Saga: Double Header

I played a double header of Saga against Tim last week. We thankfully have been getting more games of Saga in. Along with the show Vikings and The Last Kingdom, that is good motivation to build and paint more Vikings.

First up, was a Battle of the Warlords 6 Points. My Vikings vs. Tim's Scots. We chose to use characters from the books. Tim's character allowed him to steal a unit of my men. My character was Gunnar Hamundarson. The battle for the sheep had commenced.

Tim's Army, with my warriors at the bottom.

I combined two Hirdmen units to make a unit of eight.

Berserkers!

Interestingly, even though he stole my warriors, he did not move them. So at least my med wouldn't be shedding their brothers' blood.

The warlords began to clash, drawing a wound a piece. I tried to inflict as much damage as possible as quickly as possible. My Hirdmen moved up as fast as possible, but not fast enough.

Reinforcements for both sides made it to their warlords at the same time.

"They come over here and they chop off our legs; they cut off our hands and put nails in our eyes, O'Grady is dead and O'Hanrahan's gone..."

For some reason, Tim's guy below reminded me of the Traditional Irish Folk Song.

My Berserkers and Warlord, with some 21 attacks, should have chopped Tim's warlord in half, but only inflicted 5 wounds. In this scenario, each warlord has 12!

Tim's men formed a Shield Wall and attacked my secluded warlord and remaining Berserkers.

My other Hirdmen were too far away assist and on the ultimate battle, Tim's force overran mine and took the field.

Sheep! All the SHEEP ARE MINE!

Our second battle was in a secluded forest. This battle was simply aclash of warbands, also 6 points. This time I tried out the Norse Gales board and Tim took the Pagan Rus.

This battle was extremely quick. First turn we both moved up. He killed off a unit of Dane Axes by exhausting them and then killing them. But out Warlords met in the middle of the table, ready for war. On the first fight we managed to kill each other's warriors.

But on the second, I played Slaughter and we ended up killing one another's warlords, thus a draw.

Assault on the Mannerheim Line

CJ and I got a chance to replay our Mannerheim Line scenario on Black Friday. I was not expecting a repeat of our first game, but I was not expecting the results either.

Without further ado, I present the table. A similar set-up, but this time I had 3 more units of infantry and did not have the Sturmi (because I forgot it). CJ's army moved on the first turn and that is when the destruction began.

First Line - Speed Bump

Second Line - Main Force

Third Line - Reserves

I set up the third line with mostly infantry squads, hoping to have enough turns to bring them up to the second line before CJ got there.

The Valiant Flamethrower deployed front and center again, hoping to torch more Soviets.

My freshly painted Ski Finns were in position to fill any gaps.

After another pretty useless preparatory bombardment, the Russians began pouring onto the table. A T-34 started pounding my Finns. Mosin- Nagant and PPSh fire raked the trenches. I had 3 FUBAR rolls on the first turn! Two of which ended up rolling 1's, so my units fired at each other.

Cold steel and hand grenades took out the first unit of Finns.

My MG-34 was over run, making my medic flee in terror.

At the end of the first turn my entire first line had crumbled. The Ski troops moved into a copse of trees and became pinned down. My third line all failed their Morale tests to activate (so I guess the bombardment wasn;t totally useless after all) and the second line prepared to defend themselves.

The Russians were so excited to be in doors they were literally standing on their heads. CJ's army launched assault after assault, all of which he won. My dice had abandoned me. Squad by squad the Germans and Finns fell silent in their positions.

With my army on the brink, CJ assaulted the last occupied building on my second line. Molotov's burned the MG nest out and the Soviets had taken the line.

You can't win them all, and you can't win ever when you blunder that much and don't hit anything. But c'est la vie. Maybe I will fair better next time.

My minis are a mix of Brigade Games, Warlord and Old Glory. Terrain mat is from Cigar Box.