Gripping Beast Saga. Welcome back Al. Now eat my Axe!

The battle of the choppers is on!

Al and I finally managed to get in his second game of the year and to be honest, as much as I love Mordheim I was looking forward to a change.

A 6 point ding dong it is. 

I go with two lots of Hird guard in a unit of eight, a unit of Berserkers (a must!), two units of eight warriors and a unit of levy.

I am still not sold on Levy and would prefer another unit of warriors but they are painted so they make the field.

 It's a simple plan.... CHARGE!

Once again "intimidation" causes a  headache but I am making steady progress. Al concentrates his fire against a unit of my warriors and despite "asgard" the volleys of projectiles start to take a toll (this will be a theme throughout the game).

"Hold the line!"

I decide to target Al's unit of Ten warriors with my archers before I crash in with my big unit of Hirdguard with Olaf in support.

"Kiss my axe!"

The results are satisfactorily catastrophic on Al!

This opens up a channel on Al's warlord and I decide to see if I can end this one early and I charge in again with the Hirdguard. Unfortunately I have used the best of my abilities and Al gets to palm off enough damage to survive the assassination attempt and beat back my Hirdguard.

Al continues to wreck bloody havoc on my warriors with his slingers and I pitch in with my Berserkers.

Despite the flurry of attacks, Al coasts through and thats my potentially winning hand spent!

Berserker proof warlord

I guess Al feels with the slaughter of the Berserkers that any threat is gone and my Warlord is open for the killing blow next turn.

This leads him to move his Warlord into the middle of the field right into threat range of my remaining forces. Maybe his survival against the Hirdguard and Berserkers attacks has sent him a little giddy?

I have JUST enough SAGA die left to get a decent roll of dice and I decide its now or never!

I pitch in and let the gods decide who will feast in Valhalla tonight!

I use "side by side" to stop the playing of "intimidation" by Al and go all in on battle board boosts.

A cracking set of rolls sees the nearest of Al's bodyguards pulled down and the last body guard is too far away to take the hits and despite frantic flicking through the rulebook Al is unable to pawn the hits off on the Levy (what is the point of Levy!?!) and his Warlord is once again sent to meet his fore fathers!

What a cracking game and the third nail biter in 10 days. If this is the way the games are going to go this year it is going to be a blinder!!!

Or is it just because I am not playing Warmachine at the moment?

Lessons Learnt

1) Ditch the Levy and buy another unit of warriors to make three units of twelve.

2) Really surround the Warlord with body guards as the linear deployment stops the figures outside of 2" taking the hits.

3) When in doubt, just charge and let the die fall where they may!