Songs Of Silence And Torment

The Silence From Space

First off, I just wanted to let everyone know that SpacerGal is still with us in spirit if not in text. In case you hadn't noticed, she has been doing her post on Tuesdays but just like Mrs. Brisby, moving day is almost upon her so there might be a slight delay as she gets settled into her new digs. No worries though as she will be back with more of her insights into RPGs, kids games, and anything else her fevered little brain can conjure up.

Singing The Songs Of Torment
A Song of Torments Reach Battle Report

Yes, the much alluded to but often postponed battle report is finally here! I finally managed to squeeze in some time to break out my own take on the Malifaux setting using some home-brewed Song of Heroes rules. So how did it go? Let's break it down and take a look...

Assembling The Crews

For this battle I decided to go with the two crews that I've already talked about here on the blog, the Guild and the Arcanists. For more details on just who is in each, you can click here for the Guild or here for the Arcanists. Now place your bets because its time to throw down!

Setting The Scene

As this is basically a playtest of the rules that I've added into the game, I decided to keep the terrain pretty basic. Just a couple of buildings and a couple of forests is all.

The defending Guild crew are deployed along the right side of the board...

...with the attacking Arcanists along the left.

The Arcanists activate first and thanks to Sasha's leadership ability are able to make some serious headway on the first turn, using the building and the forest to provide them with some cover as they advance.

The Guild followed suit on their side of the board as most of the crew moved up by the house while Samael moved through the forest to see what he could see.

Going into turn two starts with Boomer rushing one of the Guild Guards but despite the odds being heavily against the unfortunate Guard, the giant mechanical menace only manages to force him back!

Unfazed by this turn of events, the rest of the Arcanists advance as well, trying to get themselves into position to attack next turn.

Faced with the awesome combat power of the Boomer, Sonnia launches an potent arcane bolt at the machine but fails to make it even flinch as the energies surge over its armored hull. Stunned by this, she orders the two Guards to concentrate their fire on it and amazingly enough they are actually able to force it back under a maelstrom of flying lead.

Turn three opens with the enraged Boomer barreling forward to smash one of the Guards while Sasha lets loose her own arcane bolt to fry the other Guard and the rest of the crew moves forward to get into position to take out Sonnia next turn..

Gathering her arcane powers again, Sonnia unleashes another bolt at Boomer but again fails to do anything to it! Knowing she is no match for the machine in close combat, she retreats behind the nearby house where Jeremiah Smythe, the convict gunslinger, has taken up position.

On the other side of the board, Samael has been busy trading shots with with gunslinger Valeria for the past couple of turns but neither of them have managed to do anything to the other. This continues yet again even though Samael closed the gap between the two of them first.

For turn four, Taryn lets loose a flurry of lead as she rapid fires at Jeremiah on the opposite cover of the building but he is able to duck back before any of the shots can strike home. Feeling heady with the success of her crew so far, Sasha moves herself up into the open and lets loose another arcane bolt as she tries to remove Jeremiah from the equation. Bearing the brunt of the blast, Jeremiah simply grits his teeth and stands his ground against the magical onslaught.

On the other end of the board, Valeria opens fire on Samael and finally is able to break the standoff as she forces him back into the forest.

Seizing their advantage, Sonnia and Jeremiah both let loose against Sasha and are finally able to bring her down under a tempest of lead and fire. With their leader dead, the rest of the Arcanists start to fall back but none of them flee the battlefield.

Paralyzed by the lose of their leader, turn five opens with the Arcanists doing nothing as they try to assess their chances. Meanwhile, the Guild try to capitalize on the situation with Jeremiah and Sonnia attacking Taryn but their heady success against Sasha made them overconfident as they again failed to do anything to their new target.

Samael chases after Valeria and attempt to bring her down but just like the rest of the crew manages to do nothing at all.

At this point, I decided to call the game with the Guild winning. Sasha Dubois had been brought to justice and the rest of the Arcanists headed for the hills to lick their wounds and plot their revenge.

The Dust Settles

Overall it was not a bad game though a number of bad die rolls made it much longer than I'd expected. From Boomer failing to kill a simple Guard to the Guild failing to connect in all of turn five, both sides were plagued by bad die rolls for combat though almost all of their activation rolls were phenomenal. There are a few things that I'm going to change though as I noticed they really were limiting the game, the biggest offender being the range limits.

For this game I was using the penalties and limits that are laid out in ShadowSea which effectively caps your ranged combat at three lengths from the attacker. As a majority of these crews were equipped with pistols, this was a massive disadvantage as it meant that the had to almost get into melee before they could effectively shoot. For the next game I'm going to use the range penalties from Flying Lead which will almost double all of their ranges and should make them that much more deadly... provided everyone doesn't choke on their die rolls again.

I also want to add some flavor to the arcane abilities as right now Sonnia and Sasha are both technically flinging around the same type of energy. Instead I want to add some kind of aspect to their individual magic types, in this case electricity for Sasha and fire for Sonnia. I also am going to modify the energy resistance special rule so it is more specific and add in a energy weakness rule as well to make models more susceptible to other types of energy. For example, I am thinking of making Sonnia resistant to fire but giving her a weakness to ice to really play up her whole fire mage flavor. Not sure on the details but I definitely want to give it a try. I guess we'll just have to see how it works out in the next battle report!

The Parting Shot...

And there's another one in the books! Since I have my new photo editing program program up and running there shouldn't be any more delays in the future (knocking on wood...). If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them here on the blog or you can drop me a line at SinCitySnowman@gmail.com. Remember, feedback is always welcome! SpacerGal should also be back with her insights either this week or next, so be sure to come back and see what other insanity we can get up to here at the Dispatch! Until next time...