"Dark Ages use of SBH" Topic

planning to intro SBH to my pals for 40mm Sash & Saber Vikings and Anglo-Saxons. Have had the rules for a while but this will be the first outing. Also have Late Romans and Barbarians in 25mm that will see some action as well, and the questions are similar in both cases.

First question: Could swear I saw the math formula to create one's own point values for Warriors and Personalities. I'm making my own lists (which I'll share here) so this would be really helpful to balance forces.

Second Question: Does "Wind and Waves" have rules for weather effects on battle, and things that affect boats – I'm playing with Vikings, after all…

Third Question: Was thinking that perhaps Arthur & Merlin might have ideas for expression of historical forces in game terms – and Dan Mersey is an impressively knowledgeable gamer. Would this supplement help me out?

Thanks in advance for you thoughts!

Starting with Q1, the published formulae are recognised as having a number of inconsistencies. The best option is to sign up to the Yahoo group
link
There is a very good character & warband builder in the files section (SBHform-v1214b1.html ).
Q2 Wind and water should meet your needs, I won't paraphrase the rules but it does cover weather effects and boat movement/combat. You'll need to be imaginative if you're going to fight longship to longship.

Q3 SAM is well worth it, basically three distinct sections covering Realistic forces, Dark age with magic & monsters and the Mallory versions.

The warband builder is also here: link

The boat rules look intended for small river boats, but they should work for larger ocean craft without much effort. There is actually much more of use in a viking game in SWW- burning buildings, special rules for fighting styles, etc…

SAM does have many good ideas for historical dark age gaming.

I'd think that for boat combat, you'd make a leadership check for each boat, if they fail, they continue doing exactly that they did last turn, representing the captain / helmsman / crew coordinating badly.

Fighting across shipsides would be like fighting across any obstacle, and crossing into another ship difficult movement or some such.

overall, seems like the core rule mechanics would work just fine. Dark Age craft were river craft sized, and most were meant to be carried.

I'll chime in and recommend Song of Arthur and Merlin for Dar… for any purpose, almost. One of my favourite books in the series – nice to just read.