Some thoughts about The Horde

Saga Age of Magic is now out in Australia and a few people have been asking about the different factions and how they play.

So this is my first attempt at a faction review and/or play guide.  I hope you find it interesting.

The Horde, what are they like?

The Horde is the faction most associated with the idea of barbarian warbands, the mass of unruly blood crazed warriors and races such as orcs and goblins. Regardless of the miniatures you choose and your flavour of fantasy I see them as the charge and bash faction.

The warband is combat driven, with regular heavy weapons or mounts being the core options and you shooting limited to levy bow, mounted composite bow warriors, Scourge monster, a single war machine and javelins on war chariots.

The Horde battle board only has one shooting ability, but since everything else is mostly movement and melee based, you are going to want to build a melee oriented warband.

The Horde's sorcerers have access to Earth and Metal magic, which buff the Horde battle board and troop types really well.  With right spell selection and the full battle board, the Horde are very fast, hit hard and can deal out a lot of damage very quickly.  The have some defensive abilities which reduce the likelihood of taking casualties in return, but overall you can expect that unless you can significantly reduce your opponents Saga dice generation abilities early, there counter attacks are going to hurt.

The Horde's special rules include

• a lieutenant upgraded to a aggression 6 Champion with Pride.
• War Chariot heroes which hit hard with javelins and have double aggression if starting melee with no fatigue.
• and, a Sacrificial Stone as their Sacred Ground which imparts a bonus attack die to all Horde units within S in melee.

Battle board and spell synergies:

• for a rare dice, For the Horde (Orders) increases your charges over open terrain by S and your fatigue can't be used against you.  This means you can camp outside of shooting or cavalry charge ranges with mounted units or outside of the foot unit charge range and initiate charges from far away.  This makes me want to take lots of mounted units and quadruped creatures.  Combined with the metal spell Stoke Fury, you now have a mounted unit capable of charging L+S+S or a monster charging M+S+S.  This is potentially brutal.
• Me First (Orders) stacks well with either of the above to give you 4 bonus attack dice, if your first activation for the turn is a charge.  Play this on your Behemoth and it enters melee with 16 dice.
• Domain of Metal spells are particularly useful for the Horde as they give bonus dice when calculating your initial attack dice pool.  So you get to max out your monster in combat despite not being allowed to use advanced saga abilities and your other units can use Rage and Prayers to the Old Gods to their best effect.
• Let the Blood Run gives you two charge activations for the price of one so long as you have no more than one fatigue.  With For the Horde up this gives you the opportunity to charge in and then use Let the Blood Run to finish off small units etc...

Tactical thoughts:

• Having played a handful of games with the Horde, I like the fact that they are fast, really fast if you let them.  I think you need to be patient and wait the right time to unleash their charges.  If you get that rare sage dice early, I think you need to place it on For the Horde as it is only to screw with your opponents mind early on.  You can fill your battle board over a couple of turns knowing that if your opponent wants to stand off you can use manoeuvre to close to just outside of L.  If you get a second rare, placement on Activation Pool means that you are guaranteed two extra saga dice on your charge turn to ensure you have all the activations you need.
• If you take only one sorcerer then my spell choice is Chrysalis (Earth), Stoke Fury and Rites of Battle (both Metal).  Chrysalis is so you can re-roll one magic die per spell cast, which gives you two chances to get the +2 bonus attack dice on Stoke Fury and range L with Rites of Battle. On the turn you charge you want to have both of these off if possible and you need Rites of Battle up to give you extra hitting power during your opponents counter attack.
• Placing the Sacrificial Stone early and in your opponents deployment zone sounds like a good idea as clearly indicates to your opponent that you are coming to get them.  Uneven terrain is your enemy, so you also want to place these out of the way and limit the amount of terrain on the board as early as possible.
• To mount of not to mount.  Given that your strike range can be L+S, I think that it is feasible to have an all mounted melee warband. A mounted sorcerer enables you to maximise the Rites of Battle bubble and ensure you get