First Game of the Year: A SAGA Encounter in Labrador

Hmm....our game did not actually look like this!

Last night, à L'abyss in Montreal, I had my 1st game of the year.  This was my 4th SAGA game with Luis and this time we decided to return to Age of Vikings. Who better to bring than my Skraelings and where better to have a battle than in The Labrador, that previously disputed territory on the border between Quebec and Newfoundland. Enough said on to the game.

Game Set-up (BoB Chaos)

Scenery-Bleak Moor

Deployment-Vanguard

Special Rule-Forced March

Victory Conditions-Sunjugation

Game Length-Unknown Length

The Vikings (6 SAGA Dice)

Warlord
3 units Hearthguard in 2 groups
2 units of Warriors
1 unit Bow-Armed Levy

Moors (6 SAGA Dice)

Skraeling Chieftess
5 units of Javelin-Armed Warriors in 4 groups
1 unit of Bow armed Levy

The starting positions

Luis flummoxed me by placing his archers in hard cover.

Beautifully painted Viking Warriors

It looks like the Viking are surrounded by the Skraelings, but watch out for those Hearthguard coming up the centre.

Skraeling centre has collapsed...

....as has the Skraeling left flank

but the thing is that Hearthguard are much more valuable then Warriors and the Skraelings were able to limit 3 units of them, that is a lot of massacre points, so the game is closer than it looks.

Not much left is there!

    

So the end of turn 5, we roll the dice.........a 4, one more turn. The Vikings are down to 4 SAGA dice, they take out my unit with the Bear totem, my turn but only 2 SAGA dice. I attack the Viking Hearthgurad and am able to eliminate the unit. I think that over 75% of the figures on each side were lost.....very bloody indeed!

Game over.......it looks very close......using the Massacre point system......a marginal victory is awarded to the Vikings, they won by 1 point!

The game was a lot of fun, I always enjoy playing my Skraelings. So what is next, well a game of CoC tonight in Lachine and back to Black Seas tomorrow here in the Plateau.

SAGA- Meeting Encounter

 

Myself and Adam got together at the Hobby Bunker last night to have our first game of SAGA in more than a month. Holidays are nice but I miss my gaming. I stuck with my Skraelings and Adam decided to go with Vikings, a faction he has not played for some time.

Skraelings (5 SAGA Dice)

Warlord

1 unit of Bow Armed Levy (12)

4 units of  Warriors (10,10,10,10)

Vikings (6 SAGA Dice)

Ragnar Lothbrook

Shieldmadens (6)

1 unit of Hearthguard (8)

2 units of Warriors (8,8) 

We used the chaos method of skirmish setup using the Book of Battles which resulted in the following:
Scenery-Rough Ground
Deployment-Meeting Encounter
Game Length-Pitched Battle
Special Rule-Forced March
Victory Conditions-Subjugation

Initial set up

Skraelings tightly packed

Shieldmaidens leading the charge for the Vikings

Despite having automatic light cover the Shieldmaidens are no match for an onslaught of arrows, javelins and tomahawks. They are rapidily taken down. To the left 2 units of Skraeling Warriors are trying to get to the rough ground as does a unit of Viking Warriors. To the upper right a unit of Viking Warriors as attacked a unit of Skraelings. Five dead aside!

Ragnar advances his Hearthguard, the Skraeling missles are somewhat successful, and a Skraeling Warrior band charges. They are thrown back and evade to the rough ground, but the mighty Hearthguard are down to 3.

The Vikings are looking pretty ragged but Ragnar being Ragnar attacks a unit of Skraeling Warriors, he defeats them but is exhausted, making him easy pickings for the Skraeling missles. Applying the Eagle Totem to the Skraeling levy appeared to be a more sucessful utilization of it than giving it to a Warrior unit.

The Skraeling Warlord surveys the field now absent of but 2 Vikings.

So a massive Skraeling Victory of 34 to 14 massacre points. It is not often that I get such a significant victory playing Adam, he is a very wily opponent. I believe the dice probably favoured me and the Viking BB is new to Adam. I also believe that I am getting the measure of the Skraeling BB and am finally figuring out how to use javelin armed troops.

