Monday, December 10, 2012

Song of Spear and Shield

Play testing a Ancients game called Song of Spear and Shield from Ganesh games. We have been playing the Song of Blades n Heros, Song of Drums and Shakos, Flying Lead, 61-65, Hearts and Minds, and Large Battles Drumes n Shakos. And now its the Song of Spear and Shield. The Egyptian force was a leader, 5 thanded axe/mace men, 2 armored archers and one unarmored archer (403 points). The Sea People had a leader (mirror image of the Egyptian leader) 5 tribal ally (half naked savages) archers and three armored swordmen (397 points). Well the two forces came charging toward each other and bashed in the middle. I tried to be cute with my archers but my opponent just got everyone "stuck in". The Sea people lost 4 out of the 5 archers but that wasnt enough to break em. Now the Egyptians lost just three mace men, but that dont go down as well as 4 half tribal archers... Next round had the loss of another mace man and the Egyptian force moral breaking. The game went well. My opponent is a LOOONG time wargammer, but never played any of the Ganesh games. He picked up the system fast. I had made up a cheet sheet for him to help expidite the game. Our set up, go over the rules and play to completion was a little over two hours (and that includes the pre n post game BS scession). The next day I played another game, this time was with my long time opponent George. Him n I have played all the Ganesh games I listed earlier. This time I tried another funky idea of not purchasing a leader. So the Sea People had 8 tribal archers, and three sea people warriors and a barbarian with a 2 handed weapon. The Egyptians had a leader, 5 armored archers, and three shock infantry. Was real hard to do much with out a leader. Had to roll individually, so I rolled one dice for each of the archers, firing every other rould at best. And two dice for the warriors as they a a better than 50% for a activation so I could keep them in a coordinated attack. And the Barbarian (sigh)not much help from him. So my heroic charge sending in my three Sea People warriors was countered by a heroic charge and the loss of them broke the Sea People. Leaders are important. Trying to self start the the guys leaves a lot of miniatures standing around. Next weekend I want to get the guys to try two 800 point games side by side, Egyptians vs Hittites. More on that later...

1 comment:

  1. Were you part of the beta testing for these rules? What happened to them? Ganesha Games appears to have completely dropped any intention of publishing them.

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