Welsh – SAGA Abilities

Analysis and learnings’ from the Welsh battle board and SAGA Abilities

Fifth in my series which started with the Carolingian Franks, then the Anglo Saxons and this time I have a look at the Welsh. Now this is the first faction in this series that I currently have not played a game as, so this will be very much a theoretical

Also a change from the format I’ve been following – this time I am going to start straight into the Battle Board analysis and then maybe look at the available troops.

SAGA Abilities

Lets see what the Welsh offer. For a change I thought for my useless/useful facts alongside the abilities this time I’d give you the abilities name in welsh, click on it to go to google translate to hear, a computerised, pronunciation.

I to immediately apologise to all speakers of Welsh for the appalling pronunciation, and also if any of the Google provided translations are wildly inaccurate. Should any kind person be willing to provide me with audio files to use for the pronunciations or better translations I’d be very grateful. Just drop me an email or leave a comment.

Basic SAGA Abilities

The Welsh follow the majority of battle boards in the Age of Vikings with 3 basic abilities which activate units based on unit type e.g. hero, hearth guard, Warriors or levies.

These 3 basic activation abilities are –

• NOBLES – Uchelwyr in Welsh – Activate a hero, or a unit of hearth guards
• WARRIORS OF THE CLAN – RHYBUDDION Y CLAN in Welsh – Activate a unit of warriors
• ADOLESCENTS – Glasoed in Welsh -Activate a unit of levies

COMBAT BONUS

No surprises here, this operates for the Welsh as for most factions in the Age of Vikings. That is you place SAGA dice into the ability and spend them to up your attack or defence dice during Melee, Shooting or Shooting/Reaction on a 1 for 1 basis, or a 2 for 1 basis for the relevant rare symbol.

ACTIVATION POOL

Again no surprises, this is a common ability, 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 Activation Phase
• 3 are triggerable during the Activation/Reaction Phase
• 2 are triggerable during a Melee activation,
• 1 is triggerable during the Orders Phase,

Immediately this is quite radically different from the boards I have previously looked at, it has a lot more Activation phase and Activation/reaction phase abilities.

So on with the show – err analysis – abilities triggerable in the Activation Phase.

WILD CHARGE – GWEFR WYLLT in Welsh – now this is a first for this series – this ability can only be activated by a unit with Javelins, so wish I’d looked at the Warband list first, no problem lets continue. With it you activate one of your units to charge – during the ensuing melee (so if the charge fails to connect for any reason and there is no melee, this ability doesn’t do anything but is still used up) – your unit gets as many bonus attack dice as they would generate ordinary dice during a shooting phase. So if the unit has 8 figures, aggression 1 for melee and aggression 1/2 for shooting, their starting attack pool would be 8 (8*1), to this you would gain from this ability 4 (8*1/2) bonus attack dice before you use any other SAGA abilities or the opponents fatigue.

THE HORSEMEN – y marchogion in Welsh – This ability makes you activate ALL your mounted units, to perform a move or charge. Now in typical SAGA style that means you MUST activate ALL of them if you use this ability, even if they have already moved etc. earlier. Thus if one of your mounted units is EXHAUSTED you will not be able to use this ability, as you will not be able to activate it to move or charge as is required by the ability. This also comes with a nice additional 2 bonus attack dice for any of the units that activate to charge and engage in melee through this ability, and we never sneer at bonus attack dice. Not a surprise this is quite costly at two Uncommon SAGA Dice to activate.

TAUNT – GWANGALON in Welsh – another first for this series, this ability has a limit on which type of unit it can be used to target based on which SAGA die symbol is used to trigger it. So for it to be used to target Hearth Guards or Heroes, remember Warlords count as heroes, you must use a RARE symbol to trigger. Once you have triggered it, you nominate an enemy unit and it MUST activate and charge the closest legal target. Now this does mean of course, that you cannot use this on an already EXHAUSTED unit as it would not be able to activate to charge.

Now a question for the FAQ’s what if there is no legal target within charge range? Can you activate the unit and make it charge towards that unit, fall short so potentially bring an enemy into charge range of one or more of your units? oops not in the 2019 FAQ. will go and scour the internet, after I have finished the rest of this post. – Ok the answer was in Radnor speaks (Age of Vikings P15 C2 Pa11) – basically if their is no legal target you can’t use the ability against that unit.

Radnor speaks (Age of Vikings P15 C2 Pa11)

ONE LAND, ONE KING – TIR NEU, UN BRENIN in Welsh – This ability was changed in the 2019 Age of Viking FAQ’s. The original removed a fatigue marker from all your units which ONLY HAD 1 fatigue marker on them, and then activated all your units. Wow that is pretty powerful. Lets see what it is in the FAQ – Ah they have added an OR between the two actions and limited the activation to a movement only, so now you can either remove a fatigue from all your units which ONLY HAD 1 fatigue marker on them, OR, Activate all your units for a movement. Now for the cost of a RARE symbol and a COMMON symbol I still think that is good value. But it does add a sting in the tail, if a single one of your units is Exhausted you would not be able to use this ability to activate all your units for a movement, because all your units would not be able to activate for a movement and you cannot activate an ability if you cannot full comply with its instructions.

