After months of attempting to practice and three slightly-anxious articles (here, here and here), I packed up my Anglo Danes and Saracens, boarded a train to Leicester, ate a shedload of Greggs and went off to roll some dice for the Saga Grand Melee!
If you’ve read my road to the Grand Melee mini series, you’ll know that I didn’t have lofty expectations of victory – aiming for a single win out of six games – and was generally pretty nervous about turning up! The Grand Melee has a deserved reputation for hosting some of the best Saga players in the UK, and an entirely undeserved reputation for being hyper-competitive. It was a great weekend with a bunch of great people who did their best to stop me from the impossible-sounding goal of winning a game of saga for the first time ever.
Final Preparations
Instead of finishing off the last bits of prep as I had intended on Friday night, I procrastinated by painting Fallout miniatures and sticking pine cone scales to another knight, with the sole piece of last-night preparation being stacking all my miniatures into the smallest possible carry case. Just before heading off to bed for an early train, I looked over the tournament format in the hope of dreaming up solutions to the problems it presented:
- Six games over two days – Saturday with an Age of Invasions or Age of Vikings warband (my Anglo-Danes) and Sunday with Age of Chivalry/Age of Crusades (my Saracens).
- Five scenarios in addition to Clash of Warlords, most focusing on objective play.
- Prizes for best Warlord (Days One and Two), Best Opponent and Best Painted Warlord.
- Tournament points for winning scenarios (4 for a win, 2 for a draw, 0 for a loss), and additional tournament points for getting ten massacre points and/or completing six charges before your opponent.
This came together as I’d hoped overnight, waking up to an overall plan to:
- Be an exceptionally pleasant opponent – communicative, thankful, positive and playing for fun.
- Win the Clash of Warlords scenario through all-out aggression.
- Get every available non-victory tournament point.
- At least compete for best painted warlord with my Usama Ibn Munqidh model.
After a pleasant journey up spent scrutinising the Anglo-Dane Battle board, this seemed pretty doable and I went into day one fairly confident of having a good time, if not of victory.
Saturday – The Anglo Danes
My Anglo-Dane force was simple and straightforward, with a core of units based around fatiguing my enemy before a big charge turn:
Warlord
1.5 points of Hearthguard with Dane Axes
2.5 points of Warriors
1 point of bow Levy
1 Priest
The banner would journey around looking for the best choice of unit, and settled eventually on the large unit of warriors warriors, but I didn’t make good use of it over the day. Arriving after a long and very early journey, I ate a load of Greggs and said my hellos to everyone – all told a very welcoming crowd, with 25 players there to battle it out for the championship.
Game One – Ian’s Scots
Game one of the Tournament was guaranteed to be using the Clash of Warlords scenario from the Saga rulebook. This is a scenario that rewards getting right up into the enemy’s face and killing as many of them as possible. Quite a nice one for my Anglo-Danes, who could deliver a lot of attack dice as long as the enemy stayed close enough to charge on a single activation.
Deployment looked good and the plan was simple – move forward and kill everything I could, getting as many charges as quickly as I could and waiting for the Warlord Go-Turn, when the dice fell well to activate a series of horrific charges with my Dane-Axe wielding Warlord. Ian’s army selection helped me out here, with a big hearthguard unit and chunky groups of warriors. If I could get a good Hearthguard and Warlord charge off with the right dice, I’d scythe through the line.
Luckily, that’s what happened – with Ian putting on a brave face as his dice utterly abandoned him I whittled down the Hearthguard until turn three when I could load up Shock, Crush the Weak, an additional Warlord activation and Lord of War, at which point my Warlord crushed two units in combat, stacking lots of fatigue on the enemy warlord who then got charged by my large warrior unit. That got me the six charges, the massacre points bonuses and a win. Ian looked pretty deflated but there were definitely a lot of times when the dice were just significantly kinder to me than to him – it was a game of fine margins no matter the final scores.
