Saga in the Fort 2023

By Troy Hill

The game Saga, from Studio Tomahawk, seems to be on a growth curve, and our little corner of Indiana – the NorthEast corner – is no exception. Our game group recently hosted a tournament for the “Age of Melee” at Power9 Games in Fort Wayne Indiana. With twenty players scheduled, eighteen actually managed to make it in that day. A great record for our local group.

Players from as far away as Columbus Ohio, Indianapolis, and Crown Point Indiana made the trek to bring their warbands, throw some dice, and curse the gods of the tabletop when we didn’t do as well as we’d hoped. Despite volunteering to be “ringer” I got to field my Milites Christie and compete, despite two last-minute drops.

What is Saga? When exactly was this Age of Melee?

We’ve covered Saga previously here on NDNG. But, I’ll recast the basics for those who haven’t played the game before.

Saga is a skirmish-based wargame played on a four-foot by three-foot gaming space. Warbands are anywhere from 25 figures to about a hundred for a typical (6 pt game). Most often, the game is played with warbands based from one of several historical periods. There is also a fantasy/magic-based version of the game, called Age of Magic.

Each of these periods is written up in an “Age of …” book, including Age of Hannibal, Age of Alexandar, Age of Invasions, Age of Vikings, and Age of Crusades. The “Age of Melee” is shorthand to say, bring a historical based warband.

For our tourney, any of the historical books were fair game to generate a warband from. One unit from the mercenaries section at the back of whichever book a player drew from could be included in their warband. However, Legendary characters and units, eg: King Arthur for the Britons from the Age of Invasions book was not allowed.

I selected the Milities Christi or the fighting monkish orders (Templars, Hospitallers, etc) from the Age of Crusades book. Overall, our Tourney Organizer, Daniel “Brodi” Broaddus, announced that ten of the eighteen factions brought that day were from the Age of Crusades. It’s my favorite period from all those that Saga has so far covered.

Game One:

If you know me and my play style, I’m not competitive. Whenever I play in a tourney, I’m there to win the wooden spoon award (hey, it usually comes with a fresh set of dice!), or the best sport award. Brodi, our TO, focussed only on placings, without awards for the soft scores.

So, my journey through the rankings should be a fairly downward spiral throughout the day. My only concern is to make sure both players have fun.

First up was Ben with his Pagan Rus. I think I’d played against this battle board once before.

What’s a battle board? That’s where the meta of the army comes into play. Saga is a simple game, with simple army composition rules. We were running games where our warbands were comprised of up to six points of troops. A warlord figure never counts in this total. Each warband must field a warlord model. Then a point can purchase any of the following: four hearthguard models, or eight warriors, or twelve levy figures. Each unit may be deployed on foot or mounted, as the warband list from the book allows.

In my force, the hearthgauard are mounted. Ben’s forces were all on foot.

But, back to this battleboard. Each warband gets one. It’s here that the special abilities of the warband are purchased. Each unit generates a special Saga Die. These special dice are rolled at the beginning of that player’s go in the turn. If a unit of warriors drops below four models or a levy below six models, that unit no longer generate one of these dice. The player may then purchase unit activations, abilities, or advanced abilities for his troops. In the photo above, Ben has placed his Saga Dice on the board to indicate which abilities he’s “loaded” for that turn.

The Saga dice can carry over if a player doesn’t activate that ability. This is good for abilities that provide a defensive or counter-punch ability in the opponent’s turn.

Ben and I had to contest the hill in this scenario, and eventually, points for having a unit on the hill, as well as points for how many opposition figures and units were destroyed, decided the game for Ben.

Excellent! I’m on my way to the wooden spoon award.

Game Two

I headed into round 2 with a loss and drew one of two Patricks in the tourney. This Patrick brought his Reconquista Spanish (mostly Reconquer Minis 3D printed model if I remember) from the Age of Crusades book.

Patrick had a lot more play time than I do and gave a lot of pointers on how to play against his army. True, he’d wait to see what I did in my turn, then tell me I should have done something different. But teaching in a tourney is best done after your opponent screws up.  😉

This round, we played a Tale of Challenges. In this scenario, each player chooses two challenges to accomplish during the game. We both selected I will outlive you! And we both forgot the limitation of “Your Warlord does not generate a Saga dice.” Oops. so, we eliminated the points for that challenge at the end of the game.

I chose We shall die to the last figuring that I could manage to get 75 percent or more of my warband killed off by the end of the game. This is me we’re talking about. I can lose just about any game.

If I remember correctly, Patrick chose First Blood. And then I scored the first kill, denying him that objective.

Once the game got going, I realized my error in choosing that challenge. His army was mobile, armed with a lot of javelins, and he ran away better than my warlord. I ended up losing about 60 percent of my Warband.

And the die roll to continue a turn was mine. And I still whiffed. I lost at losing. That’s just how I roll. I was creeping ever closer to the wooden spoon.

Game Three

In the final game, I drew a player newer than I. Paul, author of the Hounds of War books. He brought forth his Levantine Crusaders. Excellent. My Knightly Monks would give his peasants a sound thrashing for mucking up the battlefield and getting in our way.

For this round, we were supposed to play the Desecration scenario. I say “supposed to” because, although we both deployed the objectives (mine were the black poker chips), we ignored them for the rest of the game.

The Christian-on-Christian fight seemed to take precedence. That and it seemed a bit silly to both of us to attack an objective. The objectives have armor of 5 vs melee, and 6 vs shooting. And the objective rolls twice as many defense dice as hits received. I mean, what’s the point? Stand and shoot or attack an objective, and let your opponent maneuver in to attack the force at the objective?

The scenario does cap massacre points based on the number of objectives destroyed by each side. Since neither of us went after objectives, we capped out at 10 points scorable each side. Pity. We both did way more damage than that.

I’ve always favored scenarios where objectives were secured by the presence of troops in the vicinity or ones that could be carried off. But, in a tourney setting, I see where the meta of this scenario comes into play. If you’re going for top placing, a player needs to destroy enemy objectives to get a higher ceiling on massacre points.

Overall, it was a good game, but a draw, since we both capped out at 10 massacre points and no objectives destroyed. Had Paul gone for the win, and taken out an objective, thereby increasing his massacre points, I could have had a perfect losing streak. Wooden Spoon achieved!

Alas, that wasn’t the case.

Final Standings per the TO Brodi: