As indicated in the last blog we wanted to try a Viking “Saga” style game. The Viking army list that we used is attached: VIKINGS

Feel free to comment and suggestions. I will add more fantasy aspects like Frost giants and trolls and various Norse Gods and mythology down the track.

We wanted to keep things simple and small scale while we were still learning the subtleties of the rules so we opted for armies that consisted of 1 Rare, 2 Uncommon and 5 Common models.

David K had a hero, 2 Berserkers, 2 Bondi archers and 3 Bondi warriors. David S had a hero, 1 Dvergar weaponsmith, 1 Hearthguard 2 Bondi archers and 3 Bondi warriors, so the armies were very similar.

The choice of stances was interesting, with us initially choosing between “attack” and “balanced” with the occasional “defensive” (so we could shoot) whilst we moved closer.

These changed to us genrally alternating between “all out attack” and “densive” when we moved into close combat range.

First blood to David S as a Bondi warrior goes down from long range shooting. We found that long range shooting was ineffective.

Hero, Weaponsmith, Hearthguard and Bondi warrior of David S move forward with the protection of the nearby trees. The weaponsmith has forged  a magic +1 sword for the Hearthguard.

Two more of David K’s warriors fall to close range shooting as the battle starts to heat up.

The tide is about to turn as an archer of David S “bites the dust”.

Close combat everywhere.

Despite the odds being in favour of David S the Gods had turned against him.

With only his hero left David S fails his army morale roll and the battle is lost.

The “stunned” hero falls back.

The victorius hero.

The turn mechanisms went very well and once we became familiar went very quickly. Shooting at long range was ineffective but was much more deadly at short range which was as it should have been. We hope to try more troop types and weapons over the next few weeks to see how it goes. At the moment we are loving it.

A very neat and compact game system that plays quickly and provides the odd quirk to make things interesting – such as a Bondi Warrior easily standing up to my hero!!!

Regular readers of this blog will be well aware that I am a large fan of Dan Mersey’s rules. His latest set “Strongsword”, produced in conjunction with Westphalian Miniatures http://westfaliaminiatures.com/ , is a skirmish sized fantasy set of rules. The rules are your standard glossy produced pdf., and although it consists of 40 odd pages the rules themselves are only five to six of these and will only take a few minutes to grasp the mechanics. However, like all of Mersey’s rules there are many nuances and the key will be which of six stances you take for your war band each turn and matching these to the game situation, your war bands capability and your gaming style.

Given it was my turn to organise our weekly game I thought I would give these a go to see how they work out in practice.

The scenario: If you go into the woods today……

(Adapted from the Strongsword “Troll Hunt Scenario” available from the Westphalian miniatures website).

A large group of bears, or at least the village thinks they are bears has been terrorising villagers travelling through the forest between two competing villages.

Forces

Each village is determined to enhance their reputation against the other and wishes to rid the area of the “Menace” before the other has a chance.

Village of Kelsall (Free Company List):

2 Rare: A Captain (leader) and a Spellcaster (Pyromancer)

5 Common: 5 Human Mercenary Soldiers (3 with Spear and 2 with bow).

Borough of Wright (Free Company List):

2 Rare: A Cleric (leader) and an Ogre Brawler

5 Common: 4 Human Mercenary Soldiers (2 with Spear and 2 with X-bow) and 3 war dogs (1 choice).

Setup

• the table size should be approx. 36”x36” completely covered by forest.
• A road twists across the centre of the board from the middle of the western edge to the middle of the eastern edge
• A clearing exists in the middle of the board
• Each Warband deploys within 6” of the road on opposite sides of the board.
• The “Menace” is set up within 6” of the centre of the board.

The “Menace” can consist of three any suitable medium sized beasties – trolls, ogres, big cats or whatever is in your collection. Their stats are below:

Assorted Beasties:

Move	6” (not slowed down by forest)
Rally Morale success	5+
Weapons	Huge rock, tree limb etc. counting as a 2 handed hacking weapon
Armour	Heavy armour – as they are dumb and feel no pain and have scaly skin, thick hide etc.
Combat modifies	No modifier
Special rules	·         Big ·         Warrior of renown – roll 2 combat dice and choose the best ·         9 lives – Re-roll any “killed’ result from the damage chart inflicted on this model. The second result must be accepted. ·         Hungry – Roll a dice before moving each beastie, on a roll of 1-2 it will stop to feed and will not move this turn. ·         Brawler – ignore the -1 from being outnumbered in combat. ·         Regeneration – you may re-roll the result of any 9 lives test. This result must be applied. ·         Fear magic – a beastie successfully targeted by a spell makes an immediate move directly away from the spell caster which made the attack. This counts as the Beasties movement for this turn.

