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Friday 13 September 2013

Saga introduction

Well, it seems to be a month for learning new rules.  This Thursday at the club, Rick organised a Saga game so that I could get an intro to the rules and find out if I liked them enough to go out and pick up some of the lovely new hard plastic models from Warlord Games and/or Gripping Beast.  Rick had organised an evening game at the Defenders Club in Broughton and invited Luke and Red to come along for a 4 way intro game.  We quickly ran through the rules system, which is relatively easy to pick up and fairly straightforward, with almost everybody sharing similar statistics and capabilities.

During the brief walk-through of the game, Rick introduced me to the real complexity of the game which is the players special activations and abilities sheet and the "Saga Dice" system.  This is the real complexity of the game, and I was only able to scratch the surface of this aspect, as there seem to be a vast number of ways to use the Saga dice depending on your forces' skills and that of the opponents troops.

Rick has posted a battle report on his site:

http://rgmb-stonebridge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/saga-anglo-danish-welsh-alliance-vs.html

This shows some really nice pictures of the troops that Rick, Luke and Red brought with them (a big thanks to Luke for the loan of his lovely Anglo-Danish warband).  The key thing for me was how quickly the rules system became second nature and the game turns began to flow quite quickly with a nice period "feel".

All in all, a really nice game system and well worth the investment in a set of the rules and some suitable figures.  Now, all I have to decide is Viking, Anglo-Danish, Saxon, Welsh, Irish, Scots .... etc.  Decisions, decisions!

Thanks again to Rick for organising the game and the introduction, and to Luke for the loan of his troops, and I can only admire Red's immersion into the full-on aggression of his Viking warband.

Thanks for looking.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the write up Andy, I have been looking at Saga as a possible new venture after recent articles in 'Wargames Illustrated' and adverts for Gripping Beasts new ranges of figures. Think I will have a look at getting a set of rules.

    Cheers

    Richard P

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  2. Cheers Richard. It's a fun game, puts you in the role of a warband commander so is skirmish in concept but relatively fast play. I was in the local games store (Wargamestore) in Brimstage earlier today and you can pick up a 4 point Saga warband (for Anglo-Danes) for c. £30. Warlord Games do boxes of hard plastic for £20, so I think a box of each and I should have a pretty sizeable warband. The game struck me as having a lot of complexity and variety within a pretty straightforward system. If you get tired of one force, another type of warband will play completely differently!

    Cheers

    Andy

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