2019-06-23, SAGA Age of Magic, 2nd Test Game

This time we added the rules for Lieutenants and Creatures. Ulolkish brought his Dwarves and borrowed my two bears, and I fielded a force consisting of Moria Goblins and some Citadel Dire Wolves I bought painted a couple of years ago, as I only have two painted riderless Wargs, and needed four for this warband.

On my first turn (above) I let the Wolves advance fast on my right flank, while the rest of my warband manoeuvered forward.

The Dwarves (below) also advanced, but kept their Bears close to their flank.

On my second turn, my Wolves swept in and attacked the Bears. I annihilated the enemy Creatures (I rolled a bucket of dice, and we got the Resilience rule wrong), but two of my Wolves also bought it in the process.

Then the Dwarven Warriors killed off my Wolves (Creatures are really a glass hammer, even though we did not get the Resilience rule right), and both some Warriors and their Hearthguards advanced on my left.

My Warriors then fought the Dwarves who just killed the Wolves, but failed to defeat them and had to retire. My Hearthguards charged the Dwarven Lieutenant, killed him losing 3(!) models in the fight, while my Warriors an the left fell back behind the woods to avoid getting hammered 1-2 by the two units threatening them.

The Dwarves followed and charged my Warriors on the left, but the fight was a drawn, and the Dwarves had to fall back.

Then, I lost the game by the Dwarven Levy scoring 3 hits on 4 dice on my Hearthguards with their bows. I did not manage to save any if the hits, and my Hearthguards were annihilated. Sorely disappointing performance, but, well, it is Goblins...

The next turn, on the right my Goblins and the Dwarves decimated each other, and my Warlord finished off the enemy unit. There was some ineffective fighting on the left.

On the next turn, my Warriors on the right were reduced to 3 figures, and I would now had only my Warlord generating SAGA Di(c)e, and I did not see any reason to continue the fight. Again, one single roll completely statistically off was the main reason for the final outcome; had my Hearthguards unlikely demise not happened, they could have charged the Levies and probably dispatched them without being wiped out themselves, I would still have a SAGA Dice generating unit, and would have stood a chance against the Dwarven Hearthguards.

Conclusion:

We still need to play more times to get the rules properly memorized, but this game gave me some understanding of how this edition of the game works.

Tactics are not really important; you do not get a bonus from charging, and the 2nd Ed. rules have all members of a unit in combat fight, so you cannot out-manoeuver an enemy unit, hitting it in the flank to reduce the number of models fighting your charging unit (this was possible in 1st Ed.).

Instead, it is important to hold off, until you have those killer combos on your Battle Board, giving you an edge when actually duking it out with the enemy.

Characters, although packing a lot of dice for single minis, are not really fighting  machines. They are great for mopping up the leftovers from earlier scraps, but as the Warlord's ability from 1st Ed. to fight 'side by side' with another unit by using 'We Obey' has been left out of 2nd Ed., I find him too difficult to use in an offensive role, as his Hearthguard Bodyguards are often too far away.

I may suggest we go back to using some of the rules as they were in 1st Ed., to add more tactics to the gameplay, as games may otherwise turn into very defensive affairs, if none of the sides can get the SAGA dice results they want, and do not want to risk their troops without proper Battle Board support.

2019-06-10.: SAGA AoM, Kingdoms vs Horde Test Game

Ulolkish and I met up in Argonor's Attic yesterday evening to finally try out SAGA Age of Magic.

We had agreed to play 4 points 'plain', that is without any of the new stuff, such af Creatures and Magic, and I had built a Gondor warband using the Great Kingdoms, 3 points of Warriors in 2 units of 12, and 1 point of Levies in 1 unit.

Upon Ulolkish' arrival, he made a Goblin Horde list comprised of 1 point of Hearthguards, 2 points of  Warriors in 2 units of 8, and 1 point of Levies in 2 units of 6.

We simply lined up our warbands 12" in on my large table, and Ulolkish started his first Turn.

Both warbands made extensive use of the Manoeuvre rule during the first two Turns, only rolling and placing SAGA Dice for practice purposes.

On my third Turn, both my Warrior units charged home, the first annihilating the Goblin Hearthguards, the second almost destroying a Hoblin Warrior unit. We forgot to use each other's Fatigue during the Melee, but that is just a lesson learned.

The Goblin Warlord then charged and beat back the Warriors on my flank -

- and the other Warrior unit took one casualty from the Goblin Levy on the hill.

By then, it was almost 11 pm, and as I wanted to get up early and see off Lea for a four day field trip to Copenhagen, we called it a night.

Casualty count was very even, I think I may have been slightly in the lead because of the destroyed Hearthguard unit, but that might have changed quickly with just a few below-average rolls.

All-in-all it was an enjoyable experience, and I look forward to play SAGA a lot more! I am certain that Kevin is also interested in playing the 'historical' version of the game, and as the game flow is almost identical in SAGA 1 and SAGA 2, we should be able to get the rules 'worked in', so as to not have to look up rules all the time (we did that a lot yesterday, as it always happens with new or not so often played games).

2019-05-20: Age of Fantasy, First Game

An entire table of Ziterdes ruins!

Ulolkish and I played the standard basic game with the recommended starting forces of 150 pts. each, and rolled up four objectives to place on the table.

The Mortal Gods bases are just for convenience, as most groups are 3 strong.

In all my eagerness, I forgot to take a photo of the initial setup, but it was pretty straightforward. I won the roll off, chose table edge, and moved first on the first Round.

In the first couple of Rounds, we forgot to make Fear Tests when my Undead came into contact with enemies, but all in all we rather quickly got to grips with the rules (especially considering we just played four hours of God of Battles).

