GOT- or LOTR-Saga?

[Barbarus]

something in between GWs excellent skirmish and the larger systems.

Yepp, between GWs LOTR and GWs War Of The Ring... that is exactly where Saga is placed.

[Longstrider]

Maybe one called Lord of Ice and Fire, with factions from the whole lot.

To be serious, Saga out of the box is already pretty fantastical, and it gives pagan Rus, Vikings and Jomsvikings all very different feels despite all being Vikings, and the distinctions being questionable. So if you applied the same model to Game of Thrones there's no reason the factions would need to feel samey.

That said, I think I'd prefer LotR first - one can already imagine AGoT's human factions mapped onto extant Saga boards. Starks as Anglo Danes, Martells as Moors, Ironborn as Vikings or Norse-Gaels, Barratheons as Scots, Reeds as Welsh, etc. etc.

I REALLY enjoy your AFS factions, but I think one of the nice things about tackling LotR will be that it gets you to think about more 'classical' goblins and elves and the like, whereas AFS has (to your immense credit) its own sensibility.

[Barbarus]

Yeah, for these reasons LOTR has more personal appeal to me.

But as I said at the beginning of this thread, I just want to check how people think...cause it really seems like the interest in LOTR decreased, while the interest in GOT increased.

And I just dont want to make something no one asked for, or no one has a use for

[Vermis]

To be serious, Saga out of the box is already pretty fantastical, and it gives pagan Rus, Vikings and Jomsvikings all very different feels despite all being Vikings, and the distinctions being questionable.

That, and battleboards come across as a list of magic spells to cast.

But as I said at the beginning of this thread, I just want to check how people think...cause it really seems like the interest in LOTR decreased, while the interest in GOT increased.

I think it's more what's in the public eye at the moment. The LotR movies were done well over a decade ago (and the Hobbit movies might not count, for a number of reasons) while GoT is all over the TV these days. But the LotR books have been popular for over 60 years, and I see a TV trailer talking about 'the penultimate episode' of GoT. So just give it a little while for the hype to die down, and I'm sure things will even out again. 

[Hobgoblin]

If you are doing LOTR, Unfinished Tales is a peerless source for details of Middle Earth warfare - 'The Battle of the Fords of the Isen' and 'The Disaster of the Gladden Fields' in particular.

[Treebeard]

As much I like GoT, I think LoTR have a lot more potential for SAGA with very different factions.

[mdauben]

Yepp, between GWs LOTR and GWs War Of The Ring... that is exactly where Saga is placed.

I guess I don't see that, at least based on the way I've played both games.  When doing points match LOTR games we usually play 500-750, which generally works out to being 20-40 figures.  When we play SAGA its usually 4 or 6 points, which is again around 20-40 figures.  That puts both of them in the same game "scale" as far as I can see.  Either game could be played with more figures, but I think past 40-50 figures it starts to get too cumbersome.  YMMV, of course.

But as I said at the beginning of this thread, I just want to check how people think...cause it really seems like the interest in LOTR decreased, while the interest in GOT increased.

Again, this is counter to my personal experience.  Maybe its because I tend to hang out in forums were LOTR is discussed, but it seems to me that the game is seeing an upswing in interest in the last year or two.  The British Hobbit League, renewed support from GW and several LOTR/Hobbit groups springing up in the USA all seem to be contributing factors.  On the other hand, I know no one who plays any form of GoT miniatures, and only see it sporadically discussed on the web (although admittedly there does seem to be a fair amount of interest in GoT here).

That said, either project sounds interesting.  I'd go with the one you have the most passion for and not worry about trying to please any particular audience.

[fred]

One way we have scaled up saga, is to have multiple players on a side, each fielding 4-6 points, this then gives a good battle size game, if you have a decent sized table to play on.

[Hobgoblin]

I think it's more what's in the public eye at the moment. The LotR movies were done well over a decade ago (and the Hobbit movies might not count, for a number of reasons) while GoT is all over the TV these days. But the LotR books have been popular for over 60 years, and I see a TV trailer talking about 'the penultimate episode' of GoT. So just give it a little while for the hype to die down, and I'm sure things will even out again. 

That's an excellent point: people have been wargaming in Middle Earth since the 1950s (e.g. Tony Bath's "Tolkia").

And it raises another crucial point: would the AFS LotR game be "film" or "book"? There are huge differences between them. To my mind, the book is much more attractive as inspiration for gaming, given the wealth of different troop types and the fact that Tolkien paid quite a bit of attention to military factors in his descriptions (see the UT sources I mentioned above).