I have a really busy 2 weeks of gaming coming up with me being off to Montreal on Monday. I have a CoC game planned for Tuesday, a GdA planned for Wednesday; Saturday back to MA for a CoC game to continue the Too Many Rivers campaign, Monday week hopefully the restart of the CoC Von Luck campaign and then the next Friday off to Portland for Huzzah.

SAGA: Refused Flank

Another Norman vs Skraeling Battle at the Hobby Bunker last Thursday. Adam changed up things a bit and went with a unit of mounted warriors armed with javelins rather than the Flemish mercenaries. I went with the same configuration.

Normans

Warlord

3 units of Mounted Hearthguard
1 unit of Javelin Armed  Mounted Warriors

1 unit of Crossbow Armed Warriors

1 unit of Bow Armed Levy

Skraelings

Warlord

5 units of Javelin/Tomahawk Armed Warriors

1 unit of Bow Armed Levy

We opted to go Chaos again, which means on all 5 attributes we threw a d6 to randomly generate the conditions of the scenario. We ended up with the following.

Scenery: Bleak Moor

Deployment: Refused Flank

Game Length: Until Dusk
Victory Conditions: Subjugation

Special Rule: Night Fight

The basic 4x3 terrain, we were fighting along the long axis of the terrain rather than the usual short axis. The Srkraelings started to the right and the Normans to the left.

The inital Skraeling dispositions.

The initial Norman dsiposition.

Turn 4: I had taken down Adam's mounted warriors but had lost 2 units of warriors and had positioned my levy poorly so they never got off a shot in the whole game. As you can see both my warrior units are threatening but the large unit of Norman mounted Hearthguard is quite close. I really messed up the next 2 turns and by the end of the game I think I had lost almost 30 of my 48 warriors. 

Adam's very nice crossbowmen.

Again a pretty quick game maybe a little over 2 hours. The dice favoured Adam in this game but I have to say he played a tactically better game than I. So the reverse of last week with a decisive Norman victory with a final score of 18 to 7 for the the Normans. 

I realised that there is no way that I can take on the mounted Norman Hearthguard in melee, they are just too powerful. A unit of 12 mounted Hearthguard  with a banner generates 22 melee dice before any BB abilities are used. There is just no way to confront this with 12 die no matter what BB abiltiies are available. Couple this with their ability to move L, and they are a bit of challenge. Definitely have to come up with a different plan next time.

Meeting Encounter: A Book of Battles SAGA Skirmish

Myself and Adam finally got together last evening to try the new Book of Battles Scenario generator for SAGA2. It was our first this year due to a lot of unforseen roadblocks so we were both looking forward to it. Most of our games last fall were between my Vikings and Adam's Irish. But for this game we were both keen to try something different. Adam has just finished painting up a Norman warband and I wanted to try my Skraelings, as with SAGA2 a completely new BB has been released which looked like a lot of fun. So onto our somewhat ahistoric game!

Normans

Warlord

3 units of Mounted Hearthguard

1 unit of Crossbow Armed Warriors

1 unit of Bow Armed Levy

1 unit of Flemish Mercenaries

Skraelings

Warlord

5 units of Javelin/Tomahawk Armed Warriors

1 unit of Bow Armed Levy

Unfortunately the Skraeling can not take any legendary units as I wanted to take a Shaman

The Book of Battles has a great skirmish game generator which we used. We opted to go Chaos, which means on all 5 atributes we threw a d6 to randomly generate the condition. We ended up with the following.

Scenery: Marshy Country

Deployment: Meeting Encounter

Game Length: Cautious

Special Rule: Forced March-which we seemed to forget to do

Victory Conditions: Sacrifice

As usual, I forgot to take photos, I think Adam took a couple which I may add but the below photo gives one an idea of the layout and battle.

The little squares next to some units are their Totems.

It took us a little over 90 minutes to play the game, despite not having played for a while the SAGA2 rules appear to be well embedded now. We had a good game which appeared pretty equal until near the end. We were both cautious as we were learning our new BB's. I also believe Lady Luck favoured me as my dice were quite good. 

On turn 4, Adam sent in his Warlord to take out my Warriors (those between the marsh and the forest). I was able to survive and the Norman Warlord was exhausted (the Skraeling ability of Agility is really useful in battles were armour is unequal). 

