Hold my beer*

Fun SAGA gathering, with everyone in pretty goofy moods.  I played my Lombards yet again, this time against Chris' Anglo-Saxons in the 'Feasting and Pillaging' scenario.  I thought I did well enough early on, just being cagey and grabbing two of the treasure tokens early on. Then Chris took one from from my mounted Warriors (reducing my unit of 10 to 4) and I decided to try and get them back with the four alone with the support of four or five different Saga abilities in one attack.  I knew it was not the best idea, hence, a "hold my beer" moment.  I did actually land a bunch of hits on his unit, and then he just got an atypical saving throws result and only lost like one figure, so my effort was for naught (although I did get the treasure back).  Of course, because I blew all my dice on the showboat move, the rest of the warband did nothing, and then were helpless when Chris launched his counterattacks on his following turn.  Things went predictably downhill from there, and I had seven or so levy archers on the board by the time it was all over, but did get my other unit of warriors with one treasure token off board.  

Starting positions.

These mounted warriors are about to be attacked by the foot levy.

Attack on mounted warriors by Saxon fyrd underway.

Here's my mounted hearthguard trying to come over to support the "hold my beer" warriors who have recaptured the treasure but are exhausted and will have no dice support when they are counterattacked.  The Saxon mounted hearthguard will wipe out the warriors and then reduce the Lombard hearthguard down to 2 figures (again, no board support).

Here's the considerably more dire situation after the "hold my beer" attack, pretty close to end-game, with the Lombards having  taken tons of casualties.

*Not from Y Gododin.

Who slew the mounted ravagers with the keenest blade *

Its been a busy month but I finally got an actual game in, the first since the last Saga group gathering last month.  I ran the same Lombard warband with a unit Bulgars mercenaries.  Nellie, who I have not seen since we played Oathmark last summer, fielded Normans.  I was kind of in a hurry because I had errands to run so probably chose my terrain poorly (I should have thrown more LOS blocking stuff out there to limit the 2x long range of the Norman archers).  We also agreed to a four turn game instead of six. Nellie went first and punished me for that oversight - killing an impressive four out of six Lombard mounted hearthguard on one shooting attack in the first turn. Ouch!

This spurred me to move rather than stand around and get horses shot full of arrows.  I sent 10 warriors against the Norman mounted hearthguard and both lost about half their figs. this started a pretty devastating series of charges on one side of the field.  By turn four all 20 Lombard mounted warriors were out as were all ten Norman mounted hearthguard.  Nellie sent his warlord in to try and knock out my last two hearthguard (getting one), and then on the last turn my warlord slew his.  Final score on points was Nellie by 3 (24 to 21). 

My main takeaway is that the Bulgar mercenaries are not working super great. A unit of levy with spears might be of more use as they could be stacked with the Lombard melee board bonuses and could clear out groups of archers.  Anyway, good to see people, lots of painted figures, and roll some dice.

Game start. Normans at bottom and Lombards at top. 

Ineffectual Bulgars.

Lombard mounted warriors.

These Lombard warriors just lost five to knock out three Norman hearthguard.

Vagrant Warrior mercs in Norman service. Like the rest of the infantry in the game, they did not move at all.

Norman archers that I foolish gave sweet board position to.

Norman hearthguard.

Bulgars after riding across the board. 

Lombard warlord and his last two hearthguard companions.

*Y Gododin. LVII 

To the strife of mail-clad warriors *

Monthly Saga group game night saw the Lombards deployed for fourth time and getting their first win.  The opponent was Adam's Carolingians, which was interesting to see how that faction/board played in person, as opposed to trying to parse it from the text. Adam fielded four points hearthguard (as 6-6-4 units), a warrior bow unit, and a javelin levy unit.  I took 1.5 hearthguards, 2.5 points warriors (as 10-10 units), 1 point levy bow, and 1 point Bulgar mercenaries.  I'm not quite sure how to use the Bulgars, yet.  Their 'Retreat' is pretty great and it totally bailed them out when they were charged by the 4-figure Carolingian HG unit towards the end of the game. But the two 10-figure mounted warrior units were able to destroy both 6-figure Carolingian HG units by using variations of combinations of Attack / Immunity / Cuneus / Gratia while "only" losing 4 and 5 figures respectively.  Bulgar rangey-ness maybe makes them most useful as a distraction to the opponent and as potential exploiter of advantageous situations, such as mopping up already weak units.  Anyway, here's all the pics...

Initial set-up, Carolingians on left, Lombards on right.

Lombard warriors in two units of 10.

Lombard initial set-up, Bulgar mercenaries on left flank.

Carolingian initial set-up. Two hearthguard units of 6-figure each at upper left.

Bulgar mercenaries get to throw dice in anger for first time, taking out some Carolingian javelin levy.

Bulgars vs. Carolingian levy.

Carolingian javelins extract heavy payback, however...

Lombard warriors complete routing of both Carolingian 6-figure hearthguard units.

Carolingians.

Casualty situation by bottom of turn 5.

I probably dang near lost the game by letting my 6-figure hearthguard get whittled down to 3 figures by bow and javelin attacks, and then the Bulgars losing half of their unit to javelins and then getting wiped out by the Carolingian hearthguard at the end of the game. But the hearthguard were probably too tempting a target and probably diverted a lot of actions away from responding to the Lombard warriors on the other side of table who were doing so well.

