Band of Blades vs Super Space Knights
Compare Band of Blades and Super Space Knights side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Band of Blades | Super Space Knights | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Horror | Sci-Fi |
| Tags | Fiction-First, Playbook-Driven, Grimdark, Mission-Based, Faction Play, Deadly, Survival | CC-Licensed Rules, Combat-Heavy, Corruption, Fiction-First, Grimdark, Mission-Based, Playbook-Driven, Resource Management, Strong GM Support, Tag-Based |
| Core Mechanic | Forged in the Dark: roll a d6 dice pool equal to your action rating and read the highest die: 6 is a full success, 4–5 is a partial success with consequences, 1–3 is a bad outcome. Position (controlled, risky, desperate) sets the stakes, and players spend stress to resist consequences. Play alternates between a mission phase (specialists and rank-and-file Legionnaires execute one primary and one secondary mission) and a campaign phase, where each player runs a permanent Legion Role (Commander, Marshal, Quartermaster, Spymaster, or Lorekeeper) making strategic decisions about routes, supply, intel, and personnel as the army retreats toward Skydagger Keep. | When a move's fictional trigger occurs, a player rolls 2d6 plus War, Faith, or Logistics. A 10 or higher succeeds, a 7 to 9 succeeds with a complication or price, and a 6 or lower fails with trouble to follow. |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | 2d6 |
| Complexity | High | Medium |
| Availability | Paid | Paid |
| Runnability | 5 of 5 book tools | 3 of 5 book tools |
| License | Forged in the Dark | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Commercial publishing allowed — CC BY 4.0 |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Evil Hat Productions / Off Guard Games | Gabriel Ciprés |
| Year | 2019 | 2023 |
| Languages | English, French, Spanish, Italian | English, Spanish |
| Best For | Groups who want a campaign-length military fantasy where the Legion as a whole is the protagonist: character death is expected, players cycle through different soldiers each mission, and strategic decisions about routes, supply, and intel are split across the table rather than held by the GM. | Groups who want military science-fiction campaigns at company scale, with shared worldbuilding and a corruption spiral that can turn victories into the Order's downfall. |
| Highlights | Players rotate through Specialist, Soldier, and Rookie playbooks across missions rather than playing fixed characters, so attrition lands without ending personal arcs: the Legion endures even when individual soldiers fall. Each player also holds a permanent Legion Role that drives the campaign phase, splitting army-management decisions across the table instead of leaving them with the GM. Time and Pressure clocks turn the campaign into a race against the Cinder King: advancing toward Skydagger Keep burns time, but lingering builds undead pressure that escalates the difficulty and lethality of future missions. | Players define the Order and its galactic context together, making the military empire and its enemies specific to their campaign. Damnation can produce powerful Darkness Taints or corrupt the Order itself, turning ruthless victories into a path toward collapse. Linked rules for companies, individual knights, and spaceships let missions shift scale while retaining the same fictional framework. |
| Considerations | The campaign phase (mission generation, spy deployments, supply, advance roll, Lorekeeper annals) takes substantial time between missions and only works if every player engages with their Role. Building a deep personal arc for a single Legionnaire is structurally difficult because characters rotate between missions: emotional investment lives with the Legion rather than any one soldier. The campaign is built around a single fixed arc ending at Skydagger Keep, with a defined map, locations, and Chosen/Broken roster. There is no open-ended sandbox mode, and a full campaign runs 12–20 sessions. | Players usually control companies of dozens or hundreds of warriors, so individual characters receive less attention than the military unit. The premise centers an authoritarian human empire locked in perpetual war, and play repeatedly pressures companies toward violence and compromise. Conflicts between opponents at different scales resolve quickly in favor of the larger force, removing an underdog roll from those confrontations. |