Sunday night and the first chance to give the SAGA Irish a run out using the New Raven's Shadow supplement. Four new factions are included - the
Franks, the Irish, the Norse-Gaels and the Kingdom of Strathclyde -
along with new rules and a useful Q&A section.
I was keen on trying the new Irish board The Irish have the
option of fielding Wolfhounds in place of a warrior unit and upgrading
individual hearthguards to Curaidh champions for once I have the figures painted.
It's been a while since I fought Chris, it's fair to say he has become a veteran in that time period, coming second at Warfare, he know his Welsh back to front, whilst I fielded a largely freshly painted Irish Army using a new Battle Board (We all know how newly painted figures perform).
I am ashamed to say defeat within 4 turns....
Looks like it's back to the drawing Board for the Irish, before they come out of their bogs for a refight.
Heathguard on each wing ready to roll up the massed ranks of Warriors hidden in the wood with levy's facing off against each other in broken ground, a nice feature of the Irish is the ability to take make an ambush move and inflict missile fire on any unit in or near broken ground.
My Irish line up against the Welsh 5 Pts of Irish, plenty of rough ground to use the new Ambush rules to whittle the Welsh away.
The Welsh Levy's let fly and kill 7 of the 8 mounted Warriors, the low armour rating coupled with some rather high dice wiped out my planned left flanking move.
The Heathguard in the bog, failed to get enough dice to move out of the bog to close with the welsh other then with the Levy's who took chunks out of them with missile fire. Whilst the Irish have some useful missile traits they lack the speed of movement in rough terrain which is a great feature of the Welsh.
Time to test the Warhounds, very quick and coupled with a useful Irish trait on the battle board when fighting in rough terrain, unfortunately bad dice on my part and low armour ratings all but whipped them out, leaving my Warlord exposed, an error "New" Chris jumped on swamping him with Warriors and bringing this sorry affair to a swift conclusion....
Man, sorry to hear that Stuart. Nothing like seeing your newly painted Army beaten up. Nice looking game though.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the report on the Irish, and that's a good looking army. Early info on Raven's Shadow gives the impression that success with the Irish depends upon lucky dice rolls.
ReplyDeleteCould well be the removal of certain steps in melee to negate some of the advantages needs tactical consideration. But also I rolled really, really badly :-(
DeleteCuraidh Champions looks interesting, but in a 6pts game, I already sacrificed 1 units by combing 2 Heathguard units, it might make you force rather small in terms of models.
Yikes, from the first volley of losing 7/8 just didn't look good. I love the idea of the list, esp with the warhounds
ReplyDelete