Lenoon’s Road to the Saga Grand Melee: Part 2

This article is part of a series. For part one, click here. 

The Grand Melee is just under two months away. Last time I looked at my general Saga playing ability (poor) and the armies I was considering. With several options and two armies to take for the weekend, it wasn’t the clearest or most convincing start. Since then I’ve managed to get some games in – this did not, unfortunately, clarify very much!

Some of these games have been practice games against myself – Normans Vs Saracens. Lots of proxying, a fair bit of walking back mistakes, trying to remember that rolling more saves is good, not bad. These have been very useful test games, and I feel pretty confident that both battle boards work – I know the key abilities, the basic combinations that power the engines and when it’s a good idea to channel dice into activations and when to hold them back for big plays. With those practice games under my belt, and with the organisational power of our own Bair, I went down to Bad Moon for three games of Saga – three opponents and three very different lists. It should not surprise you that I lost all three.

I took my Saracens down – not because I know the Normans any better than them (and therefore need the practice), but that I like the models more. I think I’ve done a pretty good job, particularly on the cavalry – keeping them diverse in the same overall colour scheme. I thought they were done, actually, but in making the list found that I need to finish off three more warriors and one hearthguard – nearly done!

I took a pretty standard cavalry heavy list, comprising:

• Warlord
• One point of Hearthguard (mounted)
• Three points of Mounted Warriors
• One point of Foot Warriors
• One point of Levy (Bows)

I wanted to try out two combinations – one with no proxying (one unit of cavalry with composite bows), and one where every cavalry model had a composite bow. Composite bows are powerful, but tricky to use, requiring multiple activations to pull off. The overall strategic plan was to push cavalry up danger close, then activate (for free!) to shoot, move, shoot again and then use thoroughbred (aiming for this every turn) to retreat well out of range and recover some fatigue.

Let’s see how that went!

Game One – Jim’s Normans

I went pretty confidently into this one – knowing both boards pretty well and what everyone was capable of! We went for the standard Clash of Warlords scenario, and rolled the terrifyingly close mid-line deployment option. That meant cavalry vs cavalry and almost guaranteed first turn charges.

I used the board well this game, bringing up my warriors and levy quickly with Appeal to the Prophet, and getting some good uses of Brotherhood and Coordination off. I managed to quickly clear out the Norman cavalry and put some fatigue on the warlord, but then it got close and tight – and very quickly devolved into a mess. Jim is a great guy to play, so when things got messy it just got more fun.

In the end, I couldn’t finish off big units of warriors in time, losing Hearthguard to crossbows and rolling poorly to never quite get enough kills to knock out Saga dice. It was a fairly close loss in the end, but a loss nonetheless. I made a couple of key mistakes in this game with the battle board:

• Brotherhood – activate a unit to shoot and get additional attack dice on the charge. A powerful ability, but I used it consistently with the levy bowmen. That meant I had to manage getting two units into range on the right target – not too hard, but difficult to pull off when I needed it. Partnering a composite bow unit and a mounted warrior unit together would have been much more useful, letting me pounce on isolated units and knock them out.
• Armour piercing shafts – you just straight up can’t get 12 mounted warriors within S of another unit. I put dice on this three times and never managed to use it.
• Thoroughbred – movement that loses fatigue is fantastic, but I usually used it to move up towards and enemy, then shot, then moved away. That meant all my units ended up incredibly fatigued on very few activations. I should have planned ahead – get my units up to within bow range, then shoot and use thoroughbred to run away, or charge and use thoroughbred to sod off afterwards.

Bair’s Pagan Rus

What was very obvious in the first game was that my list was capable of stacking a huge amount of fatigue on itself – very rest hungry and really needing a warbanner (and priest) to clear off as much fatigue as possible at the start of the turn. I thought I could put this into practice in the next game, using all composite bows.

Which was of course, Pagan Rus. Masters of inflicting a preposterous amount of fatigue, at range, at will. Uh-oh. Bair is a lovely opponent, but a bloody game wizard and armed with the ability to put down a damn ruler and inflict fatigue all the way along it? This was not, in the end, at all close.

That makes it sound worse than it was. I made a few big plays on fine margins – for once actually thinking it through – and lost out to some poor dice rolls when I needed them most. I made some terrible calls on deployment – more than fast enough to refuse flanks and redeploy – and completely forgot to use Ruse to clear off Bair’s board when he was holding dice back for reactions.

Laura’s Anglo Danes

I’d not played Anglo Danes before, so I was looking forward to this one – hit like Vikings, defend like Anglo-Saxons, which sounded pretty great! I thought carefully about deployment, trying to go for a classic encirclement with the cavalry while claiming objectives with the infantry.  Laura was a great opponent and this was a great game – a fast moving cavalry force against a brick wall of mail and shield. It was a difficult match up for the Saracens, as the Anglo Danes have fantastic fatigue-inflicting abilities, and Laura rolled incredibly well getting the rare dice to power them up. I had to constantly adjust my approach to avoid exhausting units, but never managed to plan ahead to do this – Laura very kindly allowing me to walk back an activation when I hadn’t properly understood the abilities that were stacking fatigue on me!

This was another game that was close until it wasn’t, and I lacked the killing power to finish off units. I don’t think I took a Saga dice off the board until turn 5, though I was losing a unit every turn. I could have kept my cavalry out of range of the Levy bowmen, but I didn’t, and amazingly those Levy just kept taking out Hearthguard and Warriors until there were bugger all left to remove.

I really focused in on this game – which is why I have no photos of it at all – and had a great time. The thing that stuck with me though wasn’t learning anything about the Saracen board – after turn two I knew exactly what I was doing wrong (I didn’t stop doing it wrong though) – but that the Anglo-Dane board (and models!) were much more interesting than my Normans.

Anglo-Danes on the Horizon

A really fantastic day all round – thanks Jim, Laura and Bair! I’ve learnt a lot – I need more practice with the Saracens, clearly, because I didn’t even really come close to a victory in all three games. I’ll carry on practicing with them, and I’ll even finish off the last unpainted models I need for a 28 cavalry list. The main takeaway though was that playing against the Anglo-Danes made me want to play with them, with a very different style to the mobile Saracens. I more or less have that army already – the Normans – and switching would mean I could paint 8 warriors with big axes, rather than 16 Norman Cavalry.

I immediately picked up some Footsore Huscarls and dug out some spare Victrix Anglo Danes and – once they’re painted – I’ll have a big slab of Anglo Danes with a banner and priest, aiming to leave my troops as fresh as a daisy throughout the game while they crush exhausted, staggering opponents. As I’m using mainly Norman models, I’m going to scatter in some round shields and more axes but keep the Norman kit. I’m not sure if this makes the army more or less accurate to the “real” look of the Anglo-Danes, but it’ll definitely make them look like the defenders at Hastings according to the Bayeux Tapestry, so that’s all to the good (see the banner for three painted examples!).

With about six weeks to go, I’m hoping to – somehow – get ten more games in. We’ll see how that goes! In the meantime, there’s still some painting to do. The one thing I did completely finish though was the objectives I need to take to the Grand Melee, and that’s a good point to end on – I can complete one thing at least!

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