In turn 5, I launched a bunch of arrows from my Levy across the marsh and as well as some javelins from my surviving Warriors which took down all the Norman Hearthguard. I brought in my Warlord and all there was left was the crying. The final score was 16 Massacre points for the Skraelings to 10 for the Normans. A clear Skraeling victory.

I should note that the Skraelings have a really neat and unique SAGA mechanism of Totems which can be assigned permanently to a unit for the full game after paying the requisite cost in SAGA dice. You can also temporarily assign a Totem to a unit for 1 turn at the cost of 3 unique SAGA dice (Pocession). Adam made me some very nice Totem markers which were much appreciated.

We both really enjoyed the new scenario book and are hoping to get in another game next week.

SAGA: The Challenge

SAGA:More Skraelings

My fourth submission to The Painting Challenge was these 2 points of Skraeling Warriors. This completes my 6 point Skraeling warband for SAGA.

This time, I decided to do something different, so after the white prime, I airbrushed the figures with Citadel Foundation Tallerin Flesh. The skins were then painted with GW Bleached Bone. Some white, black and colour were then added. The usual AP Darktone dip was then applied. It really worked like a charm, and I maybe spent 15 minutes per figure, aside from the basing.

SAGA: Two War Bands Completed

I finally finished the final 2 starter units that I purchased in June. These are both 4 point war bands, and are what is recommended to learn the game.

First up is a 8 figure Viking Warrior unit. I used axes for the weapons in 7 out of the 8 weapons, but I found for some of them that the pose looked a little odd and maybe I should have used javelins. I will have to fix the shield to the left not sure how it got smeared with red.

Two more points of SAGA

I have just finished another unit of Skraelings, here we have a unit of Warriors comprised of 8 figures. I call them the green band as their unifying colour is green. This is to distinguish them from the the yellow band!

Skraeling Warlord and who were the Skraelings anyway?

My postings have almost now caught up with my painting. Next up is my warlord for the Skraeling Warband. I decided to go with a scenic base here, so increased the size to 60 mm and added some decorative elements. I also thought that I would give him a name to commemorate the last chieftain of the Beothuk nation who died in the early nineteenth century. So here we have Nonosbawsut. I will get more into this below. I realized early on that I wanted to add some figures to the base. I initially thought maybe a black or polar bear, but these animals are still plentiful in Newfoundland and did not really fit the dark age/lost nation theme. I then remembered the Newfoundland Wolf, extinct since the early 20th century. It sort of fit.

Skraeling Warriors (second point)

Here is my second point of Skraelings, a unit of warriors, these are the hand to hand guys. You can see that unlike the levy, they have Mohawk hair styles, a little unlikely for these guys in 1000 AD, but I will get into that bit more in my next Skraeling post. Other then that they are probably right for the period. Their clothing is all made of caribou skin and their weapons are stone.

There will be 3 units of these guys in total in my Skraeling 4 pt warband, there are no hearthguard equivalent in the Skraeling SAGA world.

Back to Terre Neuve

I have been looking at SAGA for about 6 months now, it looks like a very innovative game, simple to play, and requires a limited number of figures. I was very attracted.

When I look at the other historical periods that I have tried over the last year (WWII, Japanese Sengoku Period), and my subsequent failure to be enthused, I believe the reason is two fold. First the Napoleonic period will always be number 1 for me, but essentially it requires an enormous amount of time to paint armies at the divisional level, and I like painting Napoleonic armies. I have had a real good go at the French, Prussian and Anglo-Portuguese, but also want to paint the Hanoverians and the Brunswickers to start. Because of this I really have little will left to paint large armies in other periods. Another period really needs to be at the skirmish level. Thirty-60 figures aside and ready to go, is what I need. I also need an interesting and well put together set of rules. I have found nothing for the Sengoku period (there is a SAGA mod, but I am really not good with mods, I need a full colour rulebook with all the extras to get me started). For WWII, I based for non skirmish gaming, it was a mistake. The IABSM rules from TooFatLardies look great, but I have to do some rebasing and I am now unsure if I should have gone with 28mm rather then 15mm.