A Feast For Crows

Saga! Dark Ages mayhem on a Thursday night with the Gong Garage Gamers.

I posted a preview shot yesterday which showed the game table, and the players. Caesar, John and I had a Viking warband each, whilst Tim had Anglo-Danes. We each started in a corner of the board. Despite rolling for initiative Tim seemed to go first on each of the seven turns of the game.

Here's my warband - an all-female force of Vikings (not my figures, but John's). All warbands consisted of two lots of eight warriors, two groups of four hirdsmen and a warlord. The Vikings had a beserker upgrade on one lot of hirdsmen, and the Anglo-Danes had great-axes:

Off we go.Caesar threw some of his warriors into my berserkers:

The end result was that most of his warriors and most of my beserkers were killed. Saga combat can be very bloody indeed:

Caesar's warlord led a group of warriors into some of my warriors:

An even bloodier combat ensued, leaving Caesar's warlord all alone. Right in front of my warband:

My remaining beserker and my warlord went in to kill him. And did so:

Caesar's beserkers moved in to avenge their warlord:

There was great slaughter. My warlord died, taking so many hits that it wasn't worth sacrificing the berserker to avoid one. But they killed Caesar's unit as well:

Meanwhile ...

John's warband emerged cautiously from behind a pond. John and Tim had been watching Caesar and I slaughter each other, and were now looking to finish off vulnerable units:

Tim split his force in two - half went off against John, whilst the others moved in on the flank of my survivors:

My flank looking a bit vulnerable:

Caesar's one remaining unit charges towards John's much larger force:

This week's guest starts - in the room next door is a regular D&D campaign. They like to make use of the white-board. Also one of them spotted me taking a picture:

Back to Saga. My warriors stood on a hill and mostly died. Tim's ran up the hill and didn't:

Caesar's last unit is cut down. Bye bye Caesar. He spent the rest of the game with the rules book, telling people that they couldn't do what they wanted to do::

John and Tim's warbands get to grips, with John discovering that watching two Viking warbands fight is not a good way to learn how to take on the Anglo-Danes and their radically different battle-board:

The Anglo-Danish unpainted warlord toghs it out with some of John's Vikings (portrayed by GW Rohirrim):

And so the game ended. Points were scored based on kills and, with most of Caesar's troops in my dead pile, including his warlord, I had the most.

We're still getting to grips with Saga, and oddities like the timing of special abilities and so on. I'm sure that good tactics involve coordinating your units in an effective way; we still tend to stack up the battle-boards for a single assault by a single unit on a single opposing units. The fights tend to involve a lot of dice and a lot of casualties. Possibly chucking all of your dice into attacking doesn't help, although this seems to be how the Vikings roll in the game anyway.

Next week is looking like more Maurice, although I have a provisional Memoir '44 date with Tim.