For those who have never played SAGA before, it’s a ancientish/Dark Ageish/medievalish skirmishy set of rules. The game uses single figures, organized into units of three classes. Hearthguards, the good troops, get four figures for one point. Warriors are usually the worker bees and are eight figures for one point. Levies, everyone’s favorite peasant types-typically missile troops-are twelve figures to a point. Armies aren’t tiny, they usually figure in at 40-50 figures minimum. Because I like to have a large figure mix to choose from, my armies tend to be bigger, more in the 72 figure range. For game purposes, an army is a leader plus six points.

I like the game a lot. Every army comes with a battle board that contributes to the army’s uniqueness. The rules themselves are good, but it requires good faith on the part of all the players, and a certain rigidity to the rules. It’s seems a bit gamey at times, but for the most part avoids those Phil Barker moments in which the players spend 15 minutes trying to interpret the use of a comma. It’s a difficult set of rules to just pick up and be good at. Because the different armies have different battleboards and hence characteristics, getting a new army is a little like learning to do long division all over again. But honestly it’s a little bit like playing golf–anyone can hit one great shot, and maybe get them back out on the course again. If you just slaughtered your opponent’s Viking berserkers, well, you could be a winner next time.

I have four armies, but for the most part I use two–the Irish and the Skraelings. They are two very similar armies, that mostly prosper when they can use terrain and shoot missiles. The Irish have their slingers and javelin chuckers. The Skraelings are bowmen and javelin dudes. The Irish are an “official” army from The Age of Vikings supplement. I’ve used them in a tournament. I like to say they are all sticks and stones. Levies and warriors, but they can also have horsemen and hearthguards. They can have heroes and Legendary Leaders that can balance them out a bit.

The Skraelings are not an “official”army. They were created by the Studio Tomahawk folks (publishers of SAGA) as a special enemy for the Vikings. Its the name the Norse settlers of Newfoundland and Greenland gave to the Native Americans they encountered. The settlers were few and the indigenous inhabitants were many. One definition for Skraeling is “screamer” for the war cries these natives used. It seems appropriate.

Though not official, the Skraelings have a unique battle board. They don’t use a standard set of SAGA dice. Their troops types are limited. No legendary leaders, no heroes. No horses, so no cavalry. Just warriors with javelins and levies with bows. They are slightly movable mass missile projectors.

Their battle board is unique and a bit of a challenge. Though they lack a lot of interesting SAGA advantages, there is the business of the Totems. There are five SAGA abilities called totems that can be summoned with the right combination of dice. What’s great about totems is that once activated the totemic abilities are used by the activating unit for the entire game, until the unit is wiped out. The totems offer some advantages, such as re rolling all attack dice, or re-rolling all defense dice. Another allows a unit a +1 to its first shooting attack in a turn. These are helpful. However, it takes a lot to activate Skraeling units. Though warriors can move on one SAGA die, it takes two dice that are different to activate one hunter (levy) unit–that’s moving or shooting. Though their board does allow the activation of two units with two dice by using the Vinland activation ability, there are no abilities to massively activate all the units or just allow them a free move.

I’ve probably played 6-8 games with the Skraelings. I’ve learned a lot about them. While they are interesting, they are no free lunch. I’ve run them against Vikings and Anglo Danes. I’ve run them against later cavalry armies which is really a challenge. Here are a few suggestions if you want to try ’em out.

My warband consists of five units plus a leader. There are no armor or armament options, so you’re taking ’em right out of the box. I take a point and divide it in half to make two 12 figure warrior units. I do this for two reasons. First, it allows the warriors to roll a lot of attack dice, two extra missile dice, and perhaps more importantly, it allows the warrior units to absorb more damage. When fighting a four man hearthguard unit or eight figure warrior unit, it’s a help. Second, when activating units is difficult, it’s helpful to have fewer of them. Though it does cost a SAGA dice, if it’s a big deal you can try to get the Puma Totem which has several advantage including an extra SAGA die. The remaining three units are levies with bows.

I don’t pretend to know everything about the Skraelings, but here is what I can offer. This is best as an army that deploys in or behind cover. They don’t have any movement advantages in cover like the Picts, but they need to slow the enemy down. I usually use woods, but deploying some rocky terrain or marshes that breaks up attacks is useful. It’s tough to generally attack much with the Skraelings. Attacks really require some coordination with multiple units and it’s hard because it takes so many dice to do much with the levies. I’m not saying you can’t attack–the large warrior units getting a +1 to their attack for their javelins can be formidable. But they’re better counter-attacking than trying to take an offensive to the enemy. I recently played a game against Anglo-Danes, another army that should defend, and he impatiently flung some units into a horde of missiles. Though I did some incredibly terrible die rolling, it was still ugly for Cnut and his minions. The Skraelings really need at least average die rolling in order to attrit their opponents a bit.

My Skraelings are the Skraeling figures from Footsore Miniatures. I like ’em. They do come with terrible spears, so I cut mine out, drilled out the little hands and used Northstar spears. They wear very little clothing that is mostly animal skins and hence very easy to paint. Of course, if you have a hoard of some early Native American figures someplace, you can certainly use those.

I’ve cobbled together most of a Viking army that I’ll paint this summer. It’s not that I feel the need to supply Vikings to fight the Skraelings, though keeping a manageable foe handy to fight a historical enemy feels right. Honestly, however, the poor schmucks who fought the natives near L’Anse de Meadows were settlers not heavily armed and armored followers of Ragnar with Bloody Hands. But that would be history and this is SAGA, so I gotta get over it. However the Skraelings and Vikings are a perfect match for Tribal, the rules set I discussed in my last blog post. A SAGA army for each can easily make enough figures for two players per side for a Tribal game. That’s a this summer project. I’ll keep you posted