A Yuletide Clash - SAGA AAR

With the holiday season in full gear, I'm still looking to get more games played before the end of 2019.

It's been a couple years since I've played Saga, and since that time there's been a release of a whole new edition, along with new expansions like the Book of Battles and the Age of Magic supplement. Meanwhile, my poor Vikings, Anglo-Danes, Welsh and Normans have been languishing away in their foam, untouched and collecting dust.

Josh (my Warlords of Erehwon opponent) just happened to have a Viking army that hasn't gotten any use, along with the new Saga rulebook, the Age of Vikings expansion, and the Viking dice. So we met up at Nerdvana for a straightforward Clash of Warlords to give Josh the opportunity to learn the new rules and for me to forget the old ones.

Josh's warband was led by Ragnar Lothbrok, with two units of four Hearthguard, a unit of Berserkers, a unit of eight Warriors with spears, a unit of six Levy with bows, and a unit of six Levy with spears (not sure if this was legal, but it was how Josh had built the models).

My Norman warband consisted of a Warlord, two units of six mounted Hearthguard, a unit of eight crossbow Warriors, a unit of twelve Levy with bows, and a unit of eight Flemish Mercenaries.

The objective of Clash of Warlords is simple - kill the most enemy models by the end of six turns. You get bonus points for wiping out entire units, and for targeting Legendary Lords (like Ragnar) or mercenaries (like my Flemish warriors).

The setting was a lushy countryside, probably somewhere by the coast in Normandy. The fields and groves were rough ground but provided light cover, while the stone walls provided heavy cover for units behind them.

Most of the fighting went down by the fields and wooded groves. The Vikings advanced across the table, their shields weighted down by the constant rain of arrows and crossbow bolts. The Levy were especially dangerous in this game, their volleys slashing down into the ranks of the northmen.

In the village, one of the Norman Hearthguard units chased down Josh's bow Levy, then danced a little with the Viking Hearthguard nearby. Eventually the two units clashed, and Josh's use of the Viking's Battle Board wiped out my Hearthguard, but not before his own men were cut down.

When the Vikings finally reached the Norman's position, it was with all the fury of a storm as Josh activated his Ragnarok ability. This decreased the armor value of every model on the table, as well at allowed the Vikings to charge without needing to spend a Saga die to activate.

My crossbowmen were slaughtered, but they managed to wipe out most of their attackers in return. And after that, my second unit of Hearthguard charged into the fray, killing the Viking Warriors.

With the mounted knights bearing down on Ragnar, the remaining Viking Hearthguard and Berserker jumped in the way. While they were trampled, they managed to each take down a Norman retainer with them. Then Ragnar lived through sheer bloody-mindedness, taking Fatigue in exchange for all the wounds the Norman knights caused, while cutting down man and horse with ease.

At the end of the fight, Ragnar had defeated his enemies, but most of his raiders had been killed or routed, leaving the Normans with a solid victory.

Both Josh and I enjoyed the game. Saga is a great set of rules for a thematic skirmish game, and I didn't run into anything in V2 that seemed to break immersion, and some of the changes are very welcome (for example, the Manoeuvre rule, which lets units outside of 12" of enemies activate without needing a Saga dice, but can't move within 12" of enemy units).

Hopefully I can bring Saga to the table more in 2020, and Josh is interested in trying the Fantasy version as a comparison to Warlords of Erehwon.

Shocking Results - FiveCore Company Command AAR

Ever since I've stopped playing Flames of War, I've worried about what I was to do with my 15mm WWII collection. I've been running circles in my head - I could rebase everything to single bases and use them for games that work better with that scheme, like Battlegroup or Ain't Been Shot, Mum. Or I could try to adapt the bases to something that uses stands, like Blitzkrieg Commander or Combat HQ.

I've had FiveCore Company Command on my shelf for a while, but it's only been recently that I've actually made any effort to try the rules out for myself. I put together a little solo game to try and familiarize myself with the rules, and they seemed to run pretty well.

So when this month's SJGA meeting was suddenly moved to a different location and they needed some games to play, I threw a bunch of terrain, models, and dice into the back of the car and hoped I'd gotten enough of a handle on the game to run two to four club members through it before I had to head out.

