I have recently started playing SAGA (yeah, another game!), and I obviously decided to play with Spanish because I’m far away from home. I have only played three games, but I love SAGA. It’s simple, fast and fun. Indeed, I like to say that SAGA is like Bolt Action for Ancient. What do you think?
But we wrongly start because Spain didn’t exist as the current country at that time. The term Spain appeared during the XVI century, and the reconquista was between 722 and 1492. Therefore we should call this warband «Aragoneses», «Navarros», etc… or «Hispanos/Hispanic» (Marca hispánica). But not Spanish. Anyway, this warband is really cool. The whole army can be mounted! Can you imagine? dozens of horses charging…Yeah! This was the second reason because I decided to start Spanish (Hispanics) for SAGA. My 6 points list is the following:
- Mounted Warlord: El Cid Campeador (of course!!! but we don’t play historical characters)
- Mounted Hearthguard x3 (total: 12 miniatures with spears)
- Mounted Warriors x2 (total: 16 miniatures with javelins)
- Leavy with bows x1 (total: 12 miniatures)
In the following picture you can see how looks the whole army, but 3 horses (I forgot to buy an extra blister! buy now it has arrived).
I have played only three games (against Franks, Scots and Norse Gaels), and therefore my experience is so limited. But I think that the levy with bows is probably a bad investment. In two of three games this unit has been almost «nailed» in the same point, without doing anything. And when it could shot, I only have 4 die because it’s a levy (1 dice per 3 models). It’s important to notice that the Spanish battleboard is focused on mounted units. That’s, the battleboard is a bit different compared with others. To activate a foot troop you need a 4-5 result in a dice; while to active a mounted unit you can use 1-5. Thus, it is clearly easier to active a mounted unit, and it’s interesting to keep the 4-5 result to use a cool ability. I would like to replace the levy by a warrior priest or another mounted warrior unit.
One of the basic abilities is called «Iberia«, and it’s really nice. You can activate for movement one of your mounted units as a reaction, after a enemy unit is activated. Is really nice to counter-attack or shatter enemy tactics. On the other hand, the battleboard shows a really nice special abilites (they can be used once a turn):
- Opportunity Shot: When an enemy unit finished its movement within M of one of your missile equipped units and it doesn’t engage in melee, your unit can innmediatly resolve a shooting.
- Stunned: you can select and enemy unit with a fatigue marker and cancel its activation (for movement or shooting). And this unit cannot be activated again this turn.
- Exhausting fight: Any unit that rolls more than 6 Attack dice takes one extra fatigue at the end of the activation and cannot be activated again this turn.
- Desperate Tactics: each enemy unit engaged in this fight takes an extra Fatigue but generates two extra Attack Dice.
- Burning Sun: if the target unit loses one model in this shooting it may not be activated until the end of the turn.
- Light horses: a mounted unit with javelins may shoot once before moving, move, and then shoot again a different unit. The target units get -1 Armour. I specially love this one.
- Spanish Perfidy: if all enemy units in the fight have at least one fatigue and none of your units has, the enemy only generate half their normal Attack Dice.
- Battle Chaos: choose a Warband, take all its fatigue tokens and redistribute them with no more than two in the same unit. Discard the excess.
- Reconquista: for each dice above 5 placed on the enemy battleboard, one of his non-Warlord units cannot be activated this turn.
- Broken Command: the opponent must discard as many Saga dice as his Warlord generated at the start of the turn.
With only three games I cannot discuss tactics or strategies. I have learnt something new every game, and I still need to play much more games. But it seems that Spanish (Hispanics) are centred on disturb enemy actions by reactions (Iberia) and by blocking its actions (Battle Chaos + Stunned, reconquista, broken command…). When I play more games I will write a new post with my impressions. At the moment I love to through the battlefield and shot javelins 🙂
About the miniatures, I think Griping Beast has just released a Spanish box. However when I was looking for my miniatures I payed attention to Crusader. I bought some WWII Germans from Crusader a long time ago and I love them. So I bought dozens of blisters. The worst idea ever. The miniatures are bloody nice, of course; but the flash lines are AWFUL. Indeed awful is not a proper word to describe the terrorific they were. I spent hours and hours ONLY to remove the flashes. It was annoying. I didn’t expected that, because I had given up buying them. Terrorific. Awful. Sin. I hope they change the molds or the caster. Otherwise, I had three Norman jinetes from Conquest games, in plastic. I converted these Normans in «Andalusians» or «Castillians» time ago, so I wanted to recycle them for my SAGA army. I should have bought them instead of metal ones from Crusader. But I love metal (in every sense :P).
