Friday, November 04, 2011

A quick look at Saga

Not the holiday company thankfully, I've plenty of time before I'm eligible for that; no the recent Dark Age Skirmishing rules from Gripping Beast.


The rules are nice and glossy, and well presented, but at £25 or so for 75 pages and four playsheets, even in full colour, as a paperback edition these seem overpriced.

Still the gameplay looks to be very nice, the formations are small and loose and command and control is based on the roll of a number of specially marked D6 (you can use normal ones too).  Once rolled, the results of these will allow the player to allocate them to different actions, some basic - such as moving or fighting a round of melee - and others more specialised, and unique to each nation, e.g. Intimidation and so on.


I must admit to not paying enough attention to the combat mechanism, but it seemed straightforward enough (I wasn't actually playing, in my defence).  As did morale.

Overall my main concerns are thus twofold; the price and the flexibility.  Skirmish rules cannot restrict themselves to stand-up fights, I don't see any reason why they cannot work with a variety of scenarios, but these may as much down to the inventiveness of the players...

Additionally, this was the first day of the Leeds Nightowls new venue actively running.  The space is very comfortable, but mayber not as roomy as we first thought:


However, should we take a long term lease on the space there is the offer of the converted basement space for the same price, which would more than double our capacity, should we need it...

3 comments:

  1. I've not bought the rules yet, we usually play games with 2 or three a side, do you think the game will work with three armies per side or will it not work at all?

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  2. Our group is much the same as Ray's. 6 of us, so 3 a side. I haven't had a go at these rules yet but am also interested in using them for a group of guys.

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  3. I would reckon that each player would be able to field a small warband of aligned troops, and by judicious use of different coloured dice, they would be easily able to work off a single copy of the rules.

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