A couple of questions about Saga: Age of Magic (one more question re: Creatures)

[Hobgoblin]

I played my first game of Saga in a while (a couple of years, maybe) at the weekend and had a blast. The two friends with whom I was playing hadn't played before, and I'd forgotten about the warlord special rules, which - annoyingly - aren't included in the Age of Vikings army lists for some strange reason. But despite that blip, we had a great game (Battle Royale from the Book of Battles).

Anyway, I was thinking about adding another set of Saga dice to our collection to facilitate four-player games. We currently have the Viking, Anglo-Saxon and Scots/Irish dice. But it occurred to me that, rather than buying the dice for the Normans or Welsh or whatever, I could buy Age of Magic and a set or two of the dice that go with it.

That posed a couple of questions:

1. Now that the dust has settled since its release, how does Age of Magic hold up as a game? Is it as good as Age of Vikings, etc?

2. How cross-compatible are the Age of Magic boards with Age of Vikings? Could you play a reasonable game in which three players use AoV lists and one used an AoM list? Or two/two? Or are they really not terribly compatible?

Any pointers much appreciated!

[Knight-Captain Tyr]

You're going to get a lot of different responses to#2, just FYI! Included my thoughts below, and possibly why some people might say differently.

#1 - Yes, it holds up just fine. It's intentionally more of a 'sandbox' Universe than Age of Vikings, because it's trying to allow for players incorporating any kind of fantasy archetype they want, so it feels a bit less 'focused' than the historical Universes. Each Age of Magic battle board tries to represent a very wide 'bread basket' of similar fantasy themes. 'Undead' are pretty obvious, but 'Great Kingdoms' could be anything from WHFB Empire, to LOTR Gondor, to any of the kingdoms from the Witcher, or even the Houses from Game of Thrones. Similarly, the Horde could represent anything with an overwhelming focus on melee and speed, whilst Lords of the Wild are as easily suited to Dothraki as they are to Wood Elves.

It's also a bigger game than classic Saga in that the sweet spot is 8pts, rather than 6, and you've got huge freedom in choosing how to model different units - and Legendary units are on balance a bit less crazy than in the Historical universes, so you're more likely to see them on tabletop. Oh, and every faction has a unique terrain piece which is cool to model.

#2 - Here's where people will disagree, possibly more for aesthetic reasons than anything else. In my gaming group, Age of Magic is currently getting its butt kicked by the historical Universes, because on balance the battle boards in Age of Magic are slightly weaker than the historicals. However, in certain scenarios, Magic has a huge advantage given the availability of Flying units, who run rings around conventional armies. Furthermore, whilst spellcasting itself is fairly well balanced, it can give an edge in certain scenarios, especially where speed and movement are key. Conversely, Magic armies really need to play at 8pts to get all their cool toys - so if you're playing at 6pts, don't be surprised if the Historicals tend to hold the edge.

I would say that if you can reconcile the 'aesthetic' of a Magic board sharing a game table with a Historical board (e.g. Undead vs Vikings seems perfectly feasible in a mythological setting), yes, absolutely go ahead and mix boards. You might end up wanting to give the Magic player a 'free' Spellcaster in some scenarios as we do currently, as otherwise the Magic player may be a little short on Saga dice if you're playing at 6pts. If you're playing at 8pts, the Historicals player shouldn't need any help as they'll have a pretty huge force and will likely already have 8 Saga dice.

The most important thing - mixing boards (for our group at least) has been super fun so far and we're really enjoying the freedom it gives everyone to play exactly what they want. Give it a try and see

[Ogrob]

#1 Yes, Age of Magic is really fun. The battleboards are a bit more generic, and perhaps a little less impactfull compared to Age of Vikings, but this is compensated by magic cards and the special units. Army building is a bit more complex, but it is still SAGA and quite straightforward.

#2 I'd agree with Tyr that the balance is off, but unlike his group, we have not tried it. My go to option would be to use historical minis as an age of magic faction for when you want that match up. Great Kingdoms or Horde can happily model the vast majority of AoV factions.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, both - that's really helpful!

Hmm ... what I think I'll probably do is get one more set of AoV dice (Carolingians/Normans, perhaps) as the swiftest and cheapest way of getting us up to four; we typically have four players on hand. And then, when we've got a few more games in, I'll get AoM. That way, we can get a bit more experience with the simpler game before adding bells and whistles.

Am I right in thinking there are only two sets of dice for AoM? Order and Chaos, or something like that? Do you need magic dice too, or only if you field wizards?

I must say that I do like how Saga plays as a fantasy game using the historical boards: Skaven as Scots and Anglo-Saxons and Vikings as two tribes of orcs worked just fine at the weekend. But I'd be very keen to mix and match with the fantasy boards. I'm never hugely bothered about balance, so I'll look forward to throwing everything together. And it's certainly good to hear that AoM is a worthwhile investment.

[Knight-Captain Tyr]

Thanks, both - that's really helpful!

Hmm ... what I think I'll probably do is get one more set of AoV dice (Carolingians/Normans, perhaps) as the swiftest and cheapest way of getting us up to four; we typically have four players on hand. And then, when we've got a few more games in, I'll get AoM. That way, we can get a bit more experience with the simpler game before adding bells and whistles.

Am I right in thinking there are only two sets of dice for AoM? Order and Chaos, or something like that? Do you need magic dice too, or only if you field wizards?

That's right, just Order and Chaos dice. You do need the magic dice IF you are going to field spellcasters - although it's very feasible for one set of magic dice to cover both players, as you'll rarely roll more than 3 or 4 dice, and you can't 'stack' them in the way you can regular Saga dice.

