Saga, bridge battle Vikings vs. Anglo Danes pt. 1

First - Vikings (me) lose again. Just wanted to put that on the table first. Now, a rambling AAR about last Friday night's game.

Friday Night Wargaming at Spencer's - Saga, 6 points of my Vikings against 6 points of his Anglo-Danes, scenario is "Bridge Battle".

Rules for the scenario are:
3x4 field
River running through middle short end to short end, at least 3" wide but no more than... I forgot... wide.
2 bridges, each 1 foot, "L"* in distance from center.
Standard terrain rules for number of and placing of terrain.
...some other minutiae regarding terrain... these rules can be found in the back of the Saga Core Book.

Victory conditions: 7 rounds of play. At end of 7 rounds the faction with the most points wins.
Scoring by figure on other side of river -
warlord - 3 points
Hearthguard - 1 point
Warrior - 1 point per 2 figures
Levy - zip

Deployment went like this - Anglo-Danes went first and set up half of his army. Vikings then set up whole force. Anglo-Danes then got to set up other half of their army.

This was my first regret - AD set up mostly around the right bridge and a "security force" at the left bridge. Knowing I had to lay down my whole force at once, giving AD the advantage there as he could "react" by deploying his second half after me, I should have just put the bulk of my offense on one bridge (the right one) and a token defensive force on the left bridge.

What I did deploy was:
Right bridge - Jarl (warlord), Berserkers (aka Val'Serkers) x4, Freemen (warriors) x12.
Left bridge - Freemen (warriors) x12, Hirdmen (hearthguard) x8

 On the right - 12 Freemen up front backed by 4 Val'Serkers and a Jarl.

On the left 12 Freemen and 8 Hirdmen taking cover behind the thatched roof a-frame.

Opposite me, as can be seen in the pics, the ADs were set up pretty standard (a standard that has been beating me for 5 games in a row) with it's archers and some hearthguard in reserve and ready to react to either bridge. ADs had one warrior unit and one hearthguard unit at the foot of each bridge and his Warlord on the right.

I opened by sending my warriors on the right across the bridge to engage immediately with his warriors.

My whole plan was to smash the right with buckets of attack dice, buckets of attack dice being the specialty of the Viking faction, with my 12 man warrior force, send the remnants of that unit to the side on the other side of the bridge for a flank, send in the Val'Serkers and Jarl to wipe out any other remaining force while threatening a big move on the left bridge as I have another freeman platoon of 12 ready to cross and another "large" unit of Hirdmen (8!) thus making ADs decide which way to go.

What had actually happened was some not so good dice rolls for me.

All I needed was 4s, 5s, and 6s. 

Numbers were still on my side but that don't matter much sometimes. 

On the left I moved my Freemen up to the foot of the bridge to loom and maybe lurk a bit, Hirdmen behind the house ready to pounce upon anything that might have happened over there.

ADs had moved up onto the bridge, also looming with intent to lurk. Some of the AD levies also moved up to support their warriors with archery.

Back on the right ADs countered with an attack that whittled down my Freemen but still left me in a good position. Vikings then countered with another Freemen attack that was followed by the buzzsaw of Val'Serkers.

The dice are indicating changed armor values - Val'Serkers went down to 3 and then was further reduced to 2 while the AD axemen were reduced to 4.

From what I remember, just prior to this I had the hopes that what was left of my Freemen unit would be able to do some damage but the dice did not share that goal. The Val'Serkers were truly awesome in the sense I think I generated 23 attack dice with 4 figures but most of that was wasted on a 4 man AD axemen unit. The result was 3 of 4 Val'Serkers killed, 3 of 4 AD axemen killed. Considering I had almost 3 times the dice he had that was a poor performance. Well... first time using berserkers.

 During "The Battle of Right Bridge" I did get to use this ability. Allowed me to resolve another attack immediately after the first. Suffice to say I had one guy left and he got killed.

This is long enough for now, I'll finish this AAR later for you.