There's also the point that Tolkien's military descriptions tend to make sense - no one brings massed pikemen to attack a castle in the books! 

[Vermis]

Mike brings up a good point too: as entertaining as the books are, and as excellent as the LAF projects are, this is pretty much the only online venue where I've seen much interest in ASoIaF/GoT modelling and gaming. (Sadly, I'd guess the population of a lot of other forums and groups take the attitude 'no official minis - no point')

And personally, my gaming pipe dream for a long time has been the War of the Dwarves and Orcs - from the attack on Gundabad up to a certain Thorin II waving an oaken branch around as a shield.

[Barbarus]

Interesting views here!

I guess I don't see that, at least based on the way I've played both games.  When doing points match LOTR games we usually play 500-750, which generally works out to being 20-40 figures.  When we play SAGA its usually 4 or 6 points, which is again around 20-40 figures.  That puts both of them in the same game "scale" as far as I can see.  Either game could be played with more figures, but I think past 40-50 figures it starts to get too cumbersome.

Well, if you play 6 points lists with a lot of Hearthguard that is true, in that case you will end up with these numbers.
But lets just say you field 6 points, 2 of them Levies and the other 4 are Warriors. That makes 56 models, 57 with the Warlord added.

And I know a lot of people, myself included, who prefer to use the match size suggested in the Crescent & Cross book: 8 points.
So thats another potential 24 more models.

Id guess in 8 points matches you usually end up with around 60 miniatures per side, more if your factions rules favor Levy units.
So, that is why I see Saga between LOTR and War Of The Ring when talking about size...


Edit:
But why do you think it gets cumbersome? Id say Saga works well, no matter how many points you have on each side.
If you just group your points its no problem, judging from my experience.

(if I had a 10 points match with my Vikings... I guess Id field 1 point Levies, 4 points Warriors and 5 points Hearthguard...
and I would field them as 12 Levies in one unit, two units of 12 Warriors, one unit of 8 Warriors and two units Hearthguard with 10 models each... that is 10 points but only six units...)

[mdauben]

But lets just say you field 6 points, 2 of them Levies and the other 4 are Warriors. That makes 56 models, 57 with the Warlord added.

And I know a lot of people, myself included, who prefer to use the match size suggested in the Crescent & Cross book: 8 points.
So thats another potential 24 more models.

Our group is still pretty new to Saga so to me playing with 70-80 figures seems awfully cumbersome.  Some of that might ease once we're more experienced with the game and some of it might just be personal preference.  I tend to not want to be moving around that many individually based figures. 

[Barbarus]

Well, let me phrase it this way: if you play Saga right, you usually end up with one or more units that havent moved at all during a match.

[Nord]

A slight tangent to the OP, but Saga handles bigger numbers far better than SBG. In SBG, every combat is split into small combats, with roll offs galore and then damage rolls. Thirty dudes in combat? Prepare to roll your dice 30 to 60 times! In Saga the units are just that and combat is performed on a unit basis. Thirty dudes in combat - probably spread across 3 or 4 units, so roll your dice 3 or 4 times - admittedly more dice, but it still rocks along at a good pace. In addition, in Saga you will not get to activate all your troops every turn due to the Saga dice mechanic, which means less laborious dice rolling each turn.

I like both games, but SBG really does get bogged down with 30+ pieces, whereas Saga is actually designed to 50 to 60 pieces per side. I have played 12 point games and they really are no slower than 6 point games, again down to the fact that your options are limited due to the Saga dice mechanism.

All good stuff if you ask me. And just to pipe in with the original question again, LotR for me still. In terms of popularity, GoT is big here in this forum, but can you name any GoT forums? Figures? There are a handful of forums for LotR, there are figures galore available and just far more variety in the factions. Right, I'm off to paint my Rohan troops. Clang, hint dropped. 

[Argonor]

Well, you'll rarely get to activate all your models in large SBH games, either (because for each Quality roll your statistical chance of failure increases, and you'll tend to activate the better Quality models first, to maximize their chance of acting) - and you CAN play unit-based SBH using the OGAM rules. You CAN roll just one dice for each and every model, but you still aren't likely to succeed on all rolls.

BUT, I also like SAGA better for larger games, as it feels less random (I haven't tried to calculate if it actually is), and the way the battle waves back and forth as units attack and repel the enemy (or gets beaten back) has a nice vibe to it.