*Y Gododin. LIX.

Bulgar mercenaries for Saga

Although I'm getting comfortable with (and enjoying) the Lombard faction for Saga, the strength and challenge of that faction is that all Hearthguard and Warriors are mounted but without javelins.  This leaves all ranged attacks to levy archers, which is mainly problematic because levies need the uncommon die to activate, but that die is also used for almost all the advanced board abilities. Lombards may take Breton mercenaries (mounted warriors with javelins) but these are noted in the text as being "Bulgars, really."  Old Glory has a pack of Bulgars (set AHP-5) that looked like fun so I picked that up.

 As you can see, the Old Glory Bulgars (and pretty much all of their "horse people" / horse archer figures - Huns, Alans, Magyars, Pechenegs, etc.) are two piece figures, allowing you to angle the upper half of the body to be facing forward, to the side, or even aiming a "Parthian Shot" over the back.  They went together pretty easy especially as I recently picked up the tip that sharpie ink acts as a bit of an accelerant for superglue, and the nature of a sharpie pen (its a pen!) allows you to pinpoint areas for the glue to set faster.

If you compare the later pics to the initial one of the unassembled figures, you can see that four of the figures originally had swords, but I trimmed these off and drilled out the hands to give them javelins instead. The set also had shields but chose to ignore these and shaved off the pegs on some hands meant to mount the shield.

My bad habit is to undertake painting 60 infantry or 20-30 cavalry at a time, so when I work on a single set like this the process is an absolute breeze.  I used my standard block-painting method, then a "magic wash" of matte medium / water / black paint, with excessive wash lightly sponged or rolled off with cotton swabs.

After a clear top coat of matte varnish and mounting on MDF bases, I flocked with kitty litter, painted the kitty litter with a cheap acrylic light brown/tan, then added some flock and tufts.

This was just in time to meet Chris and Tom for a three-player game of Saga using the "Battle Royale" scenario.  Chris brought Anglo-Saxons with the mounted hearthguard option.  Tom brought his Normans.  In this scenario, players take turns placing units where ever they want on the table. What ended up happening was the Lombards were on one end, the Normans on the other, and the Anglo-Saxons in the middle area. Chris had a hard-stop time and because his Anglo-Saxons kept focusing attacks on the Normans and therefore moving away from the Lombards, the Lombards had not charged a single time (and the Bulgars had not thrown a single javelin).  Just to try things out, I did manage a charge of 10 warriors against 6 Norman hearthguard with a favorable result.

Start of the Battle Royale.

Lombards.

Bulgars make their debut.

  

Anglo-Saxon cavalry.

Lombards lined up.

Around Turn 2, maybe.

Saxon archers at extremely close range to Norman crossbows. Saxon cavalry charges Norman counterparts in background.

Turn 3 or therabouts. The Saxons keep focusing on the Normans and therefore moving away from my Lombards so I didn't do much most of the game.

Same point as above, but from other end of table.

Next up on the painting bench I have started in on 20 Alan horse archers by Old Glory, for Late Roman games. These have been languishing around for awhile, and they use the same separate torso-and-legs set-up as the Bulgars. 

From the chamber of death, from a hostile region*

I was able to arrange another game of SAGA and try out my Lombard warband again.  This time they were matched against Andrew's Vikings. We played the basic 'Clash of the Warlords' scenario.

Lombards (top) and Vikings (bottom) after Viking first moves.

I tried to be a bit more cagey this time and to only commit to melees after thinking it out a little.  During terrain selection I placed a wood in my center and then on deployment centered my archers in therein.  I put 6 mounted hearthguard on one flank and two 10-figure mounted warrior units on the other.  

Viking warriors.

I then used maneuvers and activations to send the mounted troops out to the extreme flanks. This looked like an envelopment tactic but such things are meaningless in SAGA because units do not have flanks.  What I was hoping was that the mounted troops circling around on the flanks would cause Andrew to leave a foot unit overextended somewhere that I could then gang up on.

Lombard warriors.

Unfortunately, I was the one who left a unit unsupported - with my 6 hearthguard riding out a little too far to the flank, which led to Andrew sending some Viking warriors loaded up with a double-rare Viking board ability to attack.  The warriors only had one figure left but the hearthguard were down to 2.  

Lombard warriors.

Andrew did some attacks on the levy archers with another warrior unit, and his berserkers were able to blow up a mounted warrior unit. 

Lombard levy archers.

Feeling the winds against me, I went for bombastic and charged my remaining 10 warrior unit up the middle and killed his warlord.  My warriors only lost one figure but were exhausted, and Andrew's viking hearthguard mopped them up on his turn.

Lombard warlord with his levy archers. Viking warriors prepare to charge a levy archer unit in the distance.

At this point I called it with a turn and half to go.  Andrew won 21-19 on points.  I feel like I am getting close to being able to use the Lombards effectively.  They have a little bit of an "alpha strike" feel to them - their abilities are strongest on the attack and with the emphasis on mounted troops the 10 warriors taking out the warlord seems like the correct approach. Lombards can take Breton mercenaries (skinned as Bulgars - the minis are on order), and I think a mounted warrior unit with javelins will be a big upgrade. 

*Aneurin. Y Gododin. XLVI.