Rus Pagan warlord

New Viking Warlord stand!!

Saga!

And so it begins.

So Saga is a small scale historical miniatures game that is gaining some pretty good momentum. It bridges the gap between the perception of stuffy, pretentious, old codgers standing around a gaming table arguing the merits of Napoleon's tactics and the fast paced, bloody destruction found in fantasy genre games like Dark Age and WarmaHordes. The basic start up for an army is extremely low, around $40 if you just want to rope in some plastic models (really good plastic models, btw) or in the upwards of $100 if you want to run full metal with all the fixins. The real allure for me to this game is of course the history aspect, but more in the fact that list building is simple, and really kind of unimportant. It is the tactics and your skill at guessing your opponents actions (reactions?) that really bring it into focus as a strong strategy game. And bloody! By the Gods bloody! Many games have ended with both warbands of men and horse as nothing more than a feast for crows as the stalwart Warlords clash one on one for the decisive end.

Suffice it to say it has been a long time since a game hooked me as much as Saga has. So far I have dropped around $150 on the game and have 2 factions, with all their bells and whistles, including two Viking Longships for a homebrew set of sea battle rules we are putting together.