Saga: Clash of Warlords

Preparing for the Painting Challenge is going forward fast with many miniatures being built up and a lot fewer being painted. I've been finishing a couple of projects that have been in a semi-finished state for ages. I finally got around to finishing the roofs of my 4Ground buildings and painting the doors for Gripping Beasts Dark Age Church. All in time for a game of Saga this week!

It's been a while since the last game again, but as a fellow club member wanted to try out the rules I was happy to oblige. He'd been building up a Viking force and was sort of familiar with the rules, but just hadn't played the game yet. I decided to leave my normal Anglo-Saxon list of Alfred, a bard and 5 points of Warriors home as it's a bit cheesy and opted to try out the Jomsvikings for the first time. I've played against them quite a few times, so I'm pretty familiar with how to beat them, but not really with how to play with them.

Anyways I went with a Dane-axe wielding Warlord and 4 points of dane-axe carrying hearthguard backed up by 2 points of regular warriors. All this was split into 2 groups of 8 hearthguard, a group of 8 warriors and two groups of 4 warriors to give me command dice.

My opponent Jaakko played regular Vikings with a Warlord, 2x6 hearthguard, 2x8 warriors and 12 levy with bows.

The mission was Clash of the Warlords and we set up the table so that it would be centered around a Saxon village which had become the battleground for two groups of marauding Vikings. I piled all my forces on one flank to concentrate my smaller forces in one area and hopefully pick out some lone units on the way.

My initial moves were to rush the unit of Warriors on my right flank in a bid to quickly get them killed and to remove some Saga dice. However everything went to hell and I lost 6 of my Hearthguard taking out the unit. Not a very good trade. On the following turn the remaining two were wiped out by attacking Viking Hearthguard. However they were then in turn left vulnerable to a combined attack by my Warlord and Warriors.

On the other flank the levies had moved up to shooting positions, but only managed to get out one round of shooting the whole game, which ended up in one dead Warrior. I did need to reposition my forces a bit though as I couldn't just rush them either as they were well supported.

The Vikings then made a bold dash towards my two small units of warriors who had been bravely hiding behind the building only to lose the fight without killing a single warrior. As revenge I used the Jomsviking board to pull out his Warlord from any entourage and bravely attacked him with my own Warlord and 8 Hearthguard. The end result was quite predictable, but he didn't go down without a fight and took two of my guys with him.

I'm not too impressed with the Jomsvikings. I didn't really help myself by telling my opponent that he probably should avoid giving me Wrath whenever possible, but it was a practice game for him so maybe it was in place. Still without Wrath a lot of the abilities become pretty much useless and the most effective way of gaining Wrath "Northern Tempest" is pretty much negated if there are Levies on the board. Still quite fun to play, but I think I'll stick to Anglo-Saxons and Norse Gaels.

At the same time two other club members were playing Bolt Action, this time with a Pacific setting. There's been a build up of both Japanese and USMC to give some variety in addition to the regular Western Front games that are running around. Anyways splendid basing on the Japanese with small palm trees etc. going around. Really makes the minis stand out.