Anyway, I did make it to gaming today. For something a little different, Mark gave me a game of Saga since I've been curious about it for some time.
I decided to try a force of Scots, whilst Mark tried Normans.
My force (4pts) was:
Warlord
2 units of 4 Hearthguard (combined to make a unit of 8)
1 unit of 8 Warriors
1 unit of 12 Levies (with javelin)
Mark's Normans were (I think):
Warlord (mounted)
2 units of 4 Hearthguard (mounted and combined to a unit of 8)
2 units of 8 Warriors
Some handy Lord of the Rings models were sub'ed in to represent the forces. My forces being the Urak-Hai & Easterlings.
Deployment:
The Urak-Hai pikemen are the hearthguard. The Easterlings are my levies.
Bascially I had no idea what was going on, but we got underway and Mark showed me how quickly things can happen. This was done by basically using multiple activation's to charge his knights (hearthguard) forward....
Luckily I'd put a Saga die on the Scots "Run Away" ability, so the charging knights were somewhat mystified to see the Scot levies quite quickly move out of the way revealing the Scot hearthguard. So another activation was used for the knights to charge into my hearthguard..
A number of dice rolls later....
I couldn't really figure out the Scot's board and had thought I could only use most of the abilities in the turn where I was active, so I never really used any of the abilities. On re-reading near the end of the game, I think I can use them in any melee (which made more sense and would make the abilities much more useful!).
From here, the Normans continued to advance with a unit of Norman warriors charging my levies. Who ran away. Again :) So, the warriors about faced and charged my hearthguard.
This should be good I thought.... till I rolled some rubbish dice.
And lost the combat with the hearthguard having to break-off. My own warriors and warlord charged and dealt with the pesky warriors leaving Mark with very few options.
Other than to keep charging my levies with his warlord forcing them back...
And then into my warriors, but here I had figured out one of my abilities. I had my Saga dice on "A Barrier Of Spears" and I was able to use fatigue to increase my armour. This gave me a few extra dice!
The end result... 2 hits on Mark's warlord =
So... thoughts. I'm still curious. It was a little hard with not really understanding the battle board and what I could/couldn't do. A few more games will sort that out. As for a force, I was interested in Scots (I like Scotland :) ), but they may be too defensive for me? I might try a couple of other boards out over the next few weeks. My only other rule will be no horses.... I hated painting 15mm horses, so I really don't like the idea of painting 28mm horses! As for the levies... I couldn't really see the point of them?
Whilst Mark and I were playing, Rob and Phil rolled out a game of Bolt Action on a table utilising Phil's recent Sarissa purchases. The table looked pretty cool....
I'm not sure what the final result was, so keep an eye out on Rob's blog...
Rob was fielding one of the Japanese tankettes... it's so tiny! :)
I ended the day with a quick stop in at Ardmore to have a play with some photography only to find the place dead quiet with nothing really flying. So it was off home for a cuppa.
Finally, just to show that I have actually been doing some painting... I finally based my first two Bolt Action squads this week:
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the result. The faces need a bit of tidy up, but otherwise they're done. I may do insignia at some point... but may not :) Plenty more units to go yet. Hopefully I can get a few vehicles done over the next couple of weeks.
I had a very similar first experience with SAGA. I played the Scots and had little to no idea what I was doing. The key difference was I got my backside handed to me! The Scots are a tricky force for a beginner. A lot of their abilities are defensive so you need to be able to read the game and force/lure your opponent into traps. They can be very potent, but do need a bit of experience to figure out.
ReplyDeleteAs for Levy, at four points they are hard to justify. They don't generate any SAGA dice, and I've found there's just no balance in having them. At six points, it's a whole different story. Having some sort of missile option is very useful, and in many factions levy are the only way to get this. It also doesn't matter too much if they die as you have more other units to keep up your pool of SAGA dice. They make a great meat shield or a way to draw out enemy units so your hard-hitters can get stuck in.
The Bolt Action figures look great too :-)
Thanks Paul. I had read similar comments about the Scots. With them being quite defensive, I'm not sure they're the right force for me. As for the levies, I could see how using them to bait enemy troops and then running away would be quite effective. I think Mark wants to try out a Militant Orders list next week, so I my try out a list from C&C next time.
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