So that’s all the abilities triggerable during the ACTIVATION phase. Let have a look at the ones triggerable as an ACTIVATION/REACTION

OUR LAND – EIN TIR in Welsh – This ability is triggered after an enemy unit has resolved a movement activation, so that is, its been activated and completed its move, and allows you to activate one of your units to charge or move. This is another first in this series, an ability that allows yous to activate a unit during your opponents turn. this could be quite a surprise for an opponent who doesn’t know the welsh battle board.

Imagine a Mongol player moves a unit of its mounted archers with composite bows forward to M range from a welsh unit in order to shoot at it, with the aim of moving away following the Composite bows free shooting activation (SAGA Rules V2 P37 Column 2 Paragraph 1), once the initial move is complete the Welsh player could trigger OUR LAND and charge the opponents mounted archers before they could fire, forcing a melee, a form of combat Composite bow armed cavalry are pretty poor at.

GUERRILLA – herwfilwyr in Welsh – Ooo – another ability triggered after the enemy has resolved a movement activation (see note for OUR LAND). This time you are able to activate each of your units with M of the enemy unit that has just moved, and activate them to shoot at the enemy unit which has just moved. Now this is interesting this does not insist on ALL of your units, just says they MAY be activated. So this one could be used to activate any number of your units from 1 to your whole warband, so long as they were in range and had shooting aggression. This is akin to OUR LAND in that an opponent who doesn’t know the Welsh SAGA abilities could fall foul of this.

EVADE – OSGOI in Welsh – This can be triggered after an enemy unit has been activated to shoot or charge, unlike GUERRILLA or OUR LAND it is triggered before the shooting or charge are resolved. It allows you to activate one of your units to move, interestingly it doesn’t insist that the unit you activate be the target of the Shooting or Charge, so you could use this to move any unit that can be activated to move.

I am starting to build up an image of a Faction that is awkward to play against, with its activation/reaction abilities the player of the Welsh has multiple opportunities to throw a spanner in the works of their oppenents best laid plans. Lets have a look at the single ability triggerable during the ORDERS phase, before we review the 2 triggerable during melee.

CHILDREN OF THE LAND – PLANT Y TIR in Welsh – once triggered it enables ALL your foot units during your next activation phase, to basically ignore the effect of uneven or dangerous terrain on distance moved. It also rewards you if you use the RARE symbol to activate it, by allowing you to reroll the dice and add it to your inactive SAGA dice pool. As this can be triggered by any symbol on a SAGA dice, it could be possible for the Welsh to move ignoring terrain effects on movement for most the game.

On to abilities triggerable during MELEE.

WARDANCE – DAWNS RYFEL in Welsh – an anti close ranks ability :-). You get to increase your armour by 1 and decrease theirs by one, if the enemy unit closed ranks, so for that to happen you would have had to charge the unit. Fear not if you were charged or the enemy either chose not to close ranks or couldn’t close ranks (e.g. mounted or with ranged weapons), you can use this ability to gain 3 attack dice.

DECEPTION – TWYLL in Welsh – a nice simple ability, which costs 1 Common Symbol and allows you to discard 2 attack dice to gain 4 defence dice. Remember the rule of all SAGA abilities, you need to be able to pay the price to use the ability, so if you only have 1 attack dice consider using it along side WARDANCE, through this you could end up with 1 additional attack die and 4 defence dice.

Think its time we looked at what the options for the Warband are –

Quick Overview of Faction

So what’s available –

They also have the choice of 2 Legendary Units – Maredudd Ap Owain and Owen 1.

Maredudd Ap Owain when used removes the armour reduction his Hearth Guards and Warriors should suffer for using Javelin, he also doesn’t suffer it for using his Heavy Weapon. He also whist alive and on the table, removes the need for units to take a fatigue if a friendly unit within S is eliminated.

Owen 1, also has a couple of fun extras. Firstly his Hearth Guards and Warriors can still close ranks even though they are armed with Javelins. Also his cavalry can use the Manoeuvre rule multiple times in a turn, and don’t suffer a fatigue to activate to use it, but they are not allowed to charge if they have used manoeuvre more than once.

There is a specific note on the FAQ’s for the Welsh

WELSH FACTION RULES (PAGE 13)

The limitation regarding the composition of a Strathclyde

warband is purely indicative. When you muster a Welsh warband you have no limitation on the way the units are equipped, and depending on the kind of warband you lead, you can say they are from the South (Wales) or North (Strathclyde). It also allows Owen to lead an entirely foot warband

SAGA Age of Vikings FAQ’s 2019 P1

So what have we learned about the Welsh?

1. They are a sneaky bunch, who all have some form of Ranged attack and can be mounted or on foot.
2. They can ignore almost all terrain impacts on movement speed – so long as they trigger the right ability.
3. They have abilities which allow them to attack both melee and ranged during the enemy’s activation phase.
4. Several of the abilities impact your whole Warband or all units of a specific type, you need to ensure that they all can comply with the requirements of the ability before using it, and double check you aren’t going to leave one of them in a awkward situation.

Again I am mildly impressed how the Battle board helps represent the Historical Tactics of the Faction. The Welsh in this period were fast moving, hit and run merchants, who harried their opponents, even using their women folk to pelt the English camps at night with rocks to stop the enemy from sleeping. I think this battle board really will reward that style of thinking and playing.

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.