The setup was fairly simple. Two identical forces made up of three platoons of three squads, accompanied by two support sections of machine guns and a medium mortar section. I didn't want to throw too many rules in, so I skipped tanks and anti-tank guns. Both sides were looking to break the enemy morale by removing half the units and panicking or disabling the rest. The British are painted, the Germans aren't (I never got around to it!).

The table was also fairly simple. A river with three crossings (the river itself could be crossed but it's rough ground, and in FiveCore units can't enter and exit rough ground in the same move. So any units moving outside the fords or rivers would be caught out in the open). There's some buildings to block line of sight, and I count two hedges as blocking line of sight if a unit isn't up against them taking cover. I also play that units can't be seen if they're deeper than a half move (3") into area terrain.

The standard activation method for FiveCore has two "stances" - deployment or combat. If a company is in deployment stance, all stands can move, but must stop if they come into line of sight of an enemy unit, and cannot fire. In combat stance, half the units can activate, but they can fire at and assault enemy units. It's easier to get your forces into place with deployment, but units quickly get stuck in place as they draw closer to the enemy.

The firefight began the hedgerows, with John's British putting out enough led to cause Chris' Germans to panic and fall back.

With the river splitting the board, neither side was going to rush out of cover only to be shot at by the either side, so the fight here was a see-saw.

Both sides tried moving out to cross the other ford, but couldn't make progress. John instead decided to have one squad fall back to the second floor of a nearby building to provide cover fire, while the two other squads in the platoon moved through the nearby cover to approach the river.

Unfortunately, that plan fell apart when the Germans launched a risky assault across the river. Supporting fire from a machine gun section took out the squad in the building, and another squad was removed from the Germans in the water.

A quick follow up assault scattered the remaining British squad on that flank, leaving Chris with plenty of space to maneuver his Heer troopers across the river.

The British moved to try and stop the German breakthrough, but were pushed back by a squad in the blue building.

Chris' dice (which had earlier betrayed him and kept his mortar section panicked instead of recovered and firing) continued their revolt. Even with four squads firing at the British in the open, Chris was only able to get a single Man Down result, instead of an Out of Action that would have removed the squad.

However, it wasn't looking good for the Brits. They were outnumbered and slowly being whittled down, with most of their squads either panicking or hiding behind the hedges.

More German fire saw another British squad taken out of action. The Englishmen manning the mortar were the only defense against the oncoming Jerries.

At the end it wasn't enough, however, and the noose around the British was closing ever tighter. 

With most of his company either scattered, wounded, or dead, John decided to retreat rather than fight it out to the bitter end. 

An Untimely Arrival - Muskets & Tomahawks AAR

Since I was back up in my hometown area for Thanksgiving weekend, I reached out to my old group and asked if anyone was up for a game. Carl was interested, and had purchased a couple boxes of Native Americans from Warlord Games at Fall In. So we decided to play Muskets & Tomahawks. 

We set the table up as a colonial settlement surrounded by areas of dense woods. A road cut diagonally through the area.

Carl's Indians got the Raid objective (so he needed to burn the buildings of the settlement before the game ended), while my British had the Defense objective (they needed to keep the Natives away from the buildings before the game's randomly decided end).

Carl had a horde style army, with forty-eight Warriors led by three Sachems. Thanks to the scenario requirements, I started with two units of Rangers and British Indians, along with a Ranger Officer in the settlement. My two units of British Regulars and their Officer started off the table and would come on later according to the dice.

We also decided to use the Subplots. The are supposed to be secret, but since we're pretty unfamiliar with the rules, we just rolled them out in the open. Carl's Officer got "Truce," and so his force had to be fired upon or attacked first. My officer got "Disdained," so not only did my Regular Officer not count as an Officer for all the Morale bonuses and extra actions, but he had to kill d3+2 enemies before his troops started listening to him again (melee kills counted as double)!

So that basically made the game a draw in Carl's favor from the start. With that (and a few muttered words of disdain for my dice), we began.

Since my defenders had to start out in the open (they could have been in the houses, but with so few places to shoot from, they'd just be sitting targets), the lead was flying early in the game. The Natives came on like a tidal wave, hollering and whooping as they fired their muskets. A good volley rocked one of my Ranger units, sending them running from the fight.

The Ranger Officer had his hands full, being outnumbered two-to-one. With only a single unit of Rangers effective, he could only watch as two buildings were quickly set ablaze.

