Biblical Saga

[SteveBurt]

I've been experimenting with using Sags for chariot warfare. I made a couple of boards for Egyptians and Hittites and had the chance to test them and they seemed to work pretty well. The boards are a mashup of the Norman and Scots boards; the Egyptians get the shooting stuff from the Norman board plus the evading stuff from the Scots, while the Hittites get the charging cavalry stuff from the Norman boards and the special spear abilities from the Scots. I used the Scots dice for the Hittites. The Egyptians have new dice with hieroglyphs on them.


Saga in the Bronze Age
Hearthguards (and the warlord) must be mounted in chariots.
Chariots move as mounted, and are armour 5 against shooting and in close combat (armour 6 v shooting for the warlord, as normal). Like all mounted, they take fatigue if they move in bad going. (We tried with armour 4 vs shooting as in the standard rules, but this made chariots too vulnerable to shooting).
Each chariot model counts as two hearthguard figures. So chariot units may contain 2 to 6 models. When a chariot unit takes a casualty, mark the base to show it is now only one model. When two casualties are taken, remove the chariot.
Chariots are all armed with bows, and may shoot in the normal way – 1 shooting dice per hearthguard, or in other words, two dice per intact chariot, one for a damaged chariot.
Warriors are normally armed with spears and shields, and are armour 4.
Levies are normally armed with javelins, and are armour 3

EGYPTIANS
The board emphasises shooting and manoeuvre (it has the shooty abilities from the Norman board, plus the evading abilities from the Scots board). The Pharoah can do a heroic charge.
Egyptian chariots are fast moving shooting platforms, and have no special close combat abilities.
Egyptian warriors may be armed with spear and shield, or bows (armour 3 if bow armed). One unit of warriors may have two handed axes, which follow the normal Dane Axe rules (armour 4 in melee, reduce enemy armour by 1).
Egyptian levies are armed with javelins.

HITTITES
The board emphasises hard charging cavalry and dense formations of spearmen (it has the mounted charge abilities from the Norman board, plus the special spear-only from the Scots board). Abilities with green text may only be use by spearmen.
Hittite chariots are shooting platforms but are also designed to engage in close combat.
Hittite warriors must be armed with spear and shield. They have a number of special abilities on their board, including the chance to throw javelins if the relevant Saga ability is activated.
Hittite levy are armed with bows.

ASSYRIANS
These will use the Rus Princes board unchanged. This gives their chariots suitably terrifying abilities.

CIMMERIANS/URARTU
These will use the Steppe Tribes board.

[SteveBurt]

Here's the file with the Egyptian dice.
You'll need the 'New Gardiner' font (TrueType) which contains a full set of Egyptian Hieroglyphs
It is downloadable for free - just do a google search

[LeadAsbestos]

Nice work. I was going to use SAGA for my Trojan War.games, but got hooked on Lion Rampant instead. Hope to see a battle report soon.

[SteveBurt]

We had one battle to test out the boards. That was fought with mounted having -1 armour when shot at (as per the rules).
The scenario was a fight over an (immovable) objective in the centre of the board - a small tomb complex.
Winner would be the one in sole contact with the tomb after 6 moves. If both sides were in contact, winner would be decided by dead figures per the usual rules.

The game opened with lots of shooting by the Egyptians, doubling their range to attack the chariots.
Hittites responded with a devastating chariot charge into the Egyptian levies, stacked with Saga abilities, which wiped them out.
(Should have put on a dice on the ability which allows levies and chariots to evade!)

Then the Egyptians counter-attacked and destroyed the chariots and moved spears and bows into contact with the tomb, at which point the Hittite spearmen moved up and using their abilities to the full (particularly counter-attack), destroyed one unit and pushed the other back, securing the win. Dead figure VPs were narrowly in favour of the Egyptians, who in retrospect should have shot at the spearmen first.
We felt chariots were a bit too vulnerable to shooting, so next game they will be armour 5 v shooting as well as in combat.

Boards seemed to work well and had a good balance between the shooting/evading of the slipper Egyptians and the solid combat abilities of the Hittites.

[SteveBurt]

Egyptian dice as PDF for those who find it easier

[Hu Rhu]

They sound a great addition to the whole SAGA idea.  Thanks for sharing.

[SteveBurt]

We played another game using these rules last night.
Egyptians v Hittites in the 'river crossing' scenario (except it was a dry Wadi to fit the desert theme).
Fun game, and an Egyptian victory this time; they got the shooting working overtime and the Hittites were too late getting into melee.
A couple of shots of the action

[zippyfusenet]

Oh, shiney!

I see multi-mounted infantry. I thought Saga used single-mounted figures. Could I play Saga using my 15mm DBx mounted Chariot armies? Without too much chopping and filling? Do tell.

[SteveBurt]

Yes, all multi-mounted. I have little red plastic teardrop wound markers with 1 on 1 side and 2 on the other (and there are more with 3/4 wounds all the way up to 9, but my Biblical stuff has a max of 3 figures per base).
The chariots also count as 2 figures each.
It all works fine - the markers are small but being red you notice them when counting figures.
The figures are all based for mass battle rules like DBx, FoG, To The Strongest etc.
Exact placement of figures doesn't matter for Saga, so the multi-based stuff works fine.
If you were worried about aesthetics you could paint a few extra single figures and make change (that's what I do for my Napoleonics when using them for Sharp Practice, as all the close order chaps are based in 4s).

[DivisMal]

Amazing! And since the narrative of Bronze Age warfare is usually very heroic, the Saga rules make total sense.

Thanks for sharing!

[Golgotha]

I do believe Saga Ancients is a cracking idea - surprised one does not see this more... well done keep 'em coming.

[Helen]

Great work Steve. Love the Biblical theme.

[rumacara]

Nice and welcoming idea.

[Captain yapudo]

Great