My First Game of Saga - Vikings versus Scots

Big thanks to Andrew for helping Olivier and myself through our first game.  I am very happy to say my investment in figures, rules and dice plus time was well rewarded by a very enjoyable and tense game.  The scenario was a basic six turns to kill the opposing warlord.  As raw novice players we were a little bit over generous with the terrain.

I ran one unit of beserkers, four 8 man units of warriors and a unit of 12 bow armed levy.  The Scots had three units of 8 man warriors, one 8 man hearthguard and 12 bow armed levy.

The forces as seen from my left flank.

The forces on my right.

My bow advanced and started shooting, they came off the worse for it, but did get one of the enemy Hearthguard.

Then some Scots warriors got stuck into my levy.  Remarkably they survived.

I made my first serious attack with some warriors against the Scot's Hearthguard.  I sacrificed to Valhalla, but to little good.

The dice tell the story - you need fives or better to get hits on Hearthguard.  I had some back up moves (like rerolling misses), but didn't realise they had to be declared before combat.

However, while not pictured, my second unit of warriors on the right finished off the enemy Hearthguard, but the cost was high - I had one warrior left out of the sixteen committed.

My beserkers hacked the warriors that had attacked my levy to bits although Loki had to finish them off later (remove enemy unit with three figures of less and not Hearthguard).

I had six levy, two beserkers and one warrior to protect my Warlord and all were fatigued.  I started pulling back.

Action then slowly developed on the right, around some rocky ground.

The Scots are two weak to take advantage of my much diminished centre and right.

So they get stuck into the left.  The advantage was mine as I had them down to scoring hits on a two or better.  Again the die tell the story.  However it was not all one-sided and both this unit of Scots and the other remaining one were held and repulsed,

Victory went to my Vikings when we counted up the losses.

Excellent game.  Lots of decisions to make, but only simple rules to contend with.