Off to Valhalla

Friday night rolled around, and after a long tiring week, it was good to get out for a quick game of Saga.

My arrival timing was perfect as Lee had just finished his game against Ian, so I was straight into a game.

We settled on a 4 pt Saga game and the river crossing mission was chosen.

I would play Vikings vs. Ian's Scots.

My force was pretty simple...

Warlord
4 Hearthguard
4 Hearthguard
8 Warriors
8 Warriors

Ian's was pretty much the same.

We deployed.

I split my force equally across the two fording points. Ian put 2 Hearthguard at one ford and his Warriors at the other.

My plan was simple and what I figured the Viking way would be - get stuck in as quick as possible!

Some good Saga dice rolling allowed me to load up with Frigg, Thor & Heimdal in turn 1.

Frigg gave me the double move I needed to get into combat in the first turn...

An awesome roll resulted in a number of Scot Warrior casualties, but unfortunately Heimdal was a bigger double edged sword than I realised (drops my armour). On reflection, I suspect Heimdal is best used when your opponent has some fatigue on them....

7 Scottish Warriors were dead, but so were 3 of my Hearthguard. And then the inevitable happened....

At the second ford, I'd moved my Warriors up to at least slow the Scottish Hearthguard in the next turn...

The Scots charged with Ian using a dirty trick of concentrating on one side of my Warrior unit to cut down my attack dice! Something I'll have to remember for the future.... :-)

Although, somehow casualties were light.

My second Warrior unit now joined the fray after I used Loki to destroy the Scot Warrior unit with only 1 model remaining...

The result was not so good though.

If I recall correctly, the Scots have an ability to roll Saga dice out of turn which gave Ian a number of abilities to use. Oh well, we're going down fighting!

I came up with a cunning plan for my second Hearthguard unit.... charge the Scot Hearthguard unit with only 3 models (would be 4 vs. 3) and when they bounce, use Frigg to finish them off! That was the plan anyway....

Shame I couldn't roll enough hits.

A final throw of the dice sees my Warlord charge the Scottish Warlord. You can guess the result :-)

My Warlord is killed effectively ending the game. A solid victory to the Scots and a good brutal game which was fun to play.

I knew I was onto the right tactics with double moves and Frigg, but I'm not sure on using Heimdal like I was. I would have perhaps been better placed to use those dice to get some supporting units up, i.e. getting my Warriors up to protect my Hearthguard in turn 1!

Oh and roll better, always roll better :-)

A few quick shots of some of the other action on offer...

And one shot of a very happy gamer... shame the end result of that game was a draw... :-)

Thanks for reading.