Unfortunately, the reluctant allied Natives weren't all that eager to face off against the enemy tribesmen, and stuck to the fields outside of the settlement.

The British defenders suffered multiple casualties, but gave as good as they got. Forced out of the settlement, they set up in the fields, firing at the Natives as they flitted from building to building.

Carl quickly reached his break point, which saw the Indian Morale card entered into the discard pile. Another building went up in flames, however, and the Regulars were nowhere to be seen!

Braving the colonists' fire, Carl's Natives made it to the safety of the last remaining building while other warriors kept up the pressure on the enemy.

The Regulars finally appeared at the beginning of turn 3, marching up the road in column (their officer, of course, was delayed. No wonder the troops didn't respect him).

And the reinforcements arrived just in time to see the last building catch fire.

Since Carl had completed his objective, along with his side-plot, it was a major victory for the Native Americans. The colonist settlement had been destroyed, and so the invading British would have to fall back to the nearest point of civilization to regroup.

This was a relatively quick playing game, which was probably due to the scenario. It's tough trying to balance line of sight in Muskets & Tomahawks. If a unit can be seen, it can be shot at. And if it can be shot at, it's likely going to lose a model or two (or more, if the dice are hot).

The morale system lends a good feeling of ebb-and-flow to the fight, where models can retreat, collect their heads, and turn back into the fight if they're fresh enough while units that have been beaten down and are out of range of their officers are more likely to flee.

There's more we're likely missing of the rules, but hopefully we can keep getting it to the table. And Carl and I both have our fingers crossed for the release of a second edition that's the same sort of quality as SAGA's version 2.

Command Challenges - Warlord of Erehwon AAR

Recently I met up with Josh, who I'd met when he posted his interest in playing Warlords of Erehwon online. Some of the SJGA members have also been building warbands for Erehwon (and I even got a chance to playtest a scenario with a couple of them), and my Orcs & Goblins for my Classichammer project work perfectly. 

Josh brought his dwarfs, and we both built warbands of 1,000 points (a little under what I'd call a standard sized game, which is 1,250 points.

We decided to play the "Upon the Fields of Battle" scenario, which is a pretty straightforward punch-up, with the goal either being to break the opposing warband (drop them below half their original order dice) or do the most damage after six turns.

The first couple turns were spent by both sides running up the table. There was some exchanges of missile weapons with a few pins and a couple losses, but nothing spectacular occurred.

In the third turn, I got a preview of how the game would do when my Orc Chieftain charged a unit of dwarf Warriors, bounced off, and promptly fled the table after accruing a ludicrous amount of pins thanks to my terrible rolling! My Goblins were much more effective in their long-ranged battle with a unit of Dwarf Rangers.

On the other side of the table, the Orc Chariot bounced off another unit of Dwarf Warriors, while my second mob of Orc Warriors hustled towards the Dwarf Guards, blithely unaware of the fate of their leader.

My Orcs continued to be fed into the meatgrinder, and the Dwarfs happily obliged. Another of my Warrior units was routed and were unable to rally and so ran off the table. My Goblins wore down the Rangers to just the leader left, but they were running out of time as the Dwarf Thane and his retinue approached.

I had to use my Bolt Thrower to rally the routing Chariot, but my Boar Riders routed a unit of Dwarf Warriors, who fled off the table. They were going to have to deal with the Dwarf Guards, who had handily deleted another of my Orc Warrior units.

My Goblins didn't last very long against the Dwarfs (no surprises there), and they were able to take out the remaining Dwarf Ranger before being slaughtered.

And, unfortunately, the Boar Riders weren't going to fair much better. A crossbow bolt un-boared one ride, but the greenskin cavalry passed their break test. They then failed to activate on their turn, which left them in the perfect position to be charged by the Dwarf Guards, who expertly applied their greathammers to Orc and Boar alike, destroying the unit.

By this point, my Warband was reduced to my Goblin Wizard, the Bolt Thrower, and the Chariot. They were out of range of any of the Dwarf units, and we had reached the end of turn six.

With a score of six order dice claimed compared to my single die, Josh and his Dwarfs had a solid victory to take back to their Holds.

While my Orcs and Goblins were pretty well massacred, I had a great time playing. Erehwon's a pretty simple ruleset to pick up with some intricacies that aren't apparent at first. Hopefully we can pitch it to some of the Age of Sigmar players in the area to give it a try, and I'm looking forward to playing more.

