Flashing Steel 2011

This is a stand-alone game, not an expansion.

Flashing Steel is a skirmish miniatures game (one figure = one combatant) in the Song of Blades and Heroes family. The flavour is smack in the middle of The Three Musketeers and pirate action of all kinds. Swing from those chandeliers or ratlines. Kick the chair or skewer the roast chicken.

Flashing Steel was written to address a couple of key changes needed from Song of Blades and Heroes for this genre. One was to reflect the slower rate of fire for matchlock weapons. That was easy enough.

The second was to bring in the flair and 'swashbuckling' aspects of the period into the rules. It is often forgotten that schools of martial arts were as thorough and widespread in Europe as they were in Japan in the 1500's through the 1600's. There were all kinds of flashy moves and clever tricks.

So the rules weave in this kind of option to do more than simply move-attack-resolve-repeat. More than just strict combat options, the Swashbuckling rules allow you to be more interactive with your terrain. It opens up more of the game to narrative, or story-telling wargaming. All of which is part of the great Songs engine, of course. With Flashing Steel we have tried to extend and strengthen that side of the system. -Andrew Boswell, designer