Saga, Dark Ages Skirmish war gaming I

Finally played our first 2 games of Saga a week and some days ago. It was an icy cold yet dry Friday night, in the 20s, and Spencer and I finally had everything we needed to play Saga.

First things first: Spencer and his Anglo Danes whooped my Viking ass. Twice. I looked silly.

The saga of us playing Saga can be summarized like this:
1) Spencer, interested in historical war gaming, mentions Saga to Gabe. Gabe says "OK" spring of 2013.
2) Gabe buys rule book.
3) Both buy Wargames Factory plastic minis and go through a learning process from various backgrounds in mini painting. A lot if things are learned.
4) Both now have very solid opinions on how to build and paint their armies next time around.
5) We realized.... or more like Gabe realized a lot... how important terrain was for Saga and started a whole new hobby.
6) Life, family, other hobbies, and 7 Years War 1/32 minis and All The King's Men mixed with the above made the process of saying "yes" to "Spencer kicking Gabe's ass" take about 8 months.

The game is relatively easy. Players get some points to build an army with. The units are standard - no special group gets much special troops like more modern games common at your FLGS. There is some standardization and variance but nothing in the "collectible" market. Basic warbands are:
Vikings
Anglo-Danes
Welsh
Normans
You pick one and build off of that. You can use anything to represent the light standards they coded into the rules to represent them; the only hard rule being what your table decides is the level you want to achieve in looks. Spencer and I decided to shoot higher than painting pennies blue and red and scooting them about a coffee table around jars and books... though one could play Saga doing that.

What you need (and not necessarily what I bought):
D6s - a bucket of them
Saga dice - can be bought or made
Minis, or something to represent your army in a fashion like minis would
Saga rulebook and the "battle board" that comes with the rule book
A flat surface that is about 3'x4'
maybe some of them painted pennies I mentioned above for fatigue markers
a measuring tape or measuring thing that can do 2", 4", 6", and 12"

I'm sure I missed something.

Players deploy their armies in some order based off points and scenario. You then go at it. There are phases you must follow:

1. Roll Saga dice (with runes or helmets and stuff on them) and place them on your battle board. Your battle board is the thing that gives your unit activations (move, shoot, rest) or special abilities like roll 2 extra attack dice for every X on the board and stuff like that. You put the Saga Dice on the thing you want and hope it comes in handy.

2. You activate and end up dukeing it out with the other players units.

Our 2 games went like this:

Game #1
I deploy my Vikings like an idiot. Spencer deploys his Anglo-Danes like a smart guy. I run my vikings all over the place and get picked apart by Anglo archers. My own archers are in the woods for some stupid reason and not able to get volleys to bear. The last turn looked like this:

What is left of my hearthguard and the warlord, full of fatigue and archers somewhere behind them out of any kind of range and in the woods. That's Spencer back there with HIS WHOLE ANGLO-DANE WARBAND.

Game #2
Started off a bit better. I deployed, from left to right behind the little thatched a-frame I built, warriors, warriors, warlord, hearthguard, hearthguard. My grand plan was to march my warriors up the middle and then my warlord and his hearthguard up the right flank from behind the a-frame and SLAM into the Anglo-Danes.

Oh Snap! Them wily Vikings looped around on the right!!

Well, it didn't work out too well. Spencer kept his troops in a nice and tight formation and I didn't move my left flank up enough to even get into the fight so Spencer's Anglo-Danes concentrated a majority of his forces on my Warlord and his bodyguards and they were all killed.

All that getting my lunch taken and then wallered in sound unfun but I had a blast. We were learning the game so spent a lot of time reading the rules - really Spencer did most of that. I followed along and found all the mistakes one could make when playing this game. Now we know. *Dons cape and flies away*

What I learned is that using your battle board is very important. Having your units work off each other is very important. Knowing your strengths and your opponents weaknesses are very important. All basic Art of War stuff - but mechanics of the game you are actually under the umbrella of, and The Art of War is best.

As has been stated in other blogs way before I could state it here - Saga is not a game of grand moves or strategies. Your field is quite small and we played 4 point war bands. Some of your battle board tactics will give your war band it's flavor (Anglo-Danes are slightly defensive while Vikings are all about attacking with as many attack dice as one could dream of) but it's mostly move and shoot and melee. Oh... and protect your warlord.

Players with a grip on the rules can have a game started and finished in 45 minutes. Maybe longer with larger war bands.

One can use any brand of "vikings" or dark ages warriors for your war bands as long as it's Vikings or Anglo-Danes. Normans and Welsh have cavalry so it's a bit more complicated for those war bands if you into saving money. Solid rules are 25mm scale, dark ages-esque look, and you can tell the difference between:
Levies - mostly javelins, slingers, and archers - no armor - farmers and such pressed into service.
Warriors - shields and spears mostly, some variance depending on war band.
Hearthguard - the pros - armor and shields and axes and stuff.
Warlord - the big cheese.