Anglo Saxons – SAGA Abilities

Analysis and learnings’ from the Anglo Saxon battle board and SAGA Abilities

Second in my series which started with the Carolingian Franks, this time I have a look at the Anglo Saxons, potentially the opposite end of the complexity scale for the Age of Vikings.

Quick Overview of Faction

The Anglo Saxon’s are marked as an easy faction in the Age of Vikings sourcebook, in fact they are at the top of list – not sure this means they think they are the easiest, but as the next one is the Welsh and then the Normans, it is quite evident that the list is not alphabetical.

They have very limited warband options unless you take the Legendary Leader Athelstan, where a whole beauquet of options opens up. I will start by looking at the basic list –

They also have the choice of 2 Legendary Units – Alfred the Great and Athelstan

Excluding the Impact of Athelstan, this is quite a dry list with very little equipment options, now lets have a look at their Saga Abilities –

SAGA Abilities

Let’s look at the Anglo Saxon battle board.

Basic SAGA Abilities

This is where the Anglo-Saxons vary from the majority of battle boards in Age of Vikings – instead of the 3 basic abilities which activate units based on unit type e.g. hero, hearth guard, Warriors or levies, the Anglo Saxon board works on unit size.

Thus we have these 3 basic activation abilities

• Select Fyrd – Activate a hero, or a unit or hearth guards or any unit of 10 or more figures
• Great Fyrd – Activate a unit with at least 8 figures
• Fryd – Activate a unit of less than 8 figures.

So apart from the Heros and Hearth Guards the size of your units is immediately important. With the odds of being able to activate a non Hero or Hearth Guard unit of less than 8 figures with only 1 saga dice being rolled being 1 in 2 or 50%. Compared to the odds of activating a similar unit with more than 8 figures but less than 10 figures being 67% with a single saga dice roll, and for a unit with 10 or more figures a certainty.

COMBAT BONUS

This operates for the Anglo Saxons as it does for virtually all Factions, except the Carolingians. That is you place SAGA dice into the ability and spend them to up your attack or defense dice during Melee, Shooting or Shooting/Reaction on a 1 for 1 basis, or a 2 for 1 basis for the relevant rare symbol. So potentially if you had 6 of the rare symbols on the COMBAT BONUS you could get +12 attack or defense dice, although I think your opponent my query the honesty of your dice if you achieved this.

ACTIVATION POOL

This is a relatively common ability, only the Carolingians and Jomsvikings don’t have it. For 1 of the rare saga dice symbols you can take 2 of your available SAGA Dice, roll them and add them to your inactive Saga dice pool – see my post on SAGA Dice for more information on the different states of SAGA dice. Because this is a basic ability that is triggered in the orders phase, so long as you have enough available SAGA dice – and remember when you trigger an ability the SAGA dice used to trigger it becomes available, so you really only need a minimum of 1 SAGA dice in your available pool prior to triggering to use- and you keep rolling the rare symbol a 1 in 6 chance you an trigger the ACTIVATION POOL multiple times.

Advanced SAGA Abilities

As with all the Age of Vikings battle boards there are 10 Advanced SAGA Abilities.

• 4 are triggerable during the Orders Phase,
• 4 are triggerable during a Melee activation,
• 2 are triggerable as an Order/Reaction.
• 1 is triggerable as a Shooting/Reaction,
• 1 is triggerable during the Activation Phase
• 0 are triggerable during a Shooting activation,

Straight away we see the emphasis for the Anglo Saxons is Melee and the Order Phase. Lets start with the Order Phase related abilities

VALIANT HEARTS – this ability requires 1 SAGA die of any symbol to activate. It makes all your units, until the start of your next turn, count as being at least 2 figures larger when determining the effects of SAGA abilities. The exception is the Hearth Guard which count as being 4 figures larger when determining the effects of SAGA abilities. This mean it impacts SELECT FYRD, GREAT FYRD, FYRD, TRUCE, DEFENDERS OF THE KINGDOM, CLOSED RANKS, UNISON, NO SURRENDER!, CRASH OF SHIELDS and OVERLAPPING SHIELDS abilities, that is actually all of the ones available for Anglo Saxons excluding CALL TO ARMs, BRETWALDA, COMBAT BONUS and ACTIVATION POOL. If you use the rare symbol to activate this you get to re roll it and add it into to your inactive SAGA dice. As this lasts until the start of your next turn, it will also potentially effect SAGA abilities during your opponents order and activation phases as well. This is one of those abilities that it is potentially worth creating a token/tokens for to remind yourself of its impact.

TRUCE – Allows you to remove a fatigue from each of your units containing at least 10 figures. This is a classic example of an ability where you can benefit greatly from the use of VALIANT HEARTS.

CALL TO ARMS – Personally I love this ability, it makes all your Levies have the Aggression of Warriors during melees until the end of the turn. Not just 1 unit of levies but all units of levies, this can double or triple (for bowmen) the melee combat dice for levy units.

BRETWALDA – at first looks this can appear to be over powered. It does require 2 SAGA dice to activate but it makes your Warlord count as a unit of 10 figures and increases his armour by 1.

