Saga - 2014 PNW Championships!

Two of us left Portland early in the morning to drive up to Gig Harbor, WA and enter the tournament -

Two doughty warriors, faces grim and determined, good blades notched with experience and ringing with many battle songs! Vikings, both of them. Ships laden with war-glad men and women. They braved 2 near white-out flurries of ice. They trudged ahead through the rime-frost, crossed the bridge and came to the Harbor of the Gig.

Then Jeff and Gabe met a bunch of fine fellows in a crisp and slightly wet library parking lot and the fun began.

First - Jeff took Second Place over all with his Viking faction, playing a 12 man hearthguard unit with a banner. Many were took by surprise and learned all about banner rules that came out in Raven's Shadow over two years ago.

Jeff's Second Place medal

banner - does stuff

Second - I was pretty mediocre. I played 3 Jomsviking factions, won 2 of those, and lost to a Byzantine faction that shot me to death.

No time nor do I have the memory so I will not do each battle in any kind of play by play AAR. Some points though... because we like lists and points:

1) Need to follow steps. I stuck to that in the tournament with various degrees of understanding (mostly complete understanding). It is tantamount to having any strategy in this game to follow the steps. You just can't go spending fatigue before anyone had a chance to generate attack dice or some such. This is something I will never concede in any game. 

Yes, this is supposed to be fun. Yes, this is a beer and pretzel game. Y'know what else gets a big "yes"? The steps, which are easy to follow. I'm no genius so I need these steps to be able to play the game as designed and for me to have fun.

Some guys are loose and fast on this. It's OK in a home game but I don't play that way, especially in a tournament.

2) I have a pic of a couple of my lucky dice rolls!

Three sig runes! That'd be a "6" on the dice.

Look at them hits! The 5 misses are on the left, and getting rerolled as I had an Ulr up. Two more hits BTW.

Just looked at the clock and saw I need to go get ready for my Savage Worlds game. Wargame yesterday, RPG today! I'll be back soon to post more. It was awesome and can't wait to tell you guys more.

**Part II**

Got some time before The Walking Dead is on...

3) Failed Engagement of the Day: There I was, sending my 8 axe and sword Hirdmen into the fray against some Jomsviking warriors, 7 of them to be exact. What happened? Did my trusty Hirdmen roll a ton of dice and win the day? Nope. Lost all 8 of them to the last man and the Jomsviking warriors only lost 5. This was my turning point in that battle. It was almost a complete wipe out.

4) Successful Engagement of the Day: Against another Jomsviking faction my Viking Levy, the now famed "Old Men With Bows" held up against not just one, nor 2, but 3 attacks from superior forces. Jomsviking waves of Hearthguard and Warriors were sent against the Old Men With Bows only to be repelled 3 times. This was totally not expected by me and loathed by my honorable opponent.

Old Men With Bows center of pic - "Stay back young men, we'll show you how this is done.

5) The WTF Engagement of the Day: Wolves of Winter Scenario.
Rule 1: Flanking Maneuver - on round 3 a "reserve" unit may enter the battlefield from any point on the player's right side of the board.

Rule 2: Snow - activate unit as normal. Roll a D6, if it is a "1" your unit's move is reduced to S.

So, I had this big plan in the battle pictured above. I "reserved" my Val'Serkers for the flank rule. I would spend the first 2 rounds of the match to push my opponent to my right flank and stay away from my left side of the board (where his reserve flankers would enter). On round 3 I'd deply my flanker Val'Serkers into what ever was most vulnerable on my right. I did this without flaw.

You can see my target above, 4 Dane-Axed Jomsviking Hearthguard, a very shiney thing to destroy. Further, if any of my Val'Serkers survived they could make a B-line to the Jomsviking Warlord! Oh man this was going to be awesome!! In my dreams it looked like this:

What actually happened is my Val'Serker moved the normal M and on the second activation to move and close they rolled that stupid "1" and "hit a snow bank" and were just sitting there within range of the Jomsviking axe-wielding Hearthguard. Uh oh.

Well... my opponent promptly sent his axe-singing heavies into my Val'Serkers. Result? Mutual destruction. Kind of a wash.

Exciting and fun none-the-less. Memory making move by both of us!

6) Great touch and go fight between my Vikings and the Byzantines of Scott. He took a medal for his paint job BTW. It was an honor to lose to such a good looking faction.

I really liked this game as it was against the only faction I played that day other than Jomsvikings. That's right, 3 out of 4 of my games were against Jomsvikings.

Tip about fighting Byzantines, they shoot a lot. Make sure you can defend against them. They can also shoot over their own soldiers. My Vikings got shot to pieces. Plus there was a river... I was really wishing I had my Normans for this fight.

Then, Strategos Scott sent his lone surviving knight across the bridge. He repelled wave after wave of my Vikings ala Old Men With Bows vs. the Jomsvikings. That was funny.

Before that lone knight earned himself a medal for fending off my horde.

7) I've never played Jomsvikings before. I was matched up with them 3 times in the tourney. All I had was forum advice to pull from in what to do against them and that was "Don't Let Them Build Wrath". That's exactly what I did and I won 2 of the 3 matches. They can still do stuff but that Wrath stuff is pretty scary. Give them 0 Wrath for the first 2/3 of the game. Move on them and attack. Have levies handy for that "kill 3 figures or gain 2 Wrath" ability.

8) What did Mighty Jeff, who got the silver medal and is Second in the PNW, do to win? Well, first he played (haha < smart ass me). His faction was based off a 12 man Hearthguard (Hirdmen) unit with a banner. The gist of banner rules allows a rest activation on top of the normal one you might use. This increases the range of that 12 figure Deathstar and it ends up right in the middle of the ranks of the foe. On top of that his beard played into his strategy... really. Saga has a rule that any tied die rolls, when finding out who goes first, are won by the one with the most impressive facial hair. Jeff has an impressive beard and he used that twice to go first.

This allowed him to get right up into the ranks of his opponent in turn one with 24 dice of whirling axes, swords, and spears.