Game Two – Andy’s Scots
I absolutely succeeded on my “win one victory” aim, but possibly a little too well. After one game I had more points than anyone else playing, so ended up on top table playing Andy – one of England’s Saga World Cup team, and generally a fantastic opponent to play. I endured a fair bit of ribbing on the way into this one as the Grand Melee is a fairly tight knit community – about half of it being “crush him, he’s not as good as he thinks” and the other half being “alright at least it will be quick!”. We played the Advance scenario, which was all about capturing objectives in the enemy half of the table. My plan was to…. Well, capture some objectives? That’s as much as I’d thought about it, if I’m honest.
I went in fairly sanguine, figuring that I’d at least get a very good lesson in how to play Saga well. Andy was a kind, courteous and calm opponent, which was just as well because I got an absolute pasting, losing 69-9 on objectives in a game that got away from me from turn one. It’s an interesting process, losing a game to this degree. I was outplayed, outrolled and out-thought from the off, Andy executing a simple and irresistible game plan of “take the objectives and stay alive” which meant I couldn’t keep up after a single turn. I was determined to take something away though, so once the objective score was insurmountable, I took revenge by killing off anything I could reach and secured the massacre additional tournament point.
The game was over quickly, so I was able to sit and ask some questions about what I could have done better over a whisky. I learnt a lot from this, not least that how I was playing the Anglo-Danes (stacking fatigue, slowing the enemy, picking off a unit at a time) was absolutely not the way to do it, and that they were a horrible threat provided you were incredibly aggressive.
Game Three – Austin’s Britons
Back down into the middle tables, next up after lunch was Austin with a Briton list from Age of Invasions. We played the Desacralisation Scenario – one I hadn’t been looking forward to. Of all the scenarios over the weekend, I thought this one was the least fun and interesting, particularly when playing against Britons (though Byzantines would also have been awful here). The objective rules meant that massacre points were capped by the number of enemy objectives destroyed, but with terrain and objective placement rules this effectively just meant you were playing for 10-15 massacre points. I thought a tight deployment of objectives would let me defend some with my warriors and levy, while my Hearthguard and Warlord (and other Warriors) charged up the middle. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Britons really like being bunched up together, so I fully played into Austin’s hands from turn 0!
Despite winning Game One with the Warlord go-turn, and having the advice from Andy to just do that, I settled immediately into my initial battle plan of stacking fatigue on the enemy with expensive rare abilities. Austin, with larger, fightier units and a block of Roman Deserters I spent the entire game terrified of, simply absorbed the fatigue and rolled on, while I found myself short of dice as I’d used everything to put fatigue onto units that just didn’t care that much about being tired. In the end, I just bounced off Austin’s block of Britons repeatedly, while my warriors and hearthguard were slowly killed. While no objectives on either side were lost, he got just enough charges off against my objectives to cap his score at 13. I only managed 9, so a close loss ensued – I picked up the charges tournament point, but couldn’t take down enough to get the massacre one.
I didn’t enjoy this game. Austin was a great opponent and I thoroughly enjoyed playing him, but a combination of our terrain placement, objective placement and the scenario meant we were both just activating two units a turn and repeatedly achieving very little. Of the full 4×3 board I think we ended up actually playing in a 6×12 inch section of it. It didn’t feel like Saga, for all that both Austin and I were really going for it and having a good chat while playing. In conversation with other players it seems this is a scenario that’s had a lot of tweaks to it over the years – I’m sure there’s ways to play it that are more fun, and my Saracens would have been quite good at it, but overall I’d give it a miss.
With the end of Game three, the day was over – Andy was crowned Best Warlord of Day one, rightfully so – and after a chat about what everyone was taking for Sunday (lots of Chivalry!), I went off shopping and chatting.
I’d caught up with Annie from Bad Squiddo at lunch, and seen some of the soon-to-be-released Kickstarter minis and backdrops, which were incredibly lush, and then pottered around the slightly odd Britcon trade show. Lots of people selling painted miniatures at absolutely eye-watering prices, which I will never understand personally, but they seemed to be doing alright out of it. I picked up chickens for pillage, some ww1 planes for some reason, and mammoth miniatures space bastards for a secret project. All to the good, and I escaped without spending too much.
