AAR: Scots vs. Vikings

Tom and I decided to get in a game of Saga this week to try out my new Scots from CGR Painters.  The models looked great, but I wanted to see how they did in bloody combat!  We decided to have a simple bloodbath, and lined up our guys on opposite sides of a lonely village to face off in manly combat!

The Viking Horde.

We decided on a 6 point battle.  Tom took a regular Warlord, 2 units of Heathguard, 3 units of Warriors and a unit of Levies with bows.  He decided to leave his units composed as-is to maximize his Saga Dice.

For the Scots, I took 4 units of Hearthguards and 2 units of Warriors.  I went ahead and put together the Hearthguard into two units of 8 each.  I gave up some dice, but decided that the big units were more important.  I have learned this lesson with my Vikings before.

Viking Levy Bowmen.

The Viking Chief and his retinue.

Scot Warriors with spears.  It is key to have the spears, as the Scot battle-board has some moves that can only be done with Spearmen.

Hearthguard.  Since most has spears, we counted this unit as having them.

Hearthguard with plain old weapons.

Hearthguard with spears.

Villagers with no clue about the coming battle!

Vikings assemble.  Tom has blue bases on his Warriors, ad white on his Hearthguard - neat idea!

The Viking Horde!

The board.  Line up and get'm!  That's the plan!

The Scot Horde advances.  I planned to run in with the Hearthguard up front and kill off whatever was left with the Warriors behind.

You get over here, you dogs!

Get out of the way, civilians!

...just about there.  This is a pretty scary situation for me.  I have a unit of Warriors up against Hearthguard AND a unit of Viking Warriors.  Ut oh.

I love this little nugget on the battle board.  

REACH is in green, meaning that you have to have spears to use it.  What this means to me is that I gues to place a die here and use it to move one (or two!) units forward and get the added bonus of chucking some javelins.  Pretty neat!  I used this a lot, but to little effect.

I run up and use REACH.  No a lot of damage.

Tom is about to hit me in the head.

Get'm!  On this side of the building, I have a unit of Hearthguard up against Levies.  Heh.

I wreck Tom's Warriors pretty good, but the Hearthguard kill me dead.

On the right, Tom has knocked my Hearthguard down to 3 guys with his Warriors and Levy.  Ouch!  Not looking good for the Scots.

Warlord with an 8-man strong Hearthguard wipes out the Viking Warriors and heads for the Levies.  How do you think this will go?

Levies killes dead.

Tom charges in with his Warlord and a group of Warriors.  He rolls pretty poorly and my Hearthguard are still around. Tom was sacrificing his guys for more dice just about every turn!

Tom runs away and swings his other Hearthguard around from the other side.

...but the Scot Warlord has some backup!

Viking Strategy:  RUN!

RAWR!  Viking Hearhguard prepare to assault the Scot Warriors.

Warlord with one remaining Heathguard by his side.

This Situation:  Tom has 4 models left.

Eat it Viking!

...and surrender.

At this point we call it.  Sure, we could roll some dice, but I have Tom's Vikings outnumbered big time.  This game was pretty fun and I learned a lot about the Scot battle-board.  I am accustomed to playing Vikings, so I really had to think a lot about managing fatigue, as I did not have all those removal abilities I normally have.  I think finding a way to use more complimentary combos will be key to my future success with the Scots.  I cannot wait to try another game!