Fun Weekend at the Ft. Wayne (IN) Saga Tournament

    I took my Picts to the Ft. Wayne Saga tournament and did well -- going 2-1 and having a great time

Once I decided to make the journey to the Saga tournament in Ft. Wayne, IN, the next question was which of my armies to take along and play? My most recently-painted army was the Mongols. The entire army is mounted, though, and I wasn't sure how well they would fare in a tournament featuring three scenarios with very particular victory conditions. I was especially worried about the Round 1 scenario, King of the Hill. The players get bonus points for occupying a central hill at the end of each their turns. The Mongols are all about striking and pulling back -- at least the way I play them. That would certainly entail me having to stay in place for a counter-strike by my opponent. This could prove deadly if the army was adept at shooting.

    Some of the crowd of 18 players at Power 9 Gaming in Ft. Wayne, IN, Feb. 11

So, I ended up shelving the Mongols for this tournament and playing my Picts. I actually won a tournament with them last year, and really enjoy their speed and striking ability. Their weakness, though, is they require dense terrain on the board to fully utilize their special abilities. Since terrain would be placed by the player, I felt I would be able to get at least enough terrain to give me a chance every game. I also decided to take a mercenary unit called "The Guides," which allow you to either put out additional terrain or shift the position of what's already been placed. 

    My Picts deploy for their Round 1 Battle, King of the Hill, against Scott's Moorish army

Daniel B, who was running the tournament, permitted players to have a list of eight army points from which they could draw six points at deployment. As it turned out, I used the same six points in all three rounds, never feeling the need to change it: 12 levy crossbowmen, 12 levy archers, the Guides, and three units of Pictish warrior spearmen. I kept my warlord on foot all three games, too. My opponents were all fun to play against, and I felt they presented a wide variety of challenges. My first opponent was Scott M from Indiana. He was playing Moors from Age of Crusades. I have played the Moors quite a few times myself, and it is one of my favorite armies in Saga. In fact, Scott had listened to my interview on Saga Thorsday and was basing his army list and tactics on what I recommended in Rodge's video. I told Scott I would try to help coach him through it, as this was one of the first times he had played with that army.

    Two of the other entrants from Saga Ohio, Dan N playing his Polish on left, and Bob B & Byzantines

I missed an opportunity right away to coach him during terrain placement, though. I should have told him to limit his use of "uneven" terrain, which disadvantaged his javelin-armed, Moorish cavalry and benefited my army. He went first and placed an area of ruins next to the central hill we would have to control in our King of the Hill scenario. That was a sound, tactical choice, as it gave him a good defensive position for his Moorish archers. I countered it with rocky ground on the other side of the hill where my own missile armed troops could access it quickly. Scott should have stopped placing dense terrain at that point, but placed one more piece. I kept at it, too, and the hill ended up being almost completely ringed by terrain favorable to my all-infantry, Pictish army.

    My Picts felt comfortable with the dense terrain we were able to fight in during round one

I was a little overconfident in my striking power, though. I immediately sent in one of my spear units to try to drive his Moorish archers out of the ruins. To my surprise, they were driven back and lost 25% in casualties. Yikes - bad way to start! His rolls were fairly good and mine were fairly bad in that attack, but I should have taken that possibility into account and "stacked the deck" with more advanced Saga abilities in our melee. Still, I had two other spear units and I marched one of them onto the hill next turn to begin scoring my 3 bonus points per turn (as did Scott). I was able to get some shots on his cavalry with my crossbowmen, though, which was a bonus. They advanced, getting ready to line up a charge on my infantry on the hill.

    The name of this game was "King of the Hill," so there were a lot of units advancing onto it

One interesting ability on the Pictish board is called, Secret Paths. If it is queued up in the opponent's turn, it allows a unit that has suffered a shooting attack or a charge to "teleport" near a piece of terrain somewhere on the board. Twice Scott had cavalry charges lined up against one of my units. Both times he decided to "soften them up" with archery first. Both times the Picts disappeared after weathering the Moorish missiles, leaving his cavalry with no one to charge. It was my shooting against his mounted troops that actually won the game for me, I believe. I was able to hit them a couple times and whittle away at their numbers. And when he finally did get a "Torrent of Iron" (my favorite Moorish ability) charge against my archers, the levy performed better than I thought they would and killed two or three of the enemy.

