To blood they resorted, being assembled in gleaming armour*

 

Vikings coming on board at bottom.  Danes already on board at top. 

Grabbed another game of Saga on Sunday morning with Chris.  I brought the same Vikings as last game and he used Anglo-Danes again but dropped a unit of levy archers in favor of a priest.

 

Vikings.

I brought my ox carts (originally acquired for my Fornovo game at Enfilade years ago), and we played the "Ambush" scenario.  The three carts start at the middle of one short board side and independently move towards the opposite side.  The two warbands enter from the long board sides and must attack a baggage cart and destroy it, thereby converting it to a loot token.  After five turns, the player with the most survival points, plus 6 bonus points for each loot token, wins the game.

Baggage carts.

As you can see, I was careful to actually read game victory conditions this time.  As such, I knew it would be a steep climb for the Vikings, because winning on survival points (i.e., more figures on board at end game, weighted for points cost, than your opponent) is hard for a faction which includes abilities where you sacrifice figures for attack dice!

Danish warlord with vagrant warrior mercenaries in trail.

Still, things went rather well early on.  The initial Danish attacks on a baggage cart went poorly, costing them several hearthguard figures(!).  

 

Viking hearthguard at left center have captured a baggage cart and converted it to a loot token. At the top, another cart is putting up stiff resistance to the Danish hearthguards.

By contrast, my attack on a cart by my hearthguard went off without a hitch, costing me only 1 figure, so I had my first 6 bonus points at the loss of a single survival point.  

A large 12-man warrior unit of Vikings.

A baggage cart defends itself from a Danish attack.

So now it was a contest to grab that last cart while losing as few figures as possible.  I was able to attack the cart with 10 figures (if I recall right) but they did not roll well enough to capture the cart.  

Danish hearthguard attack and drive off Viking warriors.

Meanwhile, Chris's Danish hearthguard attacked my twelve-man warrior unit, and although I ended up with six lost warriors his HG was now down to three (from a starting strength of 8).  From survival point vantage things are still looking okay for the Vikings!

Danish warriors on extreme Danish left flank.

Danish hearthguard.

The Danish vagrant warriors, however, were able to weaken the third baggage cart, and then a remaining Danish hearthguard finished it off for to convert it to loot. 

The Danish vagrant warriors attack the last baggage cart.

At this juncture, I think I was down about 3 or 4 survival points, and the Danes needed to an advantage of 2 or more a win.  I threw a fresh 10 man warrior unit at the vagrants, using the reroll attack dice ability and the 6s-count-as-two-hits ability, but still only got four hits, and because vagrants can add 2 attack dice and 2 defense dice if they have a fatigue, they were able to cancel all of those.  With my last movement dice I positioned another fresh 10 man warrior unit in close vicinity to several Danish units so I would hopefully have some options.

The Vikings slip a ten-man warrior unit into a gap between several Danish units, hoping to find a weakness on their next turn in last effort to win the day.

But with the losses from fruitless attacks on the vagrant warriors, I was now down by six survival points, so after Chris made some more moves, I conceded the game, because I would need to destroy 8 Danish warriors and lose zero of my own to simply force a draw, and as noted above, the Viking board is just not super friendly to a strategy of trying to not lose figures.

The defeated Viking warlord watches the majority of the captured baggage train slip away.

I might sound down but really I thought I played a rather flawless game.  My biggest error was probably that I should have had the hearthguard bypass the closest baggage cart and head for the "middle" cart (or even try and directly contest the one closest to the Danes!).  

*Aneurin. Y Gododin. xiv.