Saga Sacred Ground

We played Saga last night, running a doubles variant of the Sacred Ground scenario. We had two teams of two players each, running five point warbands. Gary took Jomsvkings and was teamed with me playing the Welsh, whilst Caesar took the Anglo-Danes and was teamed with Daniel playing Anglo-Saxons.

There were five pieces of terrain on the board, and each side scored points for troops occupying a terrain piece each turn.

The Anglo-Something faction.

At the start of the game we all rushed towards the nearest terrain feature, and sat in it.

Indeed this was a problem with the scenario; troops were better used occupying terrain for points than they were trying to oust the enemy from their terrain. Two things prevented the scenario becoming four warbands watching each other for eight turns. Firstly the presence of missile troops in three factions meant that casualties could be scored without leaving the terrain and, secondly, bot the Jomsvikings and Welsh had abilities on their boards which could be used to move enemy units out of the terrain they were in. For example, the Anglo-Saxon levy archers were taunted out of safety by Welsh javelinmen and archers, who then failed to inflict any significant casualties on them.

For much of the game the fiercest fighting was over the hill in the centre, with the Welsh and Jomsvikings sheltering on the reverse slope from Saxon archers.

Daniel proved more aggressive towards the end, as he and Caesar had picked up a decent lead in points. Saxon levy charged the terrain pieces in which the Welsh were scoring points.

They ended up fighting the isolated Welsh warlord who, in dramatic fashion, drove them off with heavy casualties, having not taken a scratch himself.

The game ended in a narrow win for Caesar and Daniel. Afterwards we discussed how the scenario could be modified to encourage more aggression on the part of the players, and have a couple of ideas to play around with, although one of them was to score the game properly; we'd made an error as to when scores were calculated, which did affect how things would have turned out. We'll be trying this again in a few weeks to see how the idead work.