Battle Report - Double Feature - SAGA & Dead Mans Hand

Hello Folks,

So we got together for the usual Wednesday wargaming. This time I had just painted a few Rus, and Serge had just finished him Dead Mans Hand Outlaws gang. So we decided to just play both games! No messing around here.

SAGA - Rus Princes vs Vikings

So I was excited to try out the other Russian army, and Serge wanted to try some Vikings as they were being considered as an option for our upcoming tournament. I also used this as an opportunity to try out some different Viking options, so I talked him into the Harald Hardrada hero, which allows you to upgrade some units to Varangian Guard, which have armor 6 and great axes, and Harald has armor 6 and gets 3 Saga dice. I basically just used the start box army for the Rus Princes, which turned out to be a huge mistake but oh well.

I decided to try some more unusal mission, so we went for the Escort scenario with the Vikings attacking. I couldn't find any suitable baggage, so I used some extra Viking Warlords as prisoners, the 2 guys on the road. So I had to take them off the far edge, before the Vikings could kill them. Which was not possible really but it's mainly to give something to fight over. As you can see I have 2 mounted durzhina units, some warriors, and levy bow men, the Vikings have Harald, berserkers, varangian guard, and warriors.

On turn one I just moved most of my forces up, and set my one mounted unit on a trip around to flank the vikings and pick off the berserkers with some javelins is the plan. The Rus have a battleboard ability for that.

The Vikings moved their forces up keeping together. On my next turn I tried my parting shot, but only killed one of them. So that is going to be a dead mounted unit. I moved up some more troops, using the captives as bait.

As predicted the Berserkers made short work of my mounted unit, and embarrassingly one survived! Then the Viking warriors moved up and killed a baggage guy, only to be counter attacked by the other Durzhina unit on my turn, again 1 survived so that is becoming a problem.

This started to look very grim around this time, the Vikings still had 6 dice, and I was down to only 4, and they still had the hard to kill Varagians around.

This murder men along with Harald beat up the rest of my forces, with only minor losses.

They axed down my warlord finally leaving me with no Saga dice, so a victory for the Vikings. Harald and his boys were dangerous and hard to damage, but I think it was the levy that cost me the game. In a 4 point game you just don't have enough dice to bring them into the battle effectively and do some damage, and to make it worse I also had to move around the baggage guys. But a fun game never the less.

Dead Mans Hand: The Quick and the Lead

I am a bit less solid on the pictures for this game, as it was getting a bit later and we were rushing to get this in.

This scenario starts off with a classic draw scene, 2 men with pistols meet at 20 paces and draw down on each other. I set in my one-armed deputy, against the funny hat Outlaw. The way this works in the game is each player deals 6 cards face down to represent the bullets and then you play a game of basically blackjack off each one. Whoever gets the closest to 21 shoots first and adds the difference to his roll to try and get a kill, then the other returns with no bonus. If you go over 21 you loose nerve and miss the shot. The Outlaw got the draw the first time and put a pin on one armed Jack, 3 and your out. But then I got lucky and won almost all the rest of the hands by repeatedly drawing 18, so the Outlaw was put out of action on the 5th shot I believe.

The second scene starts with another duel, but this time the gangs are getting into things as well, so they are in the buildings around waiting for trouble. On turn 1 only the duelists get to go and then everything breaks loose. The first to loose 2 models is out.

If I remember right one arm guy got the drop again and managed to kill that guy giving me an early lead, but the Outlaws were quick to take him out as well. Then later on the Outlaws gunsligner and my citizen with a shot gun shot each other point blank in the hard ware store. They both died so we had a draw for round 2.

For round 3 you set up gangs on opposite sides of the table and just have a big scrum. The first gang to loose a big nerve test and leave town is the looser. This one includes a very interesting special rules which allows either player to request a shot of whisky when setting up, so I had to give Serge a shot!

Well this only made him more lucky I guess. This battle had tons of guys running out of ammo and killing each other. On the last turn we both were below half and had to test or run, the Outlaws Passed on a 9, and the Law failed on a 1 and left town.

So there is another fun game in the old west. I was short a guy so had to put the bar man in the mix and he sadly was shot.


Thanks;
Mike