Scots – SAGA Abilities

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

Eighth in my series, the others I have done so far are.

• Carolingian Franks
• Anglo Saxons
• Vikings
• Anglo Danes
• Welsh
• IRISH
• Normans

Carrying on with the original format for these we start with –

Quick Overview of Faction

So what can we take in a Scots warband.

They also have the choice of 2 Legendary Units – Kenneth MacAlpin and MacBeth

Kenneth like most Legendary units comes with 2 special rules – the first “An Ferbasach” gives all friendly units within M of Kenneth – except himself – 2 bonus attack dice during each Melee. He also comes with one which can cause up to 3 of the oppositions units to start the game with a fatigue – apparently due to them enjoying the pre battle feast with Kenneth MacAlpin too much. I am trying very hard not to mention roadworks or diggers as that’s what always comes to mind when I hear MacAlpin.

MacBeth whilst on the table enables the warband player to always roll 6 SAGA dice regardless of the number the Warband should generate and as mention earlier he enables the inclusion of Norman Exiles/Refugees in the Warband.

No a very exiting list compared to the last two (Irish and Normans)

SAGA Abilities

So onto the battle board.

Basic SAGA Abilities

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

These 3 basic activation abilities are –

• THANES – Activate a hero, or a unit of hearth guards
• SOER-CHELE – Activate a unit of warriors
• DOER-CHELE – Activate a unit of levies

COMBAT BONUS

No surprises here, this operates for the Scots 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.

• 6 are triggerable during a Melee activation,
• 3 are triggerable during the Activation Phase
• 1 are triggerable during a Shooting/Reaction activation,
• 1 is triggerable during the Orders/Reaction Phase,
• 0 are triggerable during the Activation/Reaction Phase
• 0 are triggerable during a Shooting activation,
• 0 is triggerable during the Orders Phase,

So no Order, Activation/Reaction or Shooting abilities.

Lets take the most prevalent first, Melee abilities.

Beyond the wall – I really do love the way that SAGA keeps introducing variances to the abilities. Here we have one that generates a benefit if your DEFENCE Dice for a Melee are greater in number than your ATTACK Dice, it rewards you with a +1 to your defence die rolls. If you use the RARE symbol to trigger it, you also get to reroll all 1 or 2’s you roll on your ATTACK dice, and lets sing this together, remember you can’t reroll a reroll :-).

tireless – in order to use this you MUST close ranks. MMM a second ability with a leaning to Defence, never though of the Scots as a defence orientated people, perhaps I am wrong. It allows you to remove a fatigue once the melee has been resolved. It basically cancels out the Fatigue awarded at the end of a Melee… see what Radnor Says (P49 Column 2 Paragraph 5).

LONG Spears – Only usable with infantry without ranged weapons, think this is another first (looks like I may end up doing a SAGA ability cross comparison once I’ve looked at each Faction). When activated you discard 1/2 your attack dice, then gain 1 defence die for each attack die discarded. Another defence orientated ability? What do you think? I’ll say yes.

Hold at bay – this is also triggerable as a Shooting/Reaction. Nice and simple, gain 3 defence dice. And if you use the RARE symbol to trigger, you get to re-roll it and place it on your battle board.

Counter-attack – The first of 3 abilities which are only triggerable for Hearth Guards or Warriors, WALL OF SPEARS being the other. Now this is fun, for each defence dice you have, you gain 2 attack dice. Reasonably expensive at 2 UNCOMMON symbols to activate. I am seeing some really fun SAGA ability chaining for this faction.

WAll of spears – The second ability only triggerable for Hearth Guards or Warriors. Triggering this can generate 1 attack die and 1 defence die for each figure in your unit, if you can roll a die and score lower than the units Armour. Really not surprised this costs a RARE and a COMMON symbol to trigger.

Lets see the abilities triggerable during the Order/Reaction phase

NO RESPITE – This is a bit of a supper powered Activation Pool. It gets you to roll 3 available SAGA dice and place them on your battle board. There is a small catch, you can only place them on abilities that currently don’t have any active dice on them. Also remember you must have 3 available SAGA dice to trigger this, ok , actually you only need 2 prior to triggering as the Die used to trigger this automatically enters the Available pool upon triggering.

Now the abilities triggerable during the Activation Phase.

STAND TOGETHER – The 3rd of the Scots abilities only triggerable for Hearth Guards and Warriors (COUNTER ATTACK and WALL OF SPEARS being the others). When triggered, you activate a unit to charge, and then during the ensuing melee your unit and your opponents switch roles. I.e. you become the defender and vice versa.

DIVERSIONARY VOLLEY – Not a surprise from the name, when triggered you activate a unit to shoot. You get 2 bonus attack dice and it stops the enemy from generating any defence die from SAGA abilities or fatigue, they will still get their standard defence die per hit. (This is a SAGA mantra, always at least one defence die per hit)

REACH – Now this is a really fun one. When triggered it provides each of your basic infantry units (those without ranged weapons) a shooting activation which you must take. These shooting attacks count as Javelin attacks, see SAGA rules V2 (P39, Column 1, Paragraph 5). Also these attacks generate no fatigue.

So that’s all the abilities, so what have we learned about the Scots, are they Braveheart or Rab C Nesbit?

1. A very defence orientated set of abilities.
   1. 50% of Advanced Abilities generating or dependent on defence dice generated (HOLD AT BAY, COUNTER-ATTACK, WALL OF SPEARS, BEYOND THE WALL and LONG SPEARS)
   2. One even makes your attacker count as the defender. (STAND TOGETHER) Now the initial benefits of this I can see, are
      1. in the result of a draw the enemies unit will redraw.
      2. You force the opponent to start the Abilities/Fatigue activations, thus potentially making it easier for you to end it if they pass.
      3. You can chose to CLOSE RANKS – and as such benefit from TIRELESS
2. Rewards triggering linked abilities – Definitely would benefit from some Ability Counters
   1. Team LONG SPEARS up with BEYOND THE WALL, especially as in SAGA we always round up. So if you have 7 figures in a unit you would discard (7/2 = 3.5 round up to) 4 attack dice and gain 4 defence dice. Thus you would have more Defence Dice than attack Dice, which supports triggering BEYOND THE WALL.
   2. If you have a unit with an even number of figures, so that using LONG SPEARS would not enable triggering of BEYOND THE WALL. Trigger HOLD AT BAY either before or after LONG SPEARS and you should be able to trigger BEYOND THE WALL. If you used the RARE Symbol to trigger HOLD AT BAY, then potentially you will also generate the SAGA Symbol for either LONG SPEARS or BEYOND THE WALL.
3. 3 Advanced abilities can only be triggered for Hearth Guards or Warriors, so — taking an all levy warband will remove these from your options.
4. REACH can provide a nasty surprise to an unprepared enemy. Imaging a situation where the opponent has moved forward to with L but outside M range. Activate a group of Melee only infantry and move them forward to within M range, activate REACH, pelt the enemy with your javelin attack and then potentially charge in to finish of the enemy unit. That extra round of unexpected Ranged attacks may be enough to remove the enemy unit from the table, or at least weaken them enough for a melee to clear them out.

This set of abilities, is definitely defence orientated, Hearth Guard and Warrior benefiting, and REACH means that even if you appear to have no ranged attacks on the table.. actually.. you have.

Hope this was interesting/useful, Only 4 boards left in Age of Vikings, now will I complete them before Age of Invasions is released?.. Will I pick up Age of Crusades or Age of Magic at the Birmingham Expo show? Who knows, who cares and who’ll remember any way (to quote the illustrious PWEI)