    Having driven off the Moorish thrust on the left, Pictish crossbows begin targeting enemy on the hill

All in all, I felt that I was getting a slight edge while we were trading blows. Devastating his higher point value hearthguard cavalry ended up being enough to win my first round. I had a lot of fun playing Scott. Knowing what the Moors were good at doing was a definite advantage for me, as well. The terrain favored my Picts, too. As it was, we started off with a victory in our first round and the Picts were off and running.

    Scott's depleted Moorish cavalry finally get a 'Torrent of Iron' charge off vs. my levy archers

The second round was against D.J. Andrews, one of our co-winners from the Advance the Colors 2022 Saga tournament. He was playing an army that I had yet to face -- Spanish from Age of Crusades. I had heard that one of the rules revisions had really weakened this list, so I was surprised there were actually two players using this army in the tournament. By the way, we had 18 players in total, which is an amazing number for a first-ever Saga tournament in Ft. Wayne! D.J.'s army was heavily mounted, with three units of mounted warriors and one of mounted hearthguard. Naturally, he began placing terrain with a large, gentle hill in the center. In fact, all three of my games began the same way, with my opponents being first player and having a large, gentle hill in the center of the battlefield.

    A wide open center of the board would hamper my Picts in my 2nd Round vs. D.J.'s Feudal Spanish

Our scenario for this round was A Tale of Challenges, where each player must fulfill 2-4 "boasts" over the course of the game. I was planning on using "I Will Sack Your Lands", which requires me to have three units close to his base line at the end of the game. I planned to lean on the Secret Paths ability to help get them there, so cluttered up his side of the field with woods and scrub land. I made a mistake by not having a piece of uneven terrain opposite his large hill on my side of the board, though. Since the only defense the Picts have against shooting is hiding in terrain, I handicapped myself by leaving a huge area in the center of the battlefield with nowhere for my army to hide. This forced me to split my army into two sections, one on each wing, where they could not easily support one another.

Pictish spearmen hurtled across this board, but were unable to move en masse to the enemy baseline

Still, I planned on using Secret Paths to leapfrog across the table. This plan was scuttled by poor rolling of my command and control dice. Each six-sided Saga die has one Rare face (think of it as the "six"), two Uncommon faces, and three Common faces. I need an Uncommon for Secret Paths. Guess what I didn't roll for three turns straight? Uncommons! That seriously handicapped my chances of crossing the table and scoring bonus points for our challenge. 

    Pictish archers, followed by the Guides, loose volleys at the surprised Spanish cavalry

My other challenge required that I pick his most expensive unit in points (I chose his 12-man mounted hearthguard unit) and destroy it entirely. The biggest barrier to doing that would be the Jinetes ability on the Spanish battle board. This allows a unit of his mounted troops to move after one of mine have moved or shot. The Picts are very speedy, but their long range charge they would need to complete two separate activations. However, whenever I darted forward to where I could charge his cavalry, they would scamper away before I could play my second action (the charge). In the end, I would fail at achieving either of my challenges, which would cost me 10 points.

    Pictish spearmen come up short, as the faster Spanish cavalry at top keep evading away

As for casualties, I was actually ahead of him in destroying enemy throughout the game. I caught him off guard early (when he did not have Jinetes queued up), and moved quicker than he expected with my archers. They loosed a couple good shots at his smaller units of mounted warriors. I felt I did a good job of keeping his Flemish mercenaries out of the game, too. They were meant to be his unit that took my punches, but we did not oblige that and never charged them. When the Flemish charged one of my warrior units, I had my board stacked with good defensive melee abilities. My Pictish spearmen actually drove them off and caused some Flemish casualties.

    Late in the game, the Picts are too far from the enemy board edge to score boast to sack their camp!

Still, I was staring down a negative 10 point deficit in failed challenges. D.J. skillfully kept me from closing with my target unit. The game felt close all the way through. He had been able to pull off the "First Blood" challenge on turn one. Even though he failed to kill my warlord (his other challenge), the fact that he scored one of his and had only a single negative one made a big difference. In the end, D.J. and his Feudal Spanish prevailed in our tense game of cat and mouse.  I had a lot of fun playing against him, and would relish a straight up matchup with him another time!

