The reapers sang of war, war with the shining wing*

Starting positions. Vikings at bottom and Danes at top.

Had another game of Saga with Chris, using the "Feasting & Pillaging" scenario from the Book of Battles.  I ran my freshly painted Vikings, which are made up of two bags of Old Glory figures that I purchased five years ago for reasons now forgotten (Great Pagan Army for Dux Bellorum, maybe? I don't think I actually intended them for Saga).  

Chris' Danes.

I also went ahead and tried out a combination basing scheme of four figures to a single 50mm square base plus a bunch of individually-based figures on 25mm squares.  This allowed for faster movement like a tray, but without the weirdness of half-empty trays as casualties pile up.

Vikings.

I did better than my last outing, imposing on myself a "only two special abilities per turn" limit, which piled more dice onto basic movement/charging activations.  This allowed all units to be in good positions to potentially engage in melee.

Viking line.

Unfortunately I may still be thinking too much in terms of 1st edition scenarios.  I only briefly skimmed the scenario objectives and wrongly concluded that if I captured two objectives and got them off table that would be a victory.

The warbands close in on the objectives.

In actuality, getting an objective off table simply scored you 6 points.  Holding an objective on table by end of turn six scored you 3.  The rest of the points were awarded for "survival points" for figures still on table by turn six.

Vikings close to an objective.

Danish archers in cover.

Vagrant Warriors - these guys were brutally effective.

Accordingly, although I grabbed two objectives early on, then lost one but managed to recapture it, by about the top of turn four I had already lost entire unit of 12 warriors, my warlord was dead, and another unit of warriors was at about 50% and my hearthguard unit had lost two or three figures. My contrast I had eliminated the Danish hearthguard but little else.

Viking Hearthguard carrying off an objective.

Vagrant Warriors have an ability where if they enter a melee and burn an opponent's fatigue, they raise their armor by one and deplete the opponent's by one.  Chris managed to roll a lot of rare activation dice the second half the game and just piled activations onto the vagrants.

Viking Hearthguard carrying off an objective.

As a result, the Vagrants buzzsawed through the depleted unit of Viking warriors, reducing it to a single figure, and then on turn six moved three times consecutively to engage and destroy the Viking hearthguard unit for a fairly blow-out win in points (although by this point I had figured out that I had already lost regardless).

Danish vagrant warrior mercenaries on the move.

So lesson learned for me: read the scenario objectives.

A lone surviving Viking warrior, near end game.

Another lesson?  Shooting seems overly effective in second edition Saga.  A levy unit of 12 figures can throw 6 dice with a base to-hit of the target's armor value.  This would be target to-hit of 4+ for warriors and 5+ for hearthguard. Long experience with tinkering with Lion Rampant rules for my Italian Wars games led me to conclude that any shooting attack that can hit on a 4+ on a 1d6 is probably overpowered (if not outright game breaking).  So taking two points of Levy seems more a requirement than an option.

*Aneurin. Y Gododin. xvii.