# Band of Blades *Created:* 2026-09-12, *Modified:* 2026-10-09 ![[Band of Blades (cover).jpg|600]] **Band of Blades** is the rare **[[Forged in the Dark]]** hack that makes the *campaign* itself the horror. Where **[[Blades in the Dark]]** gives you a city to climb, this Off Guard Games (Evil Hat) game hands you a doomed army in full retreat — the Legion — and asks how much of it you can save before the undead catch you. It's *The Black Company* and *X-Com* and *FTL* all funneled through the d6-pool engine, and it's bleak in the best way: you don't play one hero, you run a whole roster of doomed soldiers, and the map itself bleeds out beneath you. ## Setting The world is **dark military fantasy** — a late-Renaissance realm of muskets and alchemy, with no dragons, no elves, and no prophecy to tidy things up. When the **Cinder King** rose in the West, nine **Chosen** — champions imbued with a god's spark — arose to face him; five were Broken and turned to fight at his side, and humanity lost the decisive battle on the plains of **Ettenmark** anyway. Now the shattered remnants of the Legion, a once-storied band of mercenaries, are all that stands between the advancing tide of horrific undead and the last stronghold at **Skydagger Keep**. There's a Chosen among you, there's an army at your heels, and there is no magic spell waiting to save the day. The odds are stacked against everyone at the table, and the book is cheerfully upfront that the world doesn't care if your protagonists live or die. ## Mechanics ### The Roster, Not the Hero The engine's signature twist is that you don't play one character — you build a **roster of Legion specialists**, each with a role and a clock, and rotate them through missions as the Legion retreats. Characters die or are wounded and retired; the survivors are who you take into the next fight. Building a character means picking a role in the Legion's structure and a soldier, and the same **Forged in the Dark** loop of playbooks becomes a stable of them. ### Mission, Campaign, Loop Play runs the fitd rhythm: a **mission phase** where squads are selected and sent out on scores against the undead, then a **campaign phase** where the Legion itself advances across the cursed map toward Skydagger Keep — camp actions, the Chosen's doings, and the ever-ticking clock of the army's retreat. The **Marshal** takes the GM seat that **Blades in the Dark** reserves for the Game Master, setting position and effect on the same d6-pool action rolls: a **6** is a clean success, a **4/5** a partial with a cost, a **1–3** a failure, with stress and resistance soaking the damage. **Progress clocks** track everything from a mission's alarms to how close the undead are to overrunning the Legion. ### Attrition Is the Point The horror of the campaign is attrition. The Legion advances, loses ground, and loses people; the dead and wounded accumulate, and each mission spends the roster you can't afford to lose. Between the retreat's map, the roving undead, and the resource-starved camp, the doom is baked into the structure rather than improvised by the Marshal — which is exactly why it lands. It's a one-edition game, and it needs no second. ## Editions - **Band of Blades** (2019) — Off Guard Games / Evil Hat Productions. The library holds the Electronic Edition. *In the library.* - A single core edition; it runs on the **Forged in the Dark** engine shared with **[[Scum and Villainy]]** and **[[Blades '68]]**. ## References - [Band of Blades — Evil Hat Productions](https://evilhat.com/product/band-of-blades/) - [Band of Blades — Off Guard Games](https://offguardgames.com/band-of-blades/) - [Band of Blades — itch.io](https://offguardgames.itch.io/band-of-blades/) - [Band of Blades Review — Gnome Stew](https://gnomestew.com/band-of-blades-review/)