    Another Round 1 game, Phil's Welsh tackle Jenny's Eastern Princes and their battle wagon

The tourney GM, Daniel, had done a great job matching up folks who normally don't play each other in the first two rounds. That's something I strive to do, as well. The Ohio contingent had brought six players - fully one third of the tourney's numbers. Indianapolis had also brought a good number to Ft. Wayne, as well. Patrick W even drove up from North Carolina! However, in the last round I got matched up against one of the Saga Ohio players -- tourney veteran Jim Randall. He was also 1-1 with his Last Romans. We had recently played in Shore Wars 2022 in Cleveland, which I had run (and played in to make an even number). Jim is an excellent, crafty opponent. You have to bring your "A Game" against him, or you will end up defeated. Even with your A Game on, it is still a likely chance he will emerge triumphant.

    My Round 3 opponent at right, Jim, as he unravels the mystery of how to attack Eric's Spartans

This version of his Last Romans was different than what I'd faced at Shore Wars. He had Flemish mercenaries (to hold the hill in Round 1) instead of Jarl Sigvaldi. Other than that, his army was infantry heavy, with only one six-man unit of mounted hearthguard with composite bows. It was obvious that Jim planned to win a shooting duel, and eke out a victory based on that. This would not be a clash of battle lines, if his strategy played out, but instead a skirmishing duel. On one turn, it became unmistakably apparent that was his strategy. He loaded up nearly all of his Saga dice in Combat Bonus to augment a shot at my Pictish crossbowmen. He ended up rolling 14 dice on that attack, I believe, and was stunned when it caused only one casualty. I reminded him that I was in heavy cover (giving me better armor and a +1 save). He countered with, "You're living a charmed life." I then reminded him my previous roll of Saga dice was 7 Commons on no Rares or Uncommons. And his own infantry in Woods had survived unscathed a 9-dice shot from my crossbowmen!

    Jim ponders and assesses the battlefield for a few moments before beginning to move on our turn one

The scenario was Desecration, and I think Jim was planning on neither of us destroying one of the three enemy objectives. However, my goal was to take out at least one, hopefully two -- if I got lucky with a Secret Path redeployment. I advanced quickly with one of my spear units and sent it charging in. The Picts succeeded in taking out his closest objective. This began a tit-for-tat string of counter-punches where each of us attacked an exposed enemy unit, leaving one of our own open for the other to counterattack. This string of charges and shooting ended when he unwisely galloped forward with his mounted warlord into one of my units. On my turn, another Pictish spear unit charged the fatigued warlord and cut him down.

Pict left wing, which joined the right wing, one by one, when no threat came their way

At this point, I felt I had the game well under control. He had yet to take an objective (capping him at 10 Massacre Points), while I had taken one of his and killed his warlord. Jim tried some last turn shenanigans, aided by some incredibly fortunate Saga die rolling. He began his final turn with 3 command dice, and somehow rolled enough Rares to play Activation Pool all the way up to his full 8 command dice! His mounted horse archers finally got into the battle, but it was too little, too late. The Picts had triumphed and we got our revenge for his gouging of my Carolingians at Shore Wars!

    Pictish spearmen charge into and slay the Roman warlord when he ventures too far forward

I ended the day 2-1, but in the middle of the pack because of my low scoring in round 2. Nevertheless, I had a great time and played three fun games of Saga. Oh, and my fear of entering my Mongols in the tournament? Fellow Saga Ohio player Joe Dihrkop brought Mongols and won it all! In addition to the gaming, we had an equally great time out the evening before. The Ft. Wayne Saga folks had organized a Friday night outing at a local wings place and 14 of us showed up. It was fun to meet a lot of the players beforehand, and get a chance to get to know them. All in all, it was a great weekend of gaming and camaraderie. Thanks to Daniel, Mark, Eric, Troy, and all of the other Ft. Wayne folks for being such great hosts! If you get a chance to make it to one of their events, I highly recommend it!!

    Finished at 1:30am the night before, Eric's Spartans were one of the cooler looking armies there!

    At left, Patrick W (who drove up from NC) advances on Anthony A from Indiana