Song of Blades and Heroes at MillenniumCon 16

The Convention

MillenniumCon 16 was held in Round Rock, Texas on November 8-10th.  Once again, it was a successful event with over 100+ game sessions.

MillenniumCon is the largest historical miniature wargame convention in the state of Texas.

This year, I was part of the convention staff and got to see what happens 'behind-the-curtain'.  I learned a lot about how the convention is organized and coordinated.  It was a great experience!

Fortunately, I was able to break away from those duties to host the 'Song of Blades and Heroes' game session.

The Scenario

The scenario was a multi-player treasure hunt.  The game borrowed heavily from the Chicago Skirmish Wargamers' scenario called 'The Dead Rise'. Please visit their blog! Basically, the map had several terrain features like rubble and tree stands, surrounding a single large crypt.  Partially collapsed walls were spread around the map to break up the line of sight.

The table layout

The objective of this game was to collect magic items left by the armies of an ancient war.  The players had to move one unit into contact with a terrain feature (not counting the collapsed walls) and investigate that area.  Players would roll a die and consult the random encounter table to reveal what was buried in the terrain.  At the same time, the bodies of the deceased warriors would rise to protect their ancient relics.  The dead warriors were represented by zombies with the 'rabble' special rule so a single hit would kill the zombie.  Included were skeletons with swords and ghosts.

Here's the random encounter table I created. Roll D6

1.     D3 Zombies – Minor item
2.     D3 Zombies – Minor item
3.     D6 Zombies, skeleton swordsman – Minor item
4.     D6+1 Zombies  – Minor item
5.     D6 Zombies, Ghost – Magic item
6.     D6+3 Zombies – Magic item

The crypt building automatically popped out six zombies, a magic item, and the Tomb King!  When a magic item appeared, the player would roll on the random magic item table from the 'Song of Gold and Darkness' book. Items took two actions to pick up. Terrain features could be investigated only once.

The rewards were:

Each Minor item = 1 Victory Point

Each Magic Item = 3 Victory points

25 points of enemy players and Zombies killed = 1 victory point.

The crypt building and the collapsed walls were paper models from David Graffam Models. He makes some really good PDF's with layers that allow you to customize the texture of the walls.

The crypt building. Could be made with several different textures but I liked the grey brick with columns.

 

The Battle Report

Four players signed up to play.  Connor (playing my warband 'Venom Inc.'), John (playing a shooter-heavy elf warband), Sebastian (playing another elf warband with h-t-h weapons), and Grant (with his infamous Xenomorph warband).

View of the table with other games in the background

The game started with the players cautiously approaching the terrain.

Sebastian's units approach some rubble, Connor's crew in the back, John's shooters taking aim on the left.

By the second turn, each player had contacted a terrain piece. One elf shooter and one xenomorph had been eaten by zombies.

John approached the crypt but didn't make contact.

Grant, disappointed that an alien warrior had been eaten with nothing to show for it, spread out his warband to search as far as they could.  The xenomorph queen touched a terrain feature and rolled the worst possible result on the chart.  Six zombies and a skeleton swordsman appeared and surrounded the queen.  The queen attacked the zombies first and was knocked down. On the zombie turn, they returned the attack.  The queen perished and triggered a morale check for all the aliens.  Most of the them fled from the battlefield.

The queen is dead!  Long live the queen!

Sebastian rolled better on the random encounter table.  He cleared out two terrain features and picked up a magical 'Hat of Lightning Bolts'.  John systematically cleared out some terrain but had trouble shooting the undead at a distance. Connor struggled to move his warband across the table which has been a long time problem with the Venom Inc.warband. Grant contacted the crypt with his remaining xenomorphs.  This triggered the Tomb King and his contingent of zombies.  The Tomb King died but his zombies committed a 'gruesome' kill on an alien and forced all but one off the table.

An alien contemplating a retreat.

The players eventually cleared out the terrain and turned against each other.  Sebastian and Connor traded blows and Connor's 100pt leader was killed.

We called for one final turn.  Each player rushed to pick up whatever items were left unclaimed but couldn't roll enough actions to be successful.  We tallied the victory points and Sebastian scored the most with two magic items, one minor item, and several kills of zombies.