The Saga Report: Part 2 – the Anglo-Danish Return

A late decision to turn to Saga instead of Pike & Shotte was a good one, although Red and Aidan were both unable to attend due to financial constraints (at this rate we’ll vanish – without a break in the job market even I won’t last the month).

Chris Fazey joined us and fielded a few of his Vikings alongside some of Lukes Anglo-Danish warriors and a bunch of my Bretonnians to make up a 4pt Anglo-Danish warband.  I took my Welsh (more Bretonnians, while Lukes fully painted Danish made up the third.  After a practice game to introduce Chris to the Saga rules we played a 3-way battle using the Feast of the Crows scenario in the rulebook.  This alters the way the turn works to make everyone roll and put down their Saga dice first, before rolling to see who went first, and this worked nicely in keeping the game rolling on. 

We played the full seven turns, with my Welsh clashing firstly with Chris’ levy, and having used my mounted hearthguard and warlord upon them, I then followed up by charging the enemy warlord (not that my warlord on his nice horse had much choice in the matter – within 12”, and with a desperate need to move to avoid Lukes slingers who were intent on pebbling him to death).  This went badly firstly for Chris’ hearthguard, then for my hearthguard when the warlord counterattacked, and finally for my warlord when Chris’ brought together a diabolical set of Saga skills to wipe the floor, the privies, and the local cess pits with him.  Down to 2 Saga dice and my battle was almost over, and Chris well in the lead in terms of victory points.

Lukes warband struggled to get to grips with anyone, and eventually had one of his warrior groups wiped out by Chris’ warriors, and then mashed my warriors, who, with only 2 Saga dice were an easy gain!  I decried both Chris and Luke’s warlords as being chickens because they spent the game hiding towards the back of their warbands (Lukes didn’t even get his axe wet!), while mine fought out front.  As a long term career this obviously has its drawbacks because he died.  Insults were slung about across the table, especially when Chris used ‘Intimidation’ to prevent me performing any activations in the last 2 turns!  The game ended with the time limit up, and Luke unable to move fast enough to engage Chris’ men who had scored more than enough VP’s by killing my lot (18 VPs, to my 12, and Lukes 8). 

Things we learnt:

• You can divide your units into a variety of sizes, as long as none are more than 12 big, or less than 4 small.  So if you purchase 2 units of 8 warriors you can use them to make a unit of 4, and a unit of 12.
• The Welsh are extremely vulnerable to missile fire – Lukes slingers particularly proved this point, especially when throwing stones at the Welsh on horseback.  You have to play to the strength of your faction.
• The Feast of Crows scenario works nicely, and keeps the game flowing despite the number of players, thumbs up to Gripping Beast there.