SAGA: The Age of Hannibal

After a long break from playing any SAGA this week we dusted off the rules and got the new Age of Hannibal armies and book out.

We started off with a straightforward 6 points a piece game using the Kill scenario to get back into the swing of the rules. SAGA is pretty straightforward from a game mechanics point of view with little book keeping, most of the nuance is offered via the battle boards.

I took the chance to dress the edge of the board with the new Iron Age ring fort I'd painted up, and it looked like some Greeks had moved in.

The Romans consisted of:
2 points of Hearth Guard in one unit of 8

3 points of Warriors in three units of 8

1 point of Levies with Javelins in one unit of 12

one Warlord on foot

The Carthaginians consisted of:

2 points of Citizen Hearthguard on foot in one unit of 8

1 point of Contingent (mercenary) Warriors with Javelin on Horse in one unit of 8

1 point of Contingent Warriors on foot in one unit of 8

1 point of Citizen Warriors on foot in one unit of 8

1 point of Levies with bow in one unit of 12

one Warlord on Horse

I'd had a quick look at the Carthaginian board before and playing through the game it became obvious that the board is mostly defensive in nature with the only way to add attack dice being for shooting. So the decision to take a big unit of Hearthguard paid off as the generate lots of attack dice natively. The three warrior units struggled to put out much hurt against the Romans as they lacked the dice.

It may be that the Carthaginians need to invest in the Elephants in order to offer an alternate punching unit. The Elephants can also shoot so would benefit from using the Eagle Eye ability.

The Romans as you would expect like to be moving forwards onto the enemy and they have a couple of abilities which allow them move forwards, the Pilum ability which allows a free Shoot and then Charge is good, especially as it is only one common dice to use. In contrast to the Carthaginians the Romans can also generate extra attack dice pretty easily, again encouraging them to get stuck in.

In the game itself the Romans closed in on the Carthaginians quickly and almost wiped out a unit of Warriors early on with the Carthaginian Hearth Guard counter attacking to stabilise the situation and wiped out the exposed Roman unit. The Hearth Guard followed up with some more fighting and the Carthaginian archers proved effective whilst the Velites hung back in the woods.

The Roman Triarii (Hearth Guard) where eventually committed and managed to maul the Spanish cavalry but by that time it was too late and the Romans had lost two complete units of Warrior with a third almost wiped out.

We picked up the rules again pretty quickly with the only real delay being the need to learn the battle boards so we can distribute the activation dice, this will speed up with practice.

This week also saw the much delayed arrival of my League of Infamy pledge so I can now finish off the Kingdom of Men army by painting up the three General on Winged Beast that I was missing. 

I can then get the game itself painted up and ready to play.