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11Nov/160

Evaluating SAGA

It is time again, to take a look at another open project. After evaluating Blood Bowl, and before that Dystopian Wars including the consequences of the decision (yes, I sold my prussians), the next system to be discussed is a larger "project" - SAGA.

If you haven't heard about SAGA, you must be wandering around wargaming with blinders lately. Studio Tomahawk and Gripping Beast landed a small success story here. A rulebook, three expansions, a crusade spin off and a campaign supplement. At the Crisis another expansion was introduced, Aetius & Arthur. And the SAGA system was published in two other languages, french and german as well. Pretty successful for a skirmisher with Vikings.

SAGA - Crescent & Cross

With this as a foundation to start from, you get a headstart at Emotion, before you even took a look at the factions and / or miniatures. SAGA is straight and direct, there are three different type of units, simple rules to start a warband (that a usually 6 pts) and a catchy battle system with D6. And you got the SAGA dice, with their results you "buy" actions from the faction specific battle boards.
The "generic" and very flexible base of SAGA, what the many expansion and an inofficial fantasy spin off  show, make the game very appealing. And with that it is a proper start point for the usual "I got a few miniatures and am looking for a matching rule set to use them"-problem.

Perry Miniatures - Crusaders Perry Miniatures - Crusaders

Perry Miniatures - Spanish Crusaders Perry Miniatures - Spanish Crusaders

Like mentioned above, usually a SAGA warband is 6 points. What does this mean miniature-vise? Well, depending on the quality of your units, they are between 4 and 12 miniatures each, so at 6 points you end up around ~ 48 miniatures with a Warlord on top. In other systems, that would just be 2 infantry units. This aspect raises the probability by a lot. And it is not a small skirmish, with a dozend miniatures on each side, so you still have Rank & File. Long story short, a solid tabletop standard will be adequate for the most of it, beside characters and elite units. And on top of that, with historical warbands, there is an incredibly broad variety of choices, to muster your troops. That is a definitive plus for the (painting) motivation and another thumbs up for the probability of such a project.

Gripping Beast - SAGA

What about space at SAGA? There are no direct rules for the base sizes, but most use 25mm round bases. Even with cavalry a regular warband will fit on a sheet of A5 to A4. As the warbands are so compact, you got to regulate yourself not to end up with a dozend of them, as they don't need much space nor cost a lot of money.

HdR Szenario 2015 HdR Szenario 2015

SAGA is popular, so even in more rural areas you'll be able to find other players. But other aspects support this game as well. For example, it is not difficult to have 2, 4 or even more warbands at hand. And the other benefits would be bases and scale. So you can use the miniatures / warbands for other systems, like Two Fat Lardies Dux Britanniarum (with the Normans, Saxons and similar), Lion / Dragon Rampant and with "base adapters" for Kings of War Historical, Dux Bellorum and some more. Or you reduce the used miniatures and have a game of historic (Advanced) Song of Blades and Heroes. This increases the usability of your miniature stock and with that the potential fellow players, as you are not bound to a single system.

Crisis 2014 Crisis 2014 Crisis 2014

With me the focus at SAGA is for the viking age with my (Anglo-)Saxons and for Crescent & Crusade the spanish crusaders. I do have a viking warband based upon the Gripping Beast starter set, but i'll upgrade it with the plastic or a bit more beautiful / modern metal miniatures, but it has a low priority. Lt. Hazels Incursio Barbarica was the reason, why I went with the Saxons, as the Musketeer / Footsore miniatures, a great project and impressive inspiration.

I'll sum up some ideas for SAGA projects in the upcoming posts, among them a roman project. Why romans? Hell, there are a few basic topics that you should have done as a wargamer - and one of these is definitely romans.

Thanks a lot for reading, come by again soon and leave a comment or give me a like on Facebook if you like this blog!

Posted by Dennis B.

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