Saga: Moors vs Rus

So Mike was over this weekend and we played a game of Saga and then we had a game of Frostrgrave. This is the battle report of the Saga game.

We played a 7 point game so that I could use the Moorish army that I have been painting up. I had bin Yusuf, a hearthguard unit of 8 African Horse, a hearthguard unit of 8 Black Guard and a warrior unit of 8 mounted on camels. I did have an Imam painted as well but I felt I already had enough special rules to deal with this time around.

Mike had a Rus army (I think it was Christian Rus rather than Pagan Rus, but really, they are all infidels anyway!).  He had a unit of 8 mounted hearthguard (much like the Black Guard, they cost an extra point and have several special powers), a unit of 12 Levy bow and 2 units of 12 Warriors. We decided to play the river crossing scenario from the original Saga book.

My plan, such as it was, was to have the Black Guard move on to the right ford and have the mounted units sweep across the left ford and crush all in their path.

I started out sensibly by moving slowly up and using some of my board abilities to slow down the Rus.

The Rus were also being sedate in their advance.

By the second or third turn my instinct to immediately get stuck in took over and the Black Guard crossed over the ford with Ben Yusuf.

And the horsemen charged across the ford into the Rus horse (who had killed one of my horse on the previous turn with bow fire). It was at this point that I realized that several of the battle board abilities I was counting on for this attack wouldn't work because they are armed with javelins and the abilities specify that they only work for troops not armed with missile weapons.

My horse were forced back with great loss and managed to inflict no damage on the Rus

The remains of my horse were wiped on the following Rus turn (they weren't so keen to attack the Black Guard though...)

The Black Guard smashed into the Rus warriors driving them back over the hill but they did lose a stand to the levy bow on the hill.

The Rus began to move towards the left ford with only the camels between them and victory.

The Black Guard finished off the warriors and faced off against the levy bow.

The camels charged across the river into the mounted Rus and just disappeared in a mist of tawny fur and blood. I had hoped to do a bit better here due to the penalty of horse fighting camel but it was not to be.

The Rus crossed over the river and the hearthguard took a few bow shots at the Black Guard to no effect.

At the end of the game the Black Guard had not quite wiped out the bow. The Rus won handily with what they had crossed the river with.

I was reasonably happy with how things went given that it was my first time playing with this force. I really didn't take much advantage of Ben Yusuf's special abilities and I think that having 2 big hearthguard units (especially when one costs an extra point) is not really a good strategy (but this list was based on what I had just painted and wanted to play with). I think the next time I play with them I will not take Ben Yusuf but just the Black Guard with foot warriors and maybe levy bow or one unit of mounted warriors. The other way to go is to go with Ben Yusuf and a mostly mounted force and use the abilities to slow down the enemy and then pick of units at the edge.

I have now played with all 3 of the Islamic armies from Crescent and Cross and I like them all, the Moors might be my favourite but they are all close. For the next few games, I want to use more foot (some of which is still being painted but I should be able to finish them off over Christmas) and also try out the 3 varieties of Cleric. I do want to just stick with these three armies to try and learn them a bit better (sticking to one would be better but I don't think I can limit my self to that).

This was the first time I had played at 7 points and I think it worked ok because we had both taken special units or figures. I don't think that there would be much point in going to an even larger point value (though maybe will will try and find the upper limit in the future...)

We also talked about using Lion Rampant with these figures to run a Crusades game at Cangames. I have since read some reviews and it seems it would work well for that .  I will probably get the Kindle version and read it over the holidays.