I must say that I do like how Saga plays as a fantasy game using the historical boards: Skaven as Scots and Anglo-Saxons and Vikings as two tribes of orcs worked just fine at the weekend. But I'd be very keen to mix and match with the fantasy boards. I'm never hugely bothered about balance, so I'll look forward to throwing everything together. And it's certainly good to hear that AoM is a worthwhile investment.

Yeah, that's totally valid as well. A lot of players transposed their fantasy armies into Saga by doing just that. I really like the flavour and character of the historicals so often find myself drawn toward them for my human fantasy armies. But I'd still use Magic boards for demons, undead, and nonhuman stuff.

[Hobgoblin]

Great - thanks!

Yes, the flavour in the historical boards is terrific and, because it's nicely exaggerated, it's readily transposed to fantasy staples. The vast bulk of my fantasy stuff consists of roughly human-sized creatures, so it's easy to slot them into appropriate roles. Of course, trolls and ogres work nicely as warlords in any case!

[Hobgoblin]

It occurs to me that Saga might be just the motivation to get my pile of old Slann painted up. They'd fit quite nicely into the Norman, Byzantine or Carolingian lists:

• Javelin-armed levies (for javelins, read tomahawks and blowpipes)
• heavy cavalry (cold ones)
• heavy infantry with two-handed weapons (palace guards)

[Hobgoblin]

And one more Age of Magic question: could one conceivably field an entire army of trolls (as Creatures)? I have a friend with a exquisitely painted GW troll project that's been languishing unfinished, and I wonder if his taste of Saga could be a prompt to complete it ...

[Ogrob]

Yes. Horde and Lords of the Wild can have any number of Creature units of the top of my head. LotW have a theme list in that style, but Horde might suit Trolls better.

[Hobgoblin]

Yes. Horde and Lords of the Wild can have any number of Creature units of the top of my head. LotW have a theme list in that style, but Horde might suit Trolls better.

Great - thanks! So a (minimum) 4-point army would be - what? - eight trolls? That might be just the carrot I need to dangle!

Just got another game in with my son this evening: Jomsviking orcs with Pecheneg mercenaries against Anglo-Dane orcs. A victory to the Jomsorcs!

It really is a terrific game. I don't think we played it enough in the past to really get to grips with the nuances. The thing I will say against it is that the special rules (especially for the warlord) are hidden away; I think perhaps all our earlier games were diminished by not remembering Resilience, Bodyguard, etc. It doesn't help that the AoV book gives generic warlords a blank special-rules column! But at least we're over that hump now!

[Ogrob]

9 trolls, as you'd need a warlord.

[Hobgoblin]

Right enough! Thanks!

[Hobgoblin]

I've been having a delve into the Age of Vikings book. One thing that occurs to me is that it's perfectly possible to play the same force with different battle boards in successive games; the effects are sufficiently abstract/'gamey' that there's no real incongruity if a bunch of orcs behave like Vikings in one game and Anglo-Danes the next. This, in fact, is what we've typically done in our widely spaced games (though more by forgetting what we'd used previously than anything else).

And I can also see good two-on-two games with one fantasy race stretched over two different battle boards on each side - so that hobgoblins might consist of Jomsvikings for the heavies and the Irish for lighter infantry (with hobhounds!) while dwarves on the other side of the table might be Anglo-Saxons and Carolingians.

It also struck me that the first thing I should do to get our Saga set up to four-player level was to get another set of Viking dice, as those open up the game more than any other. I've ordered those. That seems the logical stepping stone to getting our regular opponents (another father-and-son pair) into the game, and we can think about moving on to Age of Magic once we've had a good run-out with the historical boards.

The Irish list is particularly interesting to me, as I've got plenty of hobhounds and Mantic's equivalent to paint up - and wolves, of course. And the Curaidh seem to be a prototype of Age of Magic's Creature profile. Certainly, they'll do as trolls or ogres until I get that book - although the AoM QRS gives us some room to experiment with dropping the profiles in.

The main things missing from most of the fantasy figures I have are large units of javelin-armed infantry. But I suspect some Wargames Atlantic goblins can be padded out with extra javelins from various ancients and Viking sprues.

I unearthed a box of red-skinned orcs that had served as hobgoblins and thouls when we played through The Lost City in our RPG campaign last year. None of them are quite finished (the game was largely run over Zoom), but the "thouls" will be easy to finish off and will fit in nicely as a unit of berserkers (see below). Most of the others are Mantic orcs with two-handed weapons, so those will work as Varangians in the Viking list.

[Hobgoblin]

And yet another question that arose from today's perusal of the rules: there's nothing fundamentally gamebreaking about equipping units with gear that's not in their list, is there? I mean, all the equipment rules seem intrinsically well balanced - so that if you gave (say) a unit of Norman hearthguard heavy weapons, it wouldn't really mess up the game.

Obviously, such tampering could meddle with the historical flavour. But that's it, isn't it? Or is there something I'm missing?

[Knight-Captain Tyr]

And yet another question that arose from today's perusal of the rules: there's nothing fundamentally gamebreaking about equipping units with gear that's not in their list, is there? I mean, all the equipment rules seem intrinsically well balanced - so that if you gave (say) a unit of Norman hearthguard heavy weapons, it wouldn't really mess up the game.

Obviously, such tampering could meddle with the historical flavour. But that's it, isn't it? Or is there something I'm missing?

It's your game, so do what you and your group agree on! No harm in modifying the rules to suit your own taste.

But in the grander scheme of things, equipment limitations tend to be 1) to preserve historical flavour as you said and 2) balance. Some Saga Battle Boards have abilities which are contingent upon the kind of equipment a unit has (e.g. mounts) or give bonuses that may be a little overly strong in tandem with some equipment options (e.g. heavy weapons/javelins).

Experiment with it and have fun, it's your game, but don't be surprised if a couple lists suddenly feel a bit out of balance