A SAGA of beginners luck!

It has come to that time of year when the DDWG is once more scheduled to elect or re-elect the committee for the 2015/16 year. The AGM is rarely more than 45 minutes but it means that gaming time will be short; on the plus side my good friend for over 40 years, Paul Martin, will be there for the meeting.
Paul lives in North Dorset and is one of DDWG's affiliate members (a discounted rate for living over 20 mile from Devizes) and only come to the club on the occasional Sunday. The gaming is usually preceded by a curry and it makes a great opportunity to catch up. Yesterday was no different; curry and gaming but what to play?
Not having played SAGA for some time I decided to dust off my Vikings and Normans for a couple of hours of fun. I have almost finished the new huts and fences for my Dark Age village so they made a first outing to the table top.

My Dark Age village is a mix of mdf buildings from a number of manufacturers and scratch built buildings. Wattle fences are from Renadra

Paul opted to use Vikings so I had the Normans and had worked out two matching forces of 6 pts each: 1 general, 1 unit of 4 Hearthguard, 3 units of 8 warriors and one unit of 12 strong Levy bow each.

The fearless Normans deployed for the Viking onslaught

The  Viking raiders prepare their advance

Paul took the initiative and advanced into the village pushing his Thrall bowmen to the fore. The Normans had a fortunate first roll of their Saga dice and managed to fire double their normal range with an ability that killed two of the Thralls facing them. After that it all went downhill for the Normans!

A nice view of the scratch-built huts - maybe the Normans would have been better off hiding in them?

It should not be that difficult to roll high numbers on a D6...but it was yesterday. As for Paul who had brought what he laughingly calls his 'lucky dice' as he normally has dreadful die rolls; well he couldn't throw much below a four for the whole game.
Two Norman units melted away in two moves leaving just four Saga Dice for the Normans to use. The Viking luck held and although two units were down to one man they managed to keep out the way and therefore retain the Saga dice needed to keep the Viking steam-roller coming forward.

Erik the Pink (illegitimate son of Erik the Red and Snow White) leads his unit of Bondi forward to smash the Norman cavalry. The Viking ship grave in the background would not be needed for this game!

It was a fun game and even though the Norman general issued a personal challenge to the Viking leader, deployed as many abilities as he could with four Saga dice he died horribly to the Viking axe.

As it was only Paul's second game of Saga in two years it was a worthy win...or beginners luck? And that is how Sagas are made.

SAGA Grand Melee 2015

I was just wondering if there was to be a SAGA Grand Melee this year. It is about 12 months since I booked to play in the 2014 Grand Melee at Firestorm Games in Cardiff. Although I couldn't go on both days I had a terrific time losing playing.

Just had a look on the Gripping Beast site and there are details about this year's event which is to be held at the Derby Worlds in October. Not as convenient as Cardiff but I've not been to that show so it could be fun.

Take a look here for details.

Maybe it's time to dust the Vikings off? Perhaps a mini comp at Attack! 2015 this July even?

So many figures so little time

OK, so May to October is quite a gap.

Since Legionary I have played in two more Saga competitions - Gripping Beast's Grand Melee at Firestorm Games in Cardiff during June and an excellent day organised by Mid Somerset Wargamers at Wells, Somerset, in September. Despite all good intentions - and improving results with several and one win in a competition - I still have to get off the bottom of the competition table(s)!

I have used my Vikings in each competition. At Wells I made several mistakes - one was the choice of army composition and the second was playing the game one die short. I thought that first game was rough going!

The last stand of Eric the Pink (fighting yet more Welsh) in the Grand Melee

One of the most notable parts of my game against Normans in Wells.
Three Hearthguard fought of a 12 strong Norman unit of Hearthguard - some remarkable dice rolls all round!

Today I ventured over to Bristol to the new sci-fi show Blast-Tastic, staged by Michael Stockin of Angel Barracks. I would have liked to been able to stay longer but it is a busy weekend and I could only afford the time for a brief visit.
There were some great looking games and some notable traders present. Michael had worked hard to get his vision off the ground and to my eyes it worked well. Here's to next year.

DDWG AGM tomorrow so another busy day.

