First Songs of Blades and Heroes battle

So I welcome you all to 2012, the year of the Zombie Apocalpyse, but I hope you are as prepared as I am (I recommend the Zombie Surival Guide and World War Z, both a blast to read).

Around the christmas holidays I had my first and probably last "Songs of Blades and Heroes" game. The rules really do have the advantage that army building goes fast and the rules are easy to explain. Still I really don't like the whole activation process, a random activation is okay, as long as it doesn't frustrate every player at least 2-3 times over the whole game. Some like the amount of luck involved, but I prefer e.g. a card activation system (every player draws cards, assigns them to units and has to activate them in this order), because it's a lot more tactical approach.

Now on to the game: First warband - "The heroes" after plundering another dungeon and freeing a village from untold evils, our heroes travel through the land of Bruendelheim. The gang includes a cleric (rules-wise: magician), a dwarf, an elvish druid and his two elementals, plus Bob the mule and a hunter (the heroes picked him up on the way).

The orcish warband in the front: Skullcracker the warboss, his loyal ogre Zurg, three savage orcs and three archers. The law keepers in the bottom picture are the trusted men of the sheriff. The sheriff decided that the heroes have not paid their "plunder tax". So he sent out his men to "deal" with them. They are led by Sir Wildwort, the 8th Knight (of the 10 most trusted knights of the king).

The heroes make their way through the dense forest.

The sheriffs men are waiting behind an old barrier to cut off the heroes retreat.

Ogre attack! The orcs break loose from their hiding in the forest and fiercely attack the knights/squires. The ogre and orc boss butchered a lone squite that was caught in the open.

Even the forest turns against the knights as a swarm of spider attacks the crossbow man, but he is able to kill them all.

Sir Peter tries to corner the heroes, but they get away. Instead he tries to increase his reputation by killing the orc warboss skullcracker.

The 8th knight charges in to save the day with the sherrif's cousin to his right. Still he is to late as the orc warboss cracks Sir Peters skull with one savage blow.

At last the knight flees the field and is cought by the pursuing orcs.

Although a fun game, the luck left me and another player at the end, so it became gruesomely one-sided. The warbands worked quite well, but I'm still switching to the Lord of the Rings ruleset from GW. Still one of the best skirmish rulesets I know. I recommend you to try it, even if you like GW bashing.