Sunday – The Saracens
The mostly-mounted Saracen list posed some problems for the scenarios we were going to play on Day Two as two out of three scenarios would focus in on terrain in some way – either moving objectives that acted as terrain or occupying terrain for victory points. I was determined to play with what I’d brought, though, so come hell or high water those horse were going on the board. I entered play with:
Warlord
1 Point of Hearthguard
1.5 points of Warriors (foot)
2.5 points of Warriors (Mounted)
1 point of Bow Levy
The main choice was to use Composite Bows or not. In the end, I made one good choice here and one bad one – you’ll see why below.
Game One – Gary’s Crusaders
Another early start, but arrived on time to be matched into Gary’s Baltic Crusaders. Lots of Cavalry and a terrifying unit of crossbows, with beautifully vintage models older than I am. We were to play the To Break a Shieldwall scenario.
This scenario was a tricky one for my Saracens – pick up an objective, carry it forward and score points based on it’s position. The only units that could reliably carry them were infantry, so I split up my foot warriors into two small groups of six, giving me one infantry unit per objective. The plan was to move everything up quickly, screen out my infantry with mounted Saracens and keep defensive abilities on the board to cancel Crusader attacks. This would let me rack up the points no matter what Gary was up to.
Gary was a lovely opponent to play, really communicative and positive throughout even when the plan worked perfectly – which it did. I took all composite bows this time round, and used Thoroughbred and Appeal to the Prophet to boost mobility to a ludicrous degree. Infantry and Cavalry were zipping up all over the place, letting me move objectives firmly into Gary’s deployment zone while stopping any attempts to slow them down from the Crusaders. Composite bow shots rained down with a spooky degree of accuracy, pincushioning Gary’s intimidating Hearthguard Cavalry. In the end I’m not sure there was a huge amount he could do and I picked up the victory 30-13, with the massacre bonus point.
Game Two – Ian’s Crusaders
Two games in the bag, and a completely unearned confidence with the composite bows led into the scenario I had been dreading all weekend – Sacred Ground. I was playing against Ian (different Ian to game one!) who I’d met occasionally before and knew to be both very good and very capable of playing to the scenario, as well as being a generally very nice guy! The scenario called for occupying terrain pieces as objectives, pulling a gradually increasing tally of victory points each turn based on the number of units within the terrain. Good news for Ian, with a lot of infantry units, terrible news for me with my cavalry.
I chose all composite bows again, which was probably not the right choice but did work well – on reflection I’m not sure I would have changed this. Ian had very little shooting, a large hearthguard unit and several smaller warriors units along with a minimum sized block of pilgrims. With Ian giving some great advice to begin with (and being a very positive player throughout), I inevitably focused in on killing things on the central objective and ignored the side objectives thinking “I’ll pick them up later”.
Yes, it was a deeply unwise plan, I know. It took me too long to clear off the central objective, despite killing the Warlord, Hearthguard and Pilgrims. I relied on composite bow shooting to do so in an attempt to preserve my own forces for high-scoring later turns. This meant what should have been a one turn job to shoot and charge everything off the central hill turned into a three turn slog. I just wasn’t decisive enough and in the end couldn’t make up the point deficit. Ian suggested some ways I could score extra tournament points in the final turn (thanks Ian!), so despite the 27-7 loss, I did pick up two from the game, putting me in firmly middle-table territory going into the final game of the weekend.
Game Three – Chris’ Spanish
What a puzzle this game was. Chris was playing Spanish from Age of Crusades – highly mobile, javelin armed cavalry and tricky infantry along with the mailed fist of western knights. My list wasn’t dissimilar, trading javelins for composite bows. The scenario – Wolf Pass – rewarded keeping your units alive and getting them into the enemy deployment zone. With two light, fragile cavalry armies, this could have been a swirling melee, but ended up a cautious cat-and-mouse affair of shifting skirmishers and feigned retreats.
By turn two I just had no idea what I was doing, reacting to Chris’ very clever use of battle board abilities and mobility rather than coming up with my own plan. When I finally figured out the plan, it was too late – and the plan itself was crap (Charge the Warlord and Hearthguard into the middle and follow up later). When the final turn came and went the scores were much closer than the game itself – 11/10 to Chris, while another turn would have made it 11/5 or worse.
