Song of Shadow and Dust

    we had a try out game of SSD on Sunday. It's a game for urban violence in the ancient and medieval world.

    Impressions of the game were that it was a fast play easy to follow rules set. The activations mechanism was very neat and allowed for a balance of risk versus reward depending on actions required.

    Combat and morale seemed pretty good and the characterisation of the minis had good scope to create a gang with a unique set of profiles

    I liked the way that civilians reactions to the fighting was depicted though their non-movement in the game (unless they reacted to the violence) did seem rather limiting.

    The game we played involved an aging Roman Patrician and his bodyguard being set upon by a gang of street thugs doubtless hired by some rivals.

    We varied the types in the Gangs but Mitch's

    'distracting' actress had the most impact in the game causing some of the Patricians characters to activate in a disjointed manner allowing them to be ganged up on by the rival street gang.

    In true Rome fashion the Patrician was caught and stabbed to death in a back alleyway.

    The rules not allowing a distracting character from being 'attacked' even as a break away from move did make that trait particularly powerful. The other traits seemed pretty balanced.

    Question is does this replace Pulp for these ancient street fight games or is it best sticking to Pulp for all skirmish games?

    The game definitely had a different feel to it and the activation mechanics add a different type of strategy to the other skirmish rule sets like pulp and OPR fire fight.


    I agree regarding the actress of questionable character, that the distraction mechanism seemed very strong although i do like the idea, so maybe an amendment to the rule could work, either two distracting characters cancel each other out or perhaps only affecting models in range on a roll of 4+, may need some more play test.


    It also does have a nice set of rules to allow gangs to develop.


    As for the game, i feel Dave's initial dice roll leaving him with a clumsy drunk in a toga attempting to run off the board may have influenced the overall outcome.


    The patrician was probably staggering through the streets yelling "infamy infamy, they all have it infamy" and even without the distraction his fate was sealed at the outset.