After choosing SAGA as one of my 2 new games systems for 2012 I set about building & painting my new Viking Warband (more about this in other blog posts), then with this build up of excitement I talked about SAGA with my friends at Portal Wargaming and a few got excited and decided to join me as I delved into a historical skirmish game!

One of those friends is Andie Harper, who has joined me on my New Years Hobby Resolution before with Secrets of the Third Reich, Warmachine, Malifaux, Dystopian Wars and now SAGA, deciding to do a Welsh Warband (we both love finding new & exciting games to play). I am lucky that I have a small group within Portal Wargaming who like to follow what I am doing and join me along the way with my New Years Hobby Resolution! This is awesome as it actually allows me to play the new games with people as excited about trying something new as me!!

Andie had pretty much finished his Welsh Warband and I had finished my Vikings so all we needed was a themed battlefield, luckily Portal Wargaming had bought a few items to allow us to do this and I had painted them up as part of #MiniatureMonday so on with the battle.…or so we thought!!

Arranging a game on your friends Wedding Anniversary = FAIL

I had arranged the game on Andie’s Wedding Anniversary and so the game was rightly cancelled….……until his wife, who was ill, told Andie to go to the club as she was going to bed!! The game now back on I hurriedly set up the battlefield and this is what it looked like:

With the battlefield set up and the forces selected as 4pts Warbands we eagerly deployed our units opting for an easy scenario of ‘kill the warlord’. It’s worth saying that this would be our first ever game and neither of us had fully read and understood the rules, this was going to be interesting!!!

We rolled off according to the Scenario and chuckled about the fact that on a draw the player with the most impressive facial hair wins! We then deployed as per the rules then the game was on!!

Turn 1-3: Turn 1 started with Andie, who had won the roll, getting to roll his SAGA dice and assign them to the Battle Board. This is a great mechanic for the game and as the first couple of turns is mainly movement it allowed Andie to store some dice for later in the game! I then got a chance to cast the Runes (Roll the Viking SAGA dice) for the first time, I too stored the dice for later opting to put dice that would allow me to change one of his shoot actions into a move action and gain extra armour against shooting and the rest of my dice went into allow my activations to move my Warband forward! Turns 2 & 3 were pretty much the same and so flew by and this was the scene going in to turn 4:

Turn 4: This was where I should have lost the game!

Andie activated his warrior unit, moved and threw javelins at my Warlord. They should have killed him as they landed 3 hits, 1 was cancelled from an armour check, 1 was cancelled from the warlords ability and as my Viking Warlord was too far away from the Hearthguard unit I couldn’t transfer the damage Andie let me nudge my Hearthguard into VS range and so I transferred the damage as we hadn’t understood the rules! My Vikings did some more movement (the joy of no shooting on your army!) and so it was on to turn 5

Turn 5: Andie moved his warriors away from the approaching Viking warriors and moved his Warlord & Hearthguard to behind the wall and moved his other warrior unit through the woods.

His levies declared a shoot action but I used an ability on my Battle Board that forced them to move instead with that the turn rolled on to my activations. I rolled pretty poorly on with my SAGA dice and so couldn’t activate everything and so my Berserkers moved into combat but couldn’t attack (a fatal flaw), one of my warrior units moved up towards the cowardly Welsh twice, the Warlord & Hearthguard moved towards the Welsh Warlord & Hearthguard and the other warrior unit got left behind

Turn 6: It was time to read up about combat as the Berserkers were going to get cut down!!

After a very uneventful (apart from the Berserkers dying) Welsh activation it was over to me and my Warlord and Hearthguard charged into combat cutting down some Hearthguard!!

After much reading of the cover rules and combat Andie found what he was looking for

Turn 7: The madness took over Andie as he had rolled well on his SAGA Dice and prepared to bring the pain on my Warrior unit with both his Levies & Warriors

The other Warrior unit took aim at my Warlord and successfully shot but the Hearthguard took the hits instead! Over to me and my Warlord charged in and cut down the Welsh Warlord!!

I immediately asked Andie for his opinion on SAGA as a game system first reaction:

Second reaction: “time for another game???”

I would like to thank Andie Harper as the best opponent possible & Gordon Snellgrove, Dave Amos and Stuart Gadd for being ace helpers in checking out the rules in the Rulebook!!!

HOPE YOU ENJOYED READING THIS AS MUCH AS WE ENJOYED PLAYING THIS!!! I CAN’T STRESS ENOUGH HOW BRILLIANT THIS GAME SYSTEM IS!!!

SCORPIUS GLC SIGNING OFF FOR NOW!!!