The “Menace” in some of its various forms

Victory conditions.

• Head taking – Play until only 1 warband remains on the table, then use the rules on P. 41 to determine the winner. Remember the “menace” counts as a war-band.
• The War-bands need to kill as many beasties as possible. If opposing villagers are killed then that’s well just plain unfortunate!!

Beastie scalps count double points in this mission.

• The Beasites are hungry, put any model killed by the Beasties together and count their score at the end of the game. Big and massive model scalps count double for the beasties.

Complication – Beasties.

• It is not easy to determine how many beasties are in the forest. At least three are set up in the centre clearing.
• Each villager turn roll a dice. On a 1-2 the opposing player places an addittonal Beastie on the board within 6” of any villager of either side. If there are more than 5 Beasties in play when the dice is rolled then a new Beastie is only placed on a 1.
• Beasties are too stupid to understand the nuance of a battle stance, Beasties will always attempt to charge the closest enemy in range in the ‘Attack’ movement step, if it cannot reach an enemy model it will move randomly.
• Each stunned Beastie may attempt to Rally in the Rally step. They are individuals and gain no benefits for leaders.
• All Beasties fear magic, a Beastie successfully targeted by a spell makes an immediate move directly away from the spell-caster which made the attack. This counts as the Beasties movement for the turn.

The game:

Once we learned the game mechanics and sequence of play things started to move quickly.

The random movement of the “beasties” created chaos for Dave K and his selection of Warband stances as he kept on having to move towards the closest enemy which was taking him deeper into the forest and away from the main action.

The random movement also meant that little was happening early on as both warbands tried to get closer to the beasties and their associated victory points. Running the beasties was also a little frustrating for me as three of them left the table due to random movement and a failure to rally for being stunned which meant they fled quicker towards the nearest table edge.

This aside once the warbands closed in we had some “interesting” engagements.

The ogre brawler of Andrew W was quickly dispatched by a troll beastie who promptly died the next turn to a single javelin attack by failing both his “9 lives” and “regeneration” re-rolls. The toothpick must have been lodged up his right nostril that he was “picking” (see photo).

Then the bizarre happened with a Dave K’s Pyromancer (fire wizard) launching a “not inconsiderable fireball” at Andrew’s Cleric, who was leading his warband. When the fire subsided all that was could be seen of the Cleric was a pile of charred remains.

In retaliation Andrew launched a long range X-bow shot which pinned the wizard to a nearby tree. Suddenly the unthinkable happened and “bang” – a large fireball exploded where once the wizard was. All of David K’s models within 3” (all but one) had to see if they were damaged. Down went two archers and the leader and two javelin armed warriors were stunned and fell back away from the fireball.

The resulting warband morale test saw the last warrior fail leaving the forest in Andrew’s control.

Wow that was dramatic!!! A single shot just happened to hit the right figure at the right time when the warband was all bunched up. The following bad dice rolls meant a very sudden end to what up to that time was a very close game.

Great fun and an excellent wargame tale to continually rib Dave about. – “remember the time when….”

The fantasy elements were fun and the game definitely ended with an outlier type of result which we acknowledge, but we would like to see how this goes with more “traditional” Dark Age warbands.

We will try this again in a fortnight’s time with a straight forward encounter game between two “Saga” like warbands to see how the rules handle this.

 

Tree ent flees the table

Ogre brwaler goes down

killed by a toothpick

A not inconsiderable fireball….

BANG!!!!

The aftermath of the Bing Bang!

Victor and Vanquished:

The Borough of wright ended the day in front with 14 Victory Points (coins) and with the loss of there 2 rare models the Clreic and Ogre Brawler. With only three stunned models left on the table the Village of Kelsall finished with 8 Victory points (coins).

The game has some interestiong points, with as we expected, the key being how you managed the stance your warband took each turn. Deffinitely worth trying a few more times and has huge potential to exclipse “Saga” as our preferred Dark Ages skirmish rules.