Game 1:
See pic above - played Kyle's Anglo-Danes. Being my first game with Pagans, and Kyle's first game against them, we held back the whole time. It was a 6 point Clash of the Warlords. I won 7-5 or something like that. REALLY LOW score. The picture above is not that different from how the game ended.
I was trying to slow the Anglo-Danes down and put some fatigue on them so that I could close and fight in the last few rounds of the game. A lot of my Rus moves were just adjustments in the line, the rest of my rounds I spent slowing things down with the Winter ability.
Not the best ability by the way... unless your plan is to make no one move or shoot, including yourself.
I opened up a bit mid rounds and he was able to get his Levies in to shoot at mine. I was able to use Cold Winds which gave his shooters a fatigue for every "hit" effectively. That worked great! On my following turn I played an ability that allowed me to kill a figure for every fatigue - this is ALL units. That round was the only round that only his Levy had fatigue.
After that there was some back and forth and I barely won the game with some shots from my levy to his.
If this were a movie it would have looked like this:
Cold and snowy field. Two Warlords and their retinues arrive on the field, flanked by there peasant levies just mustered yesterday from nearby farm steads.
The peasants fought all day long while the real warriors moved around for the advantage. None was found, peasants died, Warlords made peace and all had ale that night! Yay!.
Game 2:
I played Jesse and, he having Crescent and Cross, we played a scenario from that book. 6 points Crusaders vs. Pagan Rus, God's Chosen or something like that - the one were you can re-spawn your dead once per round.
Holy crap! What a battle-fest! We pretty much loosened up and went at it. I won't even go into details of abilities or movements... not much there except "move forward and engage, use abilities that give me attack dice or mess you up!"
We got towards the end and at the last round we thought I was ahead by 2 points. We got to the end and Jesse declared me the winner and I declared we should recount our points and Jesse actually had one it by ONE LEVY.
One ability I did not use in that game was the Winter one. No need really.
Looking forward to my nest game with my Pagan Rus!
Your summery at the end of game one was Brilliant!
ReplyDeleteYou've inspired me to paint Rus. I will need to get those Old Glory models. The Gripping Beast ones should mix great with these guys.
ReplyDeleteNice.
DeleteI should blog about it but I've been getting lazy about blogging as of late.... But I just rekindled my love for Pagan Rus.
I played them a few more times against a few more opponents and it just seemed PAgan Rus are the "assholes" of Saga meaning playing them makes for a boring game for your opponent. I put them aside the last half of last year and concentrated on getting on track with my Normans and really putting my Vikings up to be feared.
I whooped out my Pagan Rus just last weekend after about 6 months of hating on them. I went up against my best opponent Spencer and we had a good game with him getting the measure of my Pagans. Ended up losing handidly but learned a lot and rekindled my love for the faction and wanting to find their measure and using them to their full potential.
I'm glad you're inspired and I hope they give you the "sweet drama" in your gaming they've given me!
Good luck and have fun.