Hostile Lands

It’s been a while since we’ve played the Age of Magic universe in Saga, so we decided to give it a go using two factions that we haven’t used before – The Horde and Lords of the Wild.

My Horde army was made up mostly of Goblins from the Gripping Beast range. They are nice figures, but not entirely well suited to Saga, even though they seem to be designed for a Horde army. My issue with them is that they consist almost entirely of spear/shield infantry. They have no heavy weapons, no riding beasts, and until recently they didn’t even have any bow armed troops. So though there are four different types of goblins (night, mountain, hill and forest), they differ only in appearance.

I haven’t really wanted to go and buy a Warhammer army, and haven’t found any suitable metal miniatures from other manufacturers, so my Hordes were mostly infantry spearmen. I had two units of Hearthguard heavy infantry, and 2 points of Bipedal Creatures (Trolls, which Gripping Beast have recently added to their line). Hopefully at some point Gripping Beast will add some beast riders to their Horde line up, because as I said, I really like the models. There’s just not a huge variety of tactical options.

My warlord was mounted – well, standing next to a war beast – about the extent of my ability to modify miniatures.

For the Lords of the Wild, I continued with my World of Greyhawk theme for my Age of Magic armies, and went with a mix of Wolf Nomads and elves from the Vesve Forest.

My Wolf Nomads were viking barbarian figures from Wargames Foundry, which I normally use as the core of my Jomsviking army. Clad in wolf skins and carrying heavy weapons. There was a huge cave bear as a Behemoth, some Wood Elf Nymphs (again from Wargames Foundry – I think this is the first time I’ve found an actual use for a unit of naked elven archers), and some Wood Elf Archers, led by Skarloc. This is actually a Regiments of Renown unit, which I painted about 40 years ago. They probably got used in a few games of early Warhammer and Battlesystem, but have sat unused in a box for over three decades.

Finally, I used my Jomsviking warlord, with a couple of bear companions as the Warlord.

We didn’t use Sacred Lands, because I don’t have any terrain pieces for that yet.

My opponent, who had taken the Lords of the Wild army, really wasn’t happy with the make up of the army, and felt that it was going to be a massacre. It was a massacre, but not in the way they expected.

We rolled for starting conditions, and got some awkward results. The random scenario generation is something I’m liking less and less. It has a habit of completely changing the game, and crippling one side or the other. We started with Fog, which would greatly limit the Lords of the Wild for the first half of the game. Since I wanted to see how the armies played out, we re-rolled and got Hostile Lands.

This would make all uneven terrain also dangerous. We really should have vetoed this one as well, since it turned out to utterly cripple the Hordes. We also got another diagonal deployment.

For the victory conditions, we got Target, which meant we each secretly designated an enemy unit as a target, which we’d get double massacre points for. I designated their the Lords of the Wild Behemoth.

For the terrain placement, I tried to ensure that there weren’t any uneven pieces of terrain near where I was deploying. The Lords of the Wild have the ability to turn small uneven terrain pieces into Titans under their control, and can also shoot from any uneven terrain (similar to the Irish ability, but more effective).

This resulted though in lots of dangerous terrain which the Horde couldn’t navigate around, and their main focus is to do massed charges at the enemy.

Turn 1

The Horde moved forward as best they could. Stuck between a dangerous hill and a dangerous swamp, they couldn’t get very far without either taking fatigue and getting slowed down, or heading towards woods which the elves would shoot at them from.

The Lords of the Wild moved their elves through some rough ground up closer to one of the small woods, and used Ambush to shoot at the Horde Lieutenant. Combining Fury and Sharpened Arrows, they took him out. I was already down a hero.

The Lords had otherwise deployed in a highly defensive fashion, and there was no sign that they were planning on moving out from their position.

Turn 2

The Horde lost the game in this turn. I wanted to take down the Behemoth, which was my target, and decided a lightning strike would do it.

I used For the Horde! in my Orders phase, and then completely forgot to also use Me First! which would have given me four extra attack dice on my first charge.

My unit of goblin warriors charged the Cave Bear. They came in with a total of 10 attack dice, and got 5 hits, giving the cave bear 3 fatigue (it has resilience 2). It had 14 attack dice as a base, and hit me for 9 hilts. I rolled… zero saves, and so my unit was wiped out. If I’d had another 4 attack dice, then it’s possible I could have got another couple of hits and not needed to make a follow up attack with my trolls.

My unit of 4 trolls then moved up and charged. They each have an aggression of 5, but initial attack dice max out at 16. This suggests that maybe I should keep them as units of 2, or maybe have a single unit of 3. They finished off the Behemoth, but it struck back (it was down to 11 attack dice, since its attacks get reduced by its fatigue) and got 8 hits. I saved only a single one, so took 7 casualties.

Fortunately my creatures have resilience 1, but this wasn’t enough to prevent the unit from being wiped out. I’ve just realised though, that both the Bear and the Trolls are imposing, so can take 4 fatigues. However, I don’t think this would have made a difference since if we’d remembered that, we probably would have spent fatigue differently at the start of the melee.

At this point in the game I was now down 4 points (my Lieutenant, two points of Creatures and a point of Warriors). The Lords of the Wild had lost a Behemoth. Some really bad save rolls on my part, plus forgetting to use my Saga ability, meant the game was probably over for the Horde.

The Lords of the Wild turned a nearby wood into a Titan, and it shuffled towards a rather surprised unit of goblins. Fortunately for them, it’s a slow moving wood and so wasn’t able to reach them. However, it now pretty much blocked the easy route around towards the elves hiding in the rough ground.

Again, Ambush was used to kill 3 of my warriors stuck at the back.

Turn 3

The Horde send their goblins into the wood (which isn’t a Titan any more, but the goblins aren’t entirely convinced). Since it’s dangerous ground, they take a fatigue. However, it stops it turning into a Titan again.

The rest of my troops try to move up into the middle of the table, to try and get around to attack the barbarians. Since most of them were infantry, it was slow though. I couldn’t risk sending my Hero out by himself, because he’d just get shot.

The Lords of the Wild again used Ambush, killing a Hearthguard, and moved their Nymphs out of the wood they were hiding it. Obviously their intent at this point was going to be to turn that wood into a Titan.

Turn 4

The Horde try to move up, though the use of Living Roots by the elves slow down their movement. I try to get them into a position where we can charge the barbarians next turn.

The Lords of the Wild indeed use Rise of the Spirits to turn that wood into a Titan, pretty much blocking my ability to charge, and attacking the nearby unit of armoured goblins. Three of them are killed.

Turn 5

A this point… I decided it wasn’t worth continuing. It hadn’t really been worth continuing since turn 2. I’d wanted to try things out and see how things worked, even if I had already lost, but at this point I really wasn’t going to be able to do much of anything.

The Lords player had been concerned that with heavy weapons their armour was too low, and they wouldn’t be able to close ranks, so they’d be useless in a defensive battle which is what they’d wanted to fight. The lack of We Obey from their Warlord was also seen as crippling, even though they had an ability to give every unit Determination for one turn.

All of that turned out to be irrelevant to the combat. Mostly because they hadn’t been any combat. With the Lords refusing to engage, and the Horde unable to engage, there wasn’t that much of a battle except right at the start where the Horde got badly trounced. I think missile troops are needed to either weaken behemoths, or finish them off.

If we’d stuck with the initial battle option of Fog, then maybe the Horde would have had a chance. As it was, the Hostile Lands option coupled with the amount of terrain we had utterly crippled them.