying something different this time. Rather than a turn-by-turn post (which I enjoyed, and will likely return to), I’ve decided to essentially handle the third turn of my Vaults of Zarn Outcast Crew campaign as a summary of high (and low. . .oh, they got low) points. You’ll understand perhaps why I’m eager to get this post over with shortly! So, in the Preparation Phase my greed got the better of me. You see, I had assigned Snorri to tend to Sir Kair’s wounds, and the initial roll was an injury. Feeling lucky, I used Snorri’s reroll and. . .well, that was the end of Sir Kair. The poor Knight of the Crown died of his injuries! What else did I do? Well, I sent Beldar and Lobrek to “Scout the Hold,” an activity which can turn up leads for upcoming adventures. As it happens, they actually found a wounded dwarf, and with a couple ...