Milites Christi Tactica

The Milites Christi are the second faction I have gathered for SAGA and unlike the Byzantines they have a special mechanic on their board. Many of the factions created after the initial SAGA release have a special twist that helps establish their theme. The Milites Christi mechanic is called Piety and several of the abilities are more effect the higher your Piety. Piety is raised by sacrificing your SAGA dice, it requires rare or uncommon dice and one more dice than your current Piety must be spent to raise the Piety by one. As you would need to sacrifice four SAGA dice to get a Piety of four it is unlikely that you will often go above three.

The Battleboard

The effect of Piety can be seen straight away with the abilities above the Piety line ( these are your 'normal' abilities that are generally multi use on most boards ) with both the Activation & Combat pools benefiting from a higher Piety. Also as the Milites Christi do not have Levy troops the activation for them has been replaced by the Prayers ability, this ability can only be used once a turn. As Piety can only be raised once a turn then a cautious approach at the start of battle whilst you build up your power level is probably best advised. The combat pool also requires rare or uncommon dice as do many of the better abilities on the board so once combat really starts you will not want to be sacrificing dice to raise Piety.

M.C. & Normans line up for battle, the objective is
to kill the opposing Warlord.

The first ability is Armour of Faith which can be activated for only a common die and as you are likely to have at least one spare most turns it should see plenty of use. Having 2 extra defence die if you cannot activate the Combat Pool or even in addition to that is very handy. Another ability that will probably get a die left on it against shooting armies is God is Merciful, this allows you a free move ( hopefully into combat ) after taking a casualty against ranged troops. As cavalry are weak against shooting then having the option to strike back immediately against the biggest threat to your cavalry could be very helpful. 

With their Warlord hidden the M.C. right advances using the
hills as cover against the Norman shooting.

Another ability that only needs a common die and should be used most turns is Deus Vult which stops your opponent from spending the fatigue on your mounted troops to slow them down. This means you can multi-activate your chaps, build up fatigue and still get to the enemy, it also combines very nicely with another ability. By the Book allows you to convert your fatigue into attack dice so this encourages you to over activate your troops, build up some fatigue and then get stuck in. This works best when you initiate the combat as the attacker uses abilities and spends fatigue first. Using both these abilities and the extra dice for over activating means you probably won't be doing much else with your other units though.

The first M.C. unit of knights tangles with some Norman mounted
Warriors leaving both units heavily damaged. meanwhile the Norman
Warlord rides over to plug the gap.

The board also has an ability to discard all fatigue at the end of a combat, Martyrs, so potentially not only could you use all your fatigue before your opponent can spend it you can also remove the one fatigue you gain at the end of combat. Of course if the enemy cannot reach you in their turn you may want to leave it on so that your next By the Book has even more fatigue to fuel those extra attack dice. 

The last ability I actually got to use this week was For the True Cross, this encourages the use of small units or the sacrificing of a damaged unit. Being able to bring most enemy troops down to an armour of 2 ( so you hit on anything but 1's on a D6 ) is excellent and whilst it is expensive it will also mean lots of models being removed by your opponent.

The result of a For the True Cross charge, 4 Norman Warriors
removed and the miraculous survival of the M.C. knights. The Norman
Warlord is left close to the knights so he has to charge them.

Repent, Sinners looks to be a excellent way of clearing lots of levy troops, with my regular Norman opponent favouring 2 points of Levy archers then it has the potential to cause massive damage to the Norman shooting line. Blasphemous War Cry would likely only be used in the last turn of a game or perhaps as a last throw of the dice gamble when all has gone wrong. Potentially you could generate a large number of extra dice but as always only upto twice the number generated by the unit itself. This is my Body is a good ability for when your opponent leaves a lot of Melee abilities with dice on in your turn, being able to render them useless should turn the advantage in your favour. Again only useful when you initiate the combat as the attacker uses their abilities first. Finally we come to This is my Blood which for a mass activation ability is pretty good, these can be tied to a radius around your Warlord on other boards. You also get an extra 4" of move for your mounted troops so it helps them reach out to the enemy. 

Having killed the 2 knights left from the first unit the second
unit of knights charges in and kills the Norman Warlord, he
did take 3 knights with him though.

Whilst the Milites Christi can take crossbowmen the battleboard really offers nothing to help with shooting so this is a melee focused army. Having the ability to get your mounted troops to make multiple activations that cannot be slowed down and then convert the fatigue into attack dice once they arrive would seem to encourage a bold use of the cavalry. Of course being overly bold may lead to the loss of all your best troops, so a careful balance will need to be struck. In the one game I played I included an Religious Advisor as he allowed me to roll seven SAGA dice rather than the normal six. As you need to sacrifice dice at the start of the game having an extra one to burn meant I was not overly disadvantaged by the Piety mechanic. I also of course had to make sure that my warband generated seven dice so I went with 3 points of Hearthguard, 2 points of Warriors and the Priest organised as ( the warlord is free ) :

Warlord - 2 SAGA dice generated

Priest - 1 SAGA dice generated

2 * 6 Hearthguard ( mounted knights ) - 2 SAGA dice generated

1 * 8 Foot Warriors - 1 SAGA dice generated

1 * 8 Foot Warriors with Crossbows - 1 SAGA dice generated

This gave me seven SAGA dice and when later on in the game I lost a unit of Hearthguard I was able to use the Priest's ability to roll one extra dice at the expense of gaining a fatigue to keep the number of SAGA dice rolled up at seven.

If I wanted to paint more cavalry then I would consider getting some mounted Warriors as they would get to use most of the good abilities, perhaps that will be one for the future as I have some Vikings to paint now.