Normans and Bretons: The Army List

This is part 1 of a series I'm planning about troop and equipment selection for the Age of Vikings factions.  Most of these are preliminary thoughts.  I don't have a lot of experience with SAGA yet even for the factions I want to play, and I'll probably never play some of them.  However, I have a lot of opinions and a blog, so I won't let that stop me from trying to give advice on all of them.

Normans and Bretons

Duke William going over his army list

The faction I want to start with is Normans, so that's who I'll talk about first.  The Norman battle board can be played using two factions: Normans or Bretons, depending on how your hearthguard are equipped.  Equipping your hearthguard with javelins makes your warband Breton, and prevents you from taking warriors armed with crossbows or levy armed with bows.  Giving your hearthguard horses or no special equipment means you're playing a Norman warband, and gives you more variety in your ranged weapons.  Though I haven't played many games yet, it seems like a significant enough difference that Normans and Bretons will play quite differently despite the fact that they use the same battle board.

Mathaga: Why Not Warriors?

At first glance, SAGA seems like a game with great internal balance, but the core mechanics of the game pose an immediate and tricky list-building question:

Is there a reason to take hearthguard?

A Warm Greeting from pGrexy

Hello historical wargamers!

I'm Grey, aka pGrexy, and as of just recently, I'm all in on SAGA.

My dear friend and co-blogger, Caleb, tried to get me into it a couple years ago.  We played some games, and I had a lot of fun, but I wasn't really hooked.  This past year, Studio Tomahawk released a new edition, and I really like what they've done.  The rules are more polished, the factions are a lot more balanced, and I'm eager to see what they decide to do with their plans to adapt SAGA to a bunch of different settings.

I'm also binge-reading the Sagas of the Icelanders, so I'm already completely sucked into the drama and warfare of the dark-ages in northern Europe.  Reading the Age of Vikings setting/rule book has added a lot of fun and context, as well as piqued my interest in the tactical mechanics of the game.

One of the really great things about SAGA the game is how easy it is to start up and faction hop.  You get all the faction rules and battle boards with the sourcebook for the setting, and you can use the same models to play multiple factions, as long as it's reasonable.  In Age of Vikings, I'm planning to use the same set of models as Normans/Bretons (they use the same battle board, although they have different equipment options for their troops) and as Carolingians.  If I decide to play an army in the Age of Crusades setting, I could definitely play the same models as Crusaders.

You also need, like, 50 models tops to build a balanced list.  I have a box of plastic Norman knights at the right scale I picked up ages ago, and I'll be picking up the 4pt Norman starter box from Gripping Beast minis soon, and that'll give me enough for a full army of 6 points, which I can try out in a couple configurations.

I'll try to post my stuff every Friday, although when I play games, I might throw in some extra battle reports to let you all know how my saga is going :P