Telling Tales

Tuesday night down at the Enfield Gamers Rich J kicked off our Fantasy SAGA campaign. A deceptively simple premise of various Fantasy forces matched to one of SAGA's ever expanding range of battle-boards it all worked very well indeed. Bolted onto a campaign system for the collection of Reknown and ability enhancing Torcs (arm-rings) I can see us playing more than happily for the next couple of months.

At the last moment I mashed together a force of Orcs based on the Anglo-Saxon board to take on Ian's Norse based Dwarves. The tweak for Ian was moving at shorts versus and extra point of armour as befitted his beard-bound brethren.

We had a really good game from which I snatched a draw from the jaws of victory in the last couple of turns. Making the early running with my Hearthgaurd heavy heathens I deliberately avoided his elite lads and ganged up on his regulars making subsequent assaults wherever possible to break his heavier armour.
A few turns in and everything had gone to plan and I'd wiped out a couple of Dwarven units to reduce his SAGA dice but this was Ian, he of the jammy dice, and a couple of superior sets of SAGA dice saw him tear back into me with his elite whilst my lads were all carrying the odd bit of fatigue!

At the last went Warlord-a-Warlord with Ian toting the more experienced support and far less fatigue. Running things VERY close with the final dice he just managed to fell my lad Gonk for a very bloody draw and a smattering of Renown on both sides.

Post battle paper-work was simple enough and whilst Ian was just ahead in the bragging stakes neither of us took any proper hammer with just a couple of warriors on each side needing to rest up for a bit. All a bit handbags at dawn then!

Two things stood out for me on the evening;
1. Despite have played a few games previously SAGA really "clicked" for me. Possibly because myself an Ian are still both relatively new to the game but its intuitive nature really came to the fore. Must be some little bits we missed but no need even for a quick play sheet and a far deeper appreciation of the SAGA dice and battle-board dynamic. Two thumbs up :)

2. The individual battle-boards themselves. Throughout the game I found myself bundling in as the aggressor and then using the defensive nature of the Anglo-Saxon board to shield myself. The more aggressive nature of the Viking board allowed Ian to smash through that shield-wall. If anything it felt like we had what should have been each other's Battle-Board.

Now this was all down to me as I hadn't played any practise games when offered or paid to much attention at all to be honest. Something to most definitely remedied as previously I'd found SAGA pleasant by innocuous. Now I'm quite the convert and wondering what else it can do era / genre wise!

I'd also borrowed Stewart's LOTR Uruks and Goblins as I'd picked up the wrong carry case when leaving home. I really enjoyed playing with them, they really seemed to fit the theme of SAGA rather than other more steriod induced offerings from elsewhere.

Having painted and sold so many so many years ago I'm really temtped to sort out some more :)
My name's Steve and I'm a WARGAMER! :)