Traveled in-state over Memorial Day to finally get some face to face gaming in. It was a good break from the lockdown. My brother and I have always liked Saga (1st Edition) and decided it would be a nice way to get things started for the weekend.
We chose two armies we had never tried; he chose the Irish and I took the Kingdom of Strathclyde. Each are really unique, even in the Sage world, with plenty of new and fun options. Typically we also just lay out some terrain and have at it, but since the Irish depend so much on difficult terrain, we used the actual tournament rules for terrain placement. I, of course, wanted him to have as little difficult terrain as possible so we ended up with the minimum 3 pieces. I chose an open hill and he chose two pieces of schrub choked fen.
Here's the layout. The trees and meadows are for aesthetic purposes only and serve no function in the game. The only terrain that matters is the hill at the bottom and the two rough patches.
Strathclyde cavalry looking suspiciously like Romano-British Arthurians.
The king and his Hearthguard.
A group of Warriors. I just used the first few of my Little Big Man banners I have had for several years and I wanted to showcase them. They were gifted to me by my old pal Roy. This one is from the Viking sheet. I like how it turned out, considering it was my first try.
Here's the other, from the Dark Ages sheet. I know I say this a lot but I love Little Big Man stuff.
One of the reasons I chose to bring the Irish. Here's a pack of wolf hounds and their pack leader. They count as a unit of Warriors but move L like cavalry instead of M. I've had these models forever and finally got to use them.
The Irish line looking a lot like Anglo-Saxons.
Bad things happened to the Irish right off the bat. My warlord and Hearthguard crushed a unit of warriors and half the hounds were taken out by mystery dudes hiding in the difficult terrain.
The king and his retinue are fatigued after the melee but it was worth it to wipe out a unit and it's all important Saga die.
So, in a twist, the Strathclydians get bonuses to some of the abilities for keeping units off the board. But the units off board don't contribute Saga dice and count as killed if they don't get on the table before game's end. Here we see another unit of Hearthguard entering from off board. Did I mention they can come in from any board edge? Nice.
A close-up of the same unit and another shout out to Little Big Man for the shield transfers.
The Irish warlord! You can always tell an Irishman.
You just can't tell him much.
Strathclydian Levies. The javelin move and shoot thing is cool.
Get 'em lads!
A swirling melee erupted and with so many units coming in from every edge, the Irish didn't know where to turn.
Final positions when the Irish called it. You can see many of their units are down to one guy and cavalry is coming in from every angle. It seems like a mismatch but when we talked about it we realized that we pretty much play every army the same: that is, line up and fight. Being the tournament game that this is, we have never really explored the nuances of each force and how they should be used. The Irish were the perfect example. We both agreed they should have stuck to the difficult terrain and made the cavalry come to them. But, admittedly, I would have done the exact same thing as Chris. This led to us to consider the possibility of choosing one or two factions and playing them multile times to really figure them out.
Best of all, although he has always enjoyed the game, Chris was really bitten by the bug and ordered several 1st Edition books and a bunch of figures. With his painting skill, I can't wait to see what he does with them!
Stay tuned for Part 2; a SYW dust-up in the New World.
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