Saga: Age of Magic – Long Live the New Flesh

Last weekend I got together with The BazPaz in his newly prepped indoor/outdoor gaming space for some socially distanced gaming. Having talked about it for a couple of years, we decided to give some of our recently painted figures a run out in Saga: Age of Magic, our first ever look at Saga of any variety.

My force was made out of some of the various ghoul figures that I have been painting recently, fielded as an “Undead Legion” Saga force. The Bazpaz used the lovely faery force that he has been working on for over a year now, on and off, made up primarily of Citadel Sylvaneth, with some Wargames Atlantic Fauns, as a “Lords of the Wild” warband.

Neither force had ever hit a gaming table before, and no game of any variety had ever been played in that precise location before, so it was a session of firsts.

The poorly photographed Grymwatch advance up the East flank

Saga has a significant amount in common with Warcry, another game that I really enjoy. Without going into too much detail, each game has a resource management element based on assigning a number of dice at the start of each turn. Mechanics like that can sound dull, but when they are used to make your feverish, naked cannibal half-dead post-humans pay no heed to casualties and chow down on their opponents at a critical juncture, they are a lot of laughs.

The Bazpaz drafted a number of the “spite” models included in the Sylvaneth range to make up a “Swarm”, exclusive to his “Lords of the Wild” faction.

Saga does a very good job of providing a solid, common base of rules that can be picked up fast, so that the players can focus on actually playing the game. I love this approach to game design. I am very excited to play more Saga soon, and I am tuning my hobby time towards it.

All in all an excellent gaming visit, after a significant social drought. I’m already prepping more Undead Legions for next time.