Song of Blades and Heroes

Song of Blades and Heroes (SBH) is a set of fast-play fantasy rules for skirmish gaming with miniatures. It was written by Andrea Sfiligoi and is published by Ganesha Games.

I first became aware of this set of rules sometime last year and the name of it stuck in my brain because of its unusual title. I then saw the name appear again at various places such as The Miniatures Page, BoardGameGeek and even Heroscapers. All the comments and reviews were favourable and I kept meaning to research the game to see what it was like but never seemed to have the time.

Well, I came across another reference to Song of Blades and Heroes on a blog today and as I'm currently on holidays I had a little more time to look further into the rules. I downloaded the preview rules and then read a number of reviews. There are some good reviews here, here, and here. SBH seemed like just the sort of fast and easy skirmish rules for which I had been looking. Not to mention the fact that SBH was also nominated for Best Miniatures Game at Origins 2008.

I have a number of unpainted fantasy miniatures in 25mm scale that I've been wondering what to do with and skirmish gaming (where each figure represents a single character) has always appealed to me. So I went ahead and downloaded the rules in pdf format this afternoon from Wargames Download for US$5.00 (AU$7.25).

From what I've read so far SBH looks like a set of well-written rules with some elegant game mechanics. What I like most is that that you only need around 5-10 figures per side, you can use miniatures from any manufacturer, and the games only take around 30-45 minutes.

Hopefully I'll be inspired to paint up some miniatures and then try playing some solo demo games. Stay tuned.