Legionary 2014 - what a SAGA.

I have often felt that the best way to learn a set of rules is to play them; not just as a Sunday afternoon experiment but by going the whole hog and entering a competition.

So yesterday, I found myself leaving home at 6.55am to drive to Exeter to play SAGA at the Legionary show staged by the Exmouth Wargames Club. Despite being a bank holiday weekend the A303 wasn't too bad and I made good time, arriving in around 2 hours from my home near to Devizes in Wiltshire.  With my newly painted Vikings ready for action it was appropriate that the podcast I decided to listen too was mostly about Vikings and the exhibition currently running at the British Museum.

It was a small competition with just six of us playing.

My first game was against a very kind opponent called David who was using Welsh. He was kind as he explained much about the game after  I had told him I have only ever played three games over a two year period, using a different army each time, and losing all of them.

So how would the Vikings do against Welsh? Not an force I knew anything much about and I'd not even looked at the SAGA  battle boards for anything other than Vikings or Normans before the weekend. Normans as that was an army I have painted and thought I'd use until I spotted that the battle board required many combinations of dice to get 'the good stuff' and as the competition was for a 4 point army I would only get six dice a turn. So a hasty painting of Vikings was called for.

Here are my Vikings (mostly berserkers in the shot) facing Welsh at the start of the game.

Athough I came second it was a good game. The Welsh javelin armed skirmishers did a fair bit of damage to me - especially from uphill. They 'taunted' my berserkers making them charge uphill and all but wiped them out!
 

My second game against Mike also found me facing Welsh - but with a different troop combination. As there were objectives in each game I decided to make a rush towards two fairly early on. This was a different tactic to my first game where I had opted to go past the objectives, eliminate the enemy and return to collect the spoils of war. As that failed it was time to try some thing new.

 So charging a sheep and a monk we rolled the die to see what would happen; a six in each case! This made the monk turn into a fighting bishop with good armour and five attacks - he killed three beserkers - and the sheep turned out to be an vicious ram killing a warrior.

It wasn't a good game for the Vikings. In one attack I rolled 16 dice needing 4 or above. A 50:50 roll you would think. No I got 12 come up with  1s, 2s and 3s.

 Needless to say I came second again!

My third and final game was against Franks. Two units of mounted Hearthguard and one unit of foot warriors. OK you ask where is the other point of troops? As it happens the mounted Hearthguard were 1.5 units each (6 figures each). This game was against Ralph who was really good at explaining things - especially as I haven't bought the supplement with the rather tricky Frankish battle board. Not that it would have helped if I had.

 Here come the mounted Hearthguard..

Well, in this game I came second once again. So after three more games I still have my 100% success rate of losing at SAGA unblemished.

Did it matter that I lost? No. It was great fun, I made some new friends and enjoyed playing something different.

What did I learn? LOTS! And the most important lesson is that Beserkers may best be left at home.

Finally, the rather nice buildings are produced by Adrian's Walls. 

Byzantine resurrection

Well they may be 40 years old but they are making a comeback! Bill Lamming Late Byzantines painted with Humbrol enamel paints back in the 1970s. I'm re-basing them for War & Conquest rules.

Here are the infantry so far.

 Byzantine cavalry.

 

And here are the first Viking unit for SAGA. There are some Conquest Games cavalry behind them and right at the back are some Gripping Beast Saxons.

What a Saga!

Played Saga this afternoon for the first time. It was a slow game due to constantly looking at the rules and working out what to do next. Not that it takes long to pick the game up.

It was an interesting game as I thought my opponent was bringing Vikings to fight my Normans. However, there were no Vikings as my opponent hasn't painted his figures. So it was just as well I'd also brought my Byzantines with me in case we had a quick first game and fancied a different army to face a a second game.

I'm not sure that Byzantines make a good army for a first game but it did make for an interesting game. My Byzantine infantry soon fell foul of a well co-ordinate Norman cavalry charge and lost half the unit. Next go Norman massed archery fire took out the rest. After that it was all downhill a combination of poor tactics and appalling die rolls!

So more reading or the rules and a try with more evenly matched forces.