Got in my first game today, starter box Fortune Hunters versus Deep Mariners. We ignored the suggested turn limits and played the simple 1 VP per 20 points killed scenario, so it was a straight up fight to the death on a Shallow Shelf sea bottom table. Mariners were effectively annihilated, killing a single dive trooper and briefly frightening a recon trooper and the scientist gal, although neither was ever greatly at risk.
Observations:
The game played pretty smoothly, no real rules issues, as expected from the relatively mature "Song" engine.
Depth rules went completely unused, mostly due most of the models winding up in a swirling back-and-forth melee fight for most of the game (probably lasted a dozen turns – I lost count). The Fortune Hunters probably would have been well served to exploit their range edge a bit more by staying away from (or above) the Mariners, but it didn't hurt them in the end. None of the terrain was particularly harmful, so there was little encouragement to swim over the pieces that could be swum over.
As I suspected from reading their stats, the starter box forces are not very good. In fact, I think I'll call some of them terrible, at least for out-of-the-box fights. The Fortune Hunters are tolerable, with the scientist (whose primary role is campaign oriented) being the only real deadwood. The Mariners are much worse off, with two badly armed Combat 2 models, one a scientist and the other an assistant – good at some odd scenarios and useful in campaign, but lame in a fight. The Scaly Horde stuff looks to be the best of the bunch, with good-to-great Combat scores making up for poor armor and lackluster weapons, and the Sea Shaman offering a +1 to activating the big fish. The Ancients are beyond merely bad, with three of their 4 or 5 models being Combat 2 support models, and even their "fighty" models (or model, with the basic box) are quite vulnerable to melee and have no easy way to escape it. Their tech is sort of good, but it's backed by such poor combat scores that it winds up being barely average.
All of that probably changes a lot in campaign mode, and weaknesses can be covered by adding/swapping out figs for stuff in the blisters – but many key models aren't out yet, and AFAIK no distributer is carrying blisters at this point, so it's mail order or nothing for now. The existing starters contain iffy figure mixes, and are likely to produce some very bad play experiences for new players. The lack of non-personality Leader/Commander figs is particularly silly, since a lot of the tactics in SoBH revolve around using your Leaders well and killing the other guy's. The Sea Shaman and Matlal give a limited +1 to activation rolls, but only for one or two models in each starter force.
All in all, I would say it looks interesting and plays well, but ignore the official stats for the models and make up your own. The game's got a decent build-your-own-figure engine, and it should be easy enough to re-stat the shoddy starter box mixes to let you play with more effective and balanced forces straight out of the box, rather than having to wait for unreleased minis to come out and blisters to become available in your FLGS. I am very much concerned that the poor selection of models in some starters (Atlan has it worst, and the Mariners only slightly less so) will lead many new players (ie ones not familiar with the other Song games) to abandon the system after a few bad experiences, which bodes ill for long-term success in retail outlets.
Which is a pity, because it looks like there's some real potential there.