I very quickly seized 3 of the 4 objectives, while the last one was contested.

The Necromancer tried raising some Zombies, but without any luck.

Skeleton Horsemen apparently are made of glass (or very brittle bone) - after killing one Gondor Fiefdom Warrior off at impact, my lone rider hit the dust. Argonor kept muttering incantations, but nothing happened...

I managed to seize the fourth objective, but was about to loose the one in the center of the board.

Which happened soon enough. My lacking ability to roll more than 2 on a D6 still kept Argonor from bolstering the ranks of the Undead with some not so fresh meat.

On Round 4, a lone surviving Fiefdom Warrior leapt for the objective on my far right, and managed to seize it - and Argonor finally succeeded in summoning a bunch of Zombies, which kept the objective in the building on my left from being taken by some Warriors of Minas Tirith.

End Score: 2-2 - a fitting end for our first foray into One Page Rules!

I showed OPR Grimdark Skirmish to Ulolkish afterwards, as I think it quite possible that we might dust off some of our old W40K minis for a scrap now and then, knowing we can set up and play a game in less than 1½ hours, and he seemed to agree.

2019-05-20: God of Battles, Undead vs Dwarves

Some might say I am a bit of a masochist, as I keep inviting Ulolkish  to play his Dwarves against my Undead, but we still had some house rules playtesting to do, and it feels appropriate to keep testing with the same two armies.

This time we tested this:

Pushbacks

When a melee has been fought (both sides having attacked), the unit inflicting the most casualties is the winner of that combat.

When two Formed Units (or a Formed Unit and a Tenacious Loose Unit) are fighting, instead of being locked in place until one is destroyed, use the following:

The winner decides if if he wants to Push Back the loser. I he does not decide to do so, the units remain in place. If the winner decides to Push Back, the loser is moved 4 inches directly backwards, and the winner is moved forward and placed in contact with the winner.

and:

Necromancer

When the top card of the Power Deck is flipped to attempt Raising a skeleton, if the card flipped is not of a value sufficient to raise the type of skeleton the Necromancer wishes, the Necromancer may play additional cards from his Power Hand, as if powering a Miracle.

The combined Power Value MUST equal or surpass the points cost of the target unit – for instance, you must have a combined value of at least 12 to raise an Undead Knight, although an unmodified flipped ‘10’ is enough for raising any kind of Undead model. (This part we introduced in our last game, and we have decided to keep it.)

Raise Dead

As we do not feel the Necromancer's innate ability, even with the above augmentation, to raise 1 Skeleton whenever one or more enemies are slain is providing a proper necromantic feel, we now introduce a new Necromancer Miracle:

Raise Dead
Target: Friendly eligible Undead Unit (see Effect)
Cost: 10
Effect: Raise 1 Guardian of Midnight, OR 1 Undead Knight, OR up to2 Skeleton Warriors, OR up to 3 Skeleton Archers, OR up to 4 Skeletons (Horde) and add them to a unit of the appropriate type which has suffered casualties (it may not exceed its original size).
Duration: Instant


The Necromancer may choose this Miracle to be part of his Miracle Hand, but by doing so he forfeits his right to discard one of the Miracle Cards he then draws to complete his hand. If it is not chosen in advance, it is shuffled with the rest of the Miracle Cards, and may be drawn at random like the rest of the Miracles.

The first turn saw steady advance by both armies. My Chariot and Guardians of Midnight were kept behind the flanks for now.

Turn 2, the battle lines closed in. My Skeleton Warriors took position on the hill on the left, while the Dwarven Miners passed my line.

On Turn 3, battle was joined, and the Miners surfaced in contact with my Baggage Train. My Chariot sped towards the enemy Camp.

On my extreme right my Skeleton Horde was getting hammered, and Argonor was Raising Dead like a madman to keep the unit on the battlefield.

On Turn 4 a Skeleton Horde with a Blacksoul charged the Dwarven Archers. The red dice hit on 3+, the white on 4+. This kind of dice result is not even a rare occurrence when I play wargames.

The Miners sacked my Baggage, and my Chariot moved into contact with the enemy Camp.

All over the front, my Skeletons were crumbling in droves, and my Necromancer had all but depleted his Divine Goodwill (Sacrifice Cards).

Only 4 points lost out of the 52 on the table, but almost all my units were closed to being wiped out by now.

At least, I had inflicted some casualties, and even had raised some Skeletons from the slain foes...

We did not complete Turn 5 - just for show I sacked the Dwarven Camp, but there was not much doubt that my army would break, this turn or the next, and that I could hardly hope to do any significant damage to the enemy Main Force with my decimated units. Thus, we noted this down as another Dwarven victory, and sat down to evaluate the House Rules tested.

We felt that the pushback rule needs a Morale Test for a unit to avoid pushing on when winning a combat. The test should be taken at ML -2 or -3 to make it possible even for Unbreakable units to get 'drawn out' and exposed to flank attacks and the likes. This will be tested the next time we play.

The Raise Dead Miracle worked very well. It did not upset balance, because there is a trade-off to be paid in Sacrifice Cards, and thus in effectiveness when it comes to using other Miracles and dispelling enemy Miracles.

We kind of felt that not being able to discard a Miracle to see if the Necromancer can get a more interesting one is too restrictive, and I gave it a lot of thought how to change it, without making the Necromancer too powerful.

What we agreed to try is a 5 points Rod of Resurrection working the same way as the Raise Dead Miracle, still being powered by Sacrifice Cards, but usable as many times during the Necromancer's Activation as he can pay the 10 Sacrifice pips.

With this, the Necromancer will draw Miracle Cards as normal before the game, and being able to discard one he does not want. I may even get my cold prying hands on one of the destructive Miracles some time...