I took a lot away from this game. Chris was another very patient opponent, playing and deciding much faster than my plodding brain allowed and querying – politely! – some of my stupider decisions so I could play better ones. My main problem in the end was armour. If I’d gone for mounted-without-bows I could have weathered shooting as best I could then charged in on equal footing, relying on the surprisingly defensive Saracen board to best the light Spanish Cavalry. Instead I frittered around with occasional bow shots, caught myself up in terrain and generally did nothing of any use. Trapped between my own panicked responses and Chris’ determined plan, I just started rolling and charging wildly. In any other round, this would have – surprisingly – earnt me a draw through a one point loss, but in the final round the winner took all and I left with only one tournament point.
Learnings and Closings
Chris and I finished early, which let me have a good chat with the other players. Everyone had been extremely welcoming over the entire weekend, giving advice, sharing tricks and tips, enjoying list discussions and pondering over who would take the overall crown. I didn’t have a single bad or negative conversation the entire weekend, even when people were sharing significantly worse and harder losses than mine had been! I made sure to thank each opponent I’d played before we ended for the day, sharing something I’d learnt from fighting their armies and hoping we’d get to play again at a future tournament.
With the dust settling on the last games – and it took a while for the dust to settle, the final players finishing up after virtually the entire hall had been disassembled and packed away – it was onto prize-givings. The Overall winner was Andras who, with Romans on Day One and Free Companies on Day Two, had fought several battles at the top table, scooping up a massive 30 Tournament points out of a possible 36. Massive congratulations there on a well deserved overall victory!
Pinning my hopes on Best Painted Warlord, I was surprised to (absolutely out of the blue) win Most Sporting/Best Opponent! We’d all been handed a voting slip earlier in the day, and I was absolutely delighted to go away with this prize – I don’t think it’s hard to be a pleasant opponent, but I do find it hard to go into game six with the same energy as game one. I’d really concentrated on being a nice person to play even when things weren’t going my way and it turns out I’d pulled it off! Winning an Age of Chivalry Warlord was a nice plus – he might get turned into a statue to mark the occasion. Most Sporting player is always the accolade I think most highly of at any event I attend, and winning it on the votes of my opponents was the highlight of the weekend.
I was pleased overall with my gameplay – two wins and four losses might not sound like a good record, but for me it was an almost unbelievable result. I ended up 18th (out of 23) which was a little disappointing – one or two more bonus points would have seen me up in the top half! Wherever I ended up, I was pleased to see that in at least three of the games I’d put together a plan and executed it well. There was only one game where I entered without a plan and suffered as a result. I don’t think I fell into many obvious trap choices with my battle boards and could certainly see my improvement as a Saga player from the practice games. I’ll not be challenging top tables any time soon but I feel I’ve learnt enough to crawl my way to at least the chance of a victory, even when playing Bair.
The Grand Melee
The Grand Melee well deserves its reputation as a hard tournament. The games were fierce and uncompromising, the scenarios hugely challenging, interesting and thought provoking and the pace of three games in a day pushing the mental capacity of the players (well, me at least). It was also well organised (thank you Jed and Joe, organisers beyond compare!) and had clearly been incredibly well thought out.
No matter how hard the battles or the pressure exerted by the top Saga players, it was a fantastically open and welcoming event too. Though the same players have been attending for years (decades!) and shared stories of hard fought battles from first edition, times they’d beaten or been crushed by a regular opponent and how they’d played at various tournaments gone by, there was no impression of cliquey-ness or that it was a closed club. I felt very welcomed throughout, included in conversations and treated as having equally worthy opinions – little did they know my saga opinions are terrible, though clearly on the upward trajectory.
Overall I had a great time – not just because I succeeded in three of my four aims! I did get better at Saga, but I also feel like I joined a really great club in the competitive Saga community. It inspired me to play more, think more and practice more. I’ll be there next year, and if you’re a Saga player in the UK (or beyond!) you should be too!
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