It only effects the Warlord in his unit size for:

-saga abilities

(useful for your abilities that need 10 figures)

(there are also opponent abilities where they need to have more figures than you to get their bonus, so good against them)

-Outnumbering in a melee combat

(important against units in hard cover as they will not fall back otherwise)

It has no impact on the number of wounds he can take, as you must remove a figure from the table for a casualty, and he is the only figure you can remove.

It also has no impact on the number of attack dice generated.

Ducat – Studio-tomahawk forums

Although with an increase in his armour of 1, the chance of having casualties caused is also quite low.

Now lets look at the Advanced Abilities triggerable during activation – there is only 1

UNISON – this allows you to activate any unit for a movement which will not generate a fatigue, it allows you to activate 2 units if both contain at least 10 figures (don’t forget the impact of BRETWALDA or VALIANT HEARTs on this). So to benefit most from this use it to activate a unit or units that have already been activated at least once for movement/melee/shooting, and then this will save you the relevant fatigue. Imagine using it to move troops out of charge range following melee or to force march them up a flank to prepare for an attack the following turn.

Next we have the 4 triggered during Melee, which also includes the triggered during the SHOOTING/REACTION

DEFENDERS OF THE KINGDOM – for a single SAGA Die you Gain 1 attack die and 1 defence die, if your unit contains at least 10 figures, you gain 1 extra attack die and 1 extra defence die – in simple English if unit size is below 10 you get 1 of each, if the unit size is greater than or equal to 10 you get 2 of each. (Again remember the impact of BRETWALDA or VALIANT HEARTs)

CLOSED RANKS – Not to be confused with stand firm the melee reaction option for charged units. If your unit has more figures than the enemy unit you gain 3 additional attack dice, if your unit outnumbers the enemy by at least 2 to 1 this increases to 5. (and yet again remember the impact of BRETWALDA or VALIANT HEARTs)

CRASH OF SHIELD – I have lost an entire Viking unit due to this one combined with BRETWALDA. But first what it does – it causes your opponent in the Melee to discard attack dice equal to half the number of figures in your unit. This of course will benefit from BRETWALDA and VALIANT HEARTS, with BRETWALDA it means that your opponent will discard 5 attack dice as the Warlord will count as 10 figures :-). The previous comment has been removed as BRETWALDA and VALIANT HEARTS do not impact the number of figures wrt melee resolution, but do wrt which level of a SAGA ability the unit receives – the next SAGA ability is a good example of where they do generate an impact.

OVERLAPPING SHIELDS – this is also triggerable as a shooting reaction, it gives your unit 2 defence dice, if your in melee and your unit has at least 10 figures you also gain 2 attack dice. So a warlord with BRETWALDA active would gain 2 additional defence dice and 2 attack dice if OVERLAPPING SHIELDS is triggered in a melee for him, and a unit of 6 Heart Guards under VALIANT HEARTs would also benefit from both the defence dice and attack dice, see how these abilities gain power as they stack.

This leaves the 1 which is activated during the ORDERS/REACTION phase – we have already covered TRUCE.

NO SURRENDER! – this is quite a nasty one to pull out on your opponent – it effects all enemy units which declare a charge against one of your units in open terrain and at least 10 figures strong, yep you know that BRETWALDA and VALIANT HEARTs take effect here. Any enemy unit that is effected takes an automatic fatigue at the end of the charge but before the melee is resolved, that means you will have at least 1 fatigue to use against them in the melee, and if they charged with 2 fatigue they will count as exhausted in the melee as the fatigue is applied before the melee is resolved. For more info on exhaustion see SAGA RULES V2 – P 32 Column 2 Para2.

So we have looked at all the Basic and advanced abilities on the Anglo Saxon board and what are the learnings’ –

1. Unit size is seriously important to the Anglo Saxons,
   1. larger units are better and will remain easier to activate.
   2. Consider combining your Hearth Guards and warriors to create larger units
2. Your Warlord can be a One Man killing machine if you can trigger BRETWALDA and support it with other abilities
   1. Consider devising a plan to use your Warlord to deliver a decisive blow turn 4 or 5, giving you time to build up your Abilities, and put some SAGA Dice in the ACTIVATION POOL to hopefully support triggering BRETWALDA.
3. The magic number is 10 –
   1. 5 of the Advanced abilities dramatically improve their impact or can only be triggered if a unit counts as having 10 or more figures
   2. A unit of 10 can be activated by any SAGA die face.
4. Conversely the Danger number is 7
   1. when a unit has 7 or less figures in it, it becomes really difficult to activate and definitely will not benefit from a range of the Advanced abilities fully.
5. You can super charge your Levy
   1. Using CALL TO ARMS will suddenly make all your levy units fight as warriors, remember this and use it. DO not be worried of lots of levy units in your war band.
6. Look to trigger multiple SAGA Abilities in a single turn.

So this list is not good for impulsive players, the Anglo Saxons were a defensive melee army and this list and battle board reward that style of play. Hold your troops back in their shield wall, and when ready break out and steam roller your enemy with your overpowered warlord and supercharged levy. Just be careful around missile troops who can whittle down you units until they are very hard to activate,

Hope this was interesting/useful, I intend to do some more from the other boards which I have used so far, and may even do a bit on those I have not played but applying a similar analysis.