Time for another Wednesday wargaming battle report. This time we decided to play a game of Saga to get some practice in before some tournaments in November. Well I am still undecided if I will play in the one at Fall-In or not but either way.
I decided to go with a Norman army for a change. This army is not very good due to allot of their abilities needing 2 dice to activate and also not being very good and needing certain dice. But I decided to give it another try and see if I can get it working for me. My plan was to use a religous adviser as my Warlord. This gives some extra Saga dice, so I hoped that would make the difference. He lets you roll 7 and can take a fatigue to roll 2 more.
The vikings had the standard fare with Harald and his guard and what have you. Serge has painted up his own army of Vikings so they are who you will be seeing.
We played the first scenario in Crescent and Cross which is just a 6 turn battle for slaughtering victory points. Nice and easy.
Here we are after my first turn. My plan is to use my bow men and cross bows to whittle down the viking units and the counter attack at the end with 3 units of knights. This turn went pretty good and I shot up 4 viking warriros and moved up my warriors to protect my crossbows from the guard.
The vikings pressed in with the guard and killed all but 2 of my warriors. The other guys hid in the woods from my arrows. So far this is going according to my plan.
Now was my turn to try and get lucky with shooting. The peasants went first to draw out defensive abilities, so they tried to shoot first but moved instead and then shot. Then 2 rounds of shooting for the cross bows. Sadly with the guards high armor of 6 and no luck for me only 1 died. Was hoping to do a bit better. Then I moved back the 2 warriors.
On the viking turn the annoying guard came forward and murdered my cross bow guys, and the warriors got rid of my 2 guys. That is a loss of 2 Saga dice which is not ideal.
Now I had to decided to charge with the knights or shoot again. Against my better judgement I decided to charge. I paid for that by loosing 2 knights and killing 0 guards. Should have ignored them and just shot the warriors.
The guards the of course rounded up the last 2 knights. So really feeling low on dice now.
I decided to try a charge again but at a much weaker opponent. I was hoping to get really lucky and score 2 units. So my archers fired at the small units of viking warriors and killed half. Then my Knights charge the big unit and killed half.
The vikings countered this by having the guard kill half of my peasant archers and the Berserkers finally came out from their hiding place.
Next turn I tried my 2 unit killing plan again the same way and had some more success, getting both units! But now I am down to 6 knights 6 archers and a priest. So not really allot of killing potential.
The Berserkers did a combined charge against my knights with the big boss and killed them both, annoyingly one berserk survived.
I made a very desperate last attempt with the last of the Knights to kill Harald as this was the only hope for victory now. But I lost half and didn't even get close. Although it was a possibility so worth a shot right.
The vikings used their last turn to clean up the knights with the stupid Varangian Guard who still have taken just 1 casualty! Leaving just my Priest to beat a hast retreat.
This left the score as something like 24 to 13 ish for the Vikings.
I thought my plan for the archers was working pretty good, but the armor of the guard was just a bit to high. I think this has finally proved to me that the cross bow guys are useless for the Normans. The guard are their ideal opponent actually and they only killed 1. My plan is to try with 2 units of archers next weak with William the Bastard to lead.
Well hope you enjoyed this report, tune in next week for another go. Serge is going to try out an Anglo Dane army with Egil and his Mercenaries.
Thanks;
Mike
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