Saga: There's a Gael Blowing in...

Shortly before Xmas I had my first game for about 5 years(!) with Paul, a big Dark-ages fan with some excellent brush skills:

Some of Paul's Anglo-Danish

His warlord, sticking it to one of the enemy!

 As to the games, in the course of an afternoon we managed to run through three different Saga battles, beginning with the Warlord Duel scenario - where each Warlord has 12 wounds and the first man down loses:

For the first game I used 6 points of Vikings, including a fair mix of men.  My Warlord had to go forward to face Paul's Anglo-Danish leader, and initially came off the worst, losing four of his wounds for two in exchange.

However, I was able to sneak my Besirkir into the line, and target the Warlord.  Nothing in the scenario said I needed to kill the enemy leader by my own leader's hand!

In typical Besirkir fashion, they died to a man in the attack, but in inflicting 14 wounds on Paul's warlord their sacrifice also assured my victory.

For our next game we opted for the escort scenario, and I changed to one of the new forces from the 'Raven's Shadow' supplement - the Norse Gaels.

Paul had to try to get at least two out of three religious souls off my side of the table.  He began by pushing down his left.  My axemen tried to intervene.

The Norse Gaels work on the principle of fighting challenges with the enemy; one on one combats which boil down to a single opposed roll.  Should the Norse Gaels win, they can then apply specific advantages to the ensuing melee, most of which will ensure the odds stack well in their favour.  A real gamblers army.

So whilst the left larger went Paul's way, in the centre my men smashed the escort and sent it running.

 Sadly for me, with nothing left to cover the left, Paul saw his opportunity and kept on running, forsaking fatigue to put as much ground between him and I, leading him to victory.

Honours were even then, and there was time for a final game.  For which Paul switched to his Vikings.  I stuck to the Gaels, but decided to take their special character, ending up with a force purely formed of noble warriors.  Seeing this and given that we decided on the most basic 'Warlord' scenario, Paul opted for his own special Character too.  As we prepared to engage, it was fair to say we both had very similar forces.

But in this second battle, the Norse Gaels challenges were particularly effective; allowing me to take down one of Pauls units of Hearthguard in short order.  Allowing us to outflank his force.

Paul took his remaining force forward into my second line, but the combo of my battleboard and some fortunate dice rolls was such that I was able to heavily deplete his lines without losing so many of my own.

Paul then forgot himself, it's fair to say, and used his Warlord as a main attacker against my right flank.  The resultant skirmish saw a stain of Viking warlord blood on the dirt road as my axemen again did their execution.

And so I took the prize in the final game.  I may not be able to stop religion in it's tracks, but a hairy bloke with an axe never proved to be a problem!

The new boards add some different aspects to the game and are, if the one I used is typical, quite entertaining.  They are certainly distinct enough from the originals to be interesting, and not too repetitive.  As for getting a game against Paul again, well that was its own reward.