Comrade's Wargames

The stars aligned last month, and our game group was able to come together for a Saga: Age of Magic game day. We had six players and managed to play five games over the course of about five hours. Not bad at all!

This game day provided a great opportunity to get some armies onto the battlefield, many of which haven’t yet seen action in their current incarnation. I wasn’t able to get play-by-play photos of the games themselves, so here’s a look at some of the matchups as they unfolded throughout the day.

Lawrence’s Otherworld Daemons vs. Vincent’s Great Kingdoms

Lawrence loves big centerpiece models and it shows in this Nurgle daemon army! He played against Vince’s Great Kingdoms army in the first pairing. Here’s a look at their clash.

See below: There’s nothing like a wedge of knights charging into a knot of foul daemons. Did they win the day or did they get wiped out in a flurry of hooves and lances? I honestly can’t remember. Maybe Vince or Lawrence will chime in with a comment and fill in the blanks.

Lawrence’s Daemons vs. Pat’s Undead

This second game was more like half a game, against my undead. We were pressed for time so we played a few turns and called it a draw. It was a beautiful game featuring several newly completed pieces of terrain — that autumn forest piece from me and the big Ophidian Archway from Lawrence! Here are a few photos.

Hmmm…12 foot tall dragon ogres appearing behind your archers is not where you want them to be. Lawrence was playing the Otherworld army list, and he made great use of the teleport ability to move his units around the battlefield.

The photo below shows the proper arrangement, with the targets in front of the archers.

This was yet another game session where I misused my Black Knight (the special lieutenant character for the Undead army list). He just looks so badass! Who wouldn’t want to send that grim reaper charging into a unit of warriors? Turns out, that’s not a very good tactic. Oh well, live and learn (or not, if you’re undead).

Paul’s Beastmen

I confess I only got one photo of Paul’s nascent Beastmen army. He had been working diligently on it over the last couple of months and brought a batch of nifty beastmen and minotaurs to the table. I think Paul has finally discovered the pure, unadulterated joy that comes with painting BROWN. I say this as a Skaven player who has literally dozens of shades of browns in my paint collection.

Anyway, we added some units of basic fighter-types from various collections to bulk out the army to fit the games. I’m really excited to watch this army develop!

John’s Great Kingdoms vs. Mark’s Lords of the Wild

John’s GHA (Generic Human Army) has come into focus over the last few months. The army was developed specifically for use with Saga and Dragon Rampant, using miniatures from a variety of manufacturers. He’s tied it closely to the homebrew fantasy setting we developed a couple years ago using Microsope.

These photos show John’s Great Kingdoms battling Mark’s Lords of the Wild. I’ll have more photos from Mark’s army in a moment; he and I got in a game vs. my undead as well.

John also debuted a few new units, including this batch of crossbowmen and a cool new trebuchet catapult thingy. His army is really loaded for bear! It will give me no pleasure to swarm his defensive positions with tides of foul ratmen and monstrous abominations from the pits. No pleasure at all.

Mark’s Lords of the Wild vs. Pat’s Undead

I ended up with several photos from this game because, well, it featured my army, and I was standing nearby for most of the game.

Alas, it was not my best showing. The Lords of the Wild list is a real tough nut to crack, particularly for my slow-moving undead. Mark made great use of his creatures to outflank and destroy my key units that generated Saga dice, leaving me with few resources as the game reached its later turns.

His army was led by this brutal giant gorilla who, as you can clearly see, is wearing a T. Rex as a headdress. That should have been my first tip-off that Mark would be pulling no punches this game.

Actually, I had a decent opportunity to take out his warlord, during a turn when I was able to pile on enough to fatigue to exhaust him for a turn. Alas, my dice rolls betrayed me in spectacular fashion, allowing his leader to retreat to the rear and rest up to remove some fatigue. I can definitely chalk up this defeat to statistically poor dice results — c’est la vie!

Anyway, T. Rex showed up shortly thereafter and ate everyone. The end.

This session solidified the ascent of Saga: Age of Magic as our group’s default choice for “big skirmish” scale fantasy gaming. It is a fantastic and flexible system that provides a lot of strategic and tactical depth in both gameplay and list-building.

The “use whatever you want” philosophy for building armies also suits our group very well. We have some players like Lawrence and Paul, who have armies drawn from Age of Sigmar, and other players like me and Vincent and John, who have cobbled-together armies featuring a miniatures from many different sources, and players like Mark, who custom-printed quite a few miniatures for his army.

Saga: Age of Magic welcomes all!