Trouble on the Barrow Downs

Started by sunjester, 08 April 2018, 07:41:20 AM

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sunjester

I played my first game of Sellswords and Spellslingers from Ganeha Games this afternoon. It was a solo game to get the feel of the rules before trying it out with other players. I picked the rules up after seeing some positive reviews and I am planning to use them for a Middle Earth based campaign. I will try out a few games, both solo and with other players, to see if the rules need tweaking to better reflect the Middle Earth setting.

Game report and my inital thoughts on the rules, plus photos are on the blog http://grahamsgaming.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/trouble-on-barrow-downs.html







Steve J

Thanks for the review :). These days I'm trying to stick to a few core rulesets for my games, so Dragon Rampant, Lion Rampant and The Pikemen's Lament are my go-to skirmish games, as the mechanisms are so similar to make it easy for me to remember the rules!

Techno


petercooman

Nice report!

Have been looking at these as well. Bit on the fence about the cards though. You can print them yourself, but you can also buy them printed. Andea said there will be a constant stream of new content coming out. He already made  the First Expansion available. Probleem is the cards for the Expansion are not available printed. (only on drive-thru cards), wich is us based and so has high shipping costs.

If i go in, i want all my cards to be the same, so i'll wait a bit and decide to print myself or order a bunch at a Time to save on the shipping.

Tot enough to keep me going in SOBH right now anyway!

petercooman

Also, not having time to loot is something that comes up in a few reviews so far. That bugs me a bit in an "advance-your-character" game. Do you think this could hamper the progression of the party? Or do they get some loot when they finish a scenario?

sunjester

Quote from: petercooman on 08 April 2018, 09:38:38 AM
Also, not having time to loot is something that comes up in a few reviews so far. That bugs me a bit in an "advance-your-character" game. Do you think this could hamper the progression of the party? Or do they get some loot when they finish a scenario?

Bearing in mind this is my first game, I'll need to play a few times to be sure, but I don't think so. I think it is more a feature of this particular scenario.
Character progression is achieved by experience (XP) not loot. You get a set XP for all the survivors of a scenario, plus you can earn additional XP by performing certain actions in different scenarios.
Obviously obtaining loot helps as well, but some scenarios also have a cash reward for success, eg collecting certain items, killing a particular monster etc. Some individuals have a larger treasure than average, so it's probably worth concentrating on looting them.
Once I am more familiar with the rules, I will look at creating my own scenarios as well.

petercooman


lowlylowlycook

Looks interesting. 

As an aside, I've been reading some of the Adventures in Middle Earth supplement for D&D and they suggest that characters that make a habit of looting bodies should get Shadow Points since that's not something heroes should be doing.  That's a pretty big change from regular old D&D!

Ithoriel

It's not "looting", yer honour, it's "recycling" ... an' that's a good thing, innit! :)
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petercooman

Quote from: lowlylowlycook on 09 April 2018, 03:05:01 AM
Looks interesting. 

As an aside, I've been reading some of the Adventures in Middle Earth supplement for D&D and they suggest that characters that make a habit of looting bodies should get Shadow Points since that's not something heroes should be doing.  That's a pretty big change from regular old D&D!

But but .... Didn't they find the ring while looting? And sting, and glamdring etc...  :-\

sunjester

Quote from: petercooman on 09 April 2018, 01:45:32 PM
But but .... Didn't they find the ring while looting? And sting, and glamdring etc...  :-

Yes, but that was dodgy types like dwarves, hobbits and wizards, wasn't it, not high-brow elves or the like.

petercooman

True, although i wouldn't call them dodgy in their face  ;D ;D

ErHo

Quote from: petercooman on 09 April 2018, 01:45:32 PM
But but .... Didn't they find the ring while looting? And sting, and glamdring etc...  :-

Sometime after the Troll encounter where they got the named blades, seeking shelter during a storm they got captured and separated.

Bilbo finds the ring and meets Gollum

"Call it extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard and hit it fast with a major - and I mean major - leaflet campaign."

- Rimmer

Ithoriel

'Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!'
There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data