Sand in the Eye - Middle Earth SBG Tournament AAR

My second day at Fall In! 2019 was spent in a Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game tournament. 

Earlier this year I decided to jump in feet first as the newest edition has seemed to breath life into the game. I had never really looked at Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings games, and the Hobbit line had left me even colder. 

But the new starter box had piqued my interest, so a couple Amazon purchases later and I had a pretty decent start to a Mordor army. I've added on to it since that to get enough options to mix and match. It was from this that I picked my tournament force.

My first game was against Stephen, who had brought a Mirkwood force. The scenario was Lords of Battle, where each player primarily scored victory points by causing wounds to the opposing force.

I was able to deploy my Orcs in a line, which faced off against two warbands of elves, one led by Thranduil, and another by Legolas.

Since Stephen and I were both relatively new to the game, this ended up being more or less a straight up brawl. The elves' higher Fight saw them winning more combats, but the Morannon Orcs had a higher Strength and could more easily cause wounds. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get Shagrat close to Thranduil to try and draw him into combat, and Stephen was ultimately able to cause more wounds by the time the round ended.

So the first game was a close loss for Mordor.

The second game was against Ted and his Fiefdoms. I quickly learned that this force was all about the overlapping auras that made their infantry living blenders. The scenario was Heirloom of Ages Past, where both sides had to search through six objectives, find the relic, and hold onto it until one side reached 25% of its original size.

It was in this game that I learned to dread the Maelstrom of Battle special rule, where warbands come onto the table randomly, either at the player's choice or their opponent's. While Shagrat was able to move onto the table with relative safety, both Kardush and the Morannon Captain came on right on top of Ted's force. I basically had to watch as two of my warbands were slaughtered.

I then tried to quickly end the scenario by causing my army to reach its 25% limit before the relic had been found, but Ted managed to keep enough of my force alive to secure the objective and kill my banner (which would have given me victory points) to win the game.

It was a second, and much more devastating loss for the forces of Sauron.

My third game was against Nick and his Lothlorien elves. The scenario was Contests of Champions, where a force's leader aims to cause as much damage as possible, and I messed it up from the beginning. Both sides' Leaders have to deploy within 3" of the center, and then deploy their warbands within 6" of the center. I placed Shagrat right out in the center, thinking that Nick's Leader, Galadriel, had to do the same. Instead, Shagrat found himself facing a wall of Galadhrim warriors.

A lucky Priority roll meant that Shagrat wasn't immediately surrounded and chopped to pieces, but that wasn't much of a comfort when he was Commanded through the Lothlorien line over to Galadriel, who proceeded to slap my Leader to death. Since Shagrat hadn't managed to kill even a single elf by that point, it was more or less a total wash at that point. Nick proceeded to spend the rest of the game just aiming to break my force to score the maximum amount of victory points.

Another embarrassing loss for Mordor.

By this point I had become somewhat put out by the beatings I had been getting, especially when I found out I was going to be playing another Maelstrom of Battle scenario against Rainier and his all-mounted (and fantastic looking) Khand army. The scenario was Hold Ground, where both sides needed to control an objective in the center of the table by the (randomly decided) end of the game.

My only goal was to lose as quickly as possible to get the game over with, which was facilitated when Shagrat failed to show up the first turn, while the Morannon Captain and Kardush ended up on opposite ends of the table with plenty of Khandish horsemen and their chariot-riding heroes for company. I abandoned any pretensions of cohesion for the warbands and just throw them at the horsemen when I had priority. Doing so, I was actually able to kill off the Khandish King with a horde of regular Orc Warriors and Orc Trackers.

Shagrat's warband came on at the end of the second turn in yet another area, seperated from the rest of the Mordor army. So I just marched him and the rest of his warband towards the center. More through dumb luck than any amount of skill, Shagrat ended up being the only model within 6" of the objective when my army broke and the game ended, which meant I had managed a win by a slim margin.

I have to admit, the games I played were somewhat discouraging, even at such a low points value. I felt like I kept coming up against players who were far better than me, but only had losses on their records because they had been up against even better players. I certainly learned plenty about the rules, but these were harsh lessons.

I do plan to go to another tournament in January, but this event has opened my eyes to how rough a treatment I'll probably get there as well. In the future, I'll probably spend my HMGS events trying out participation games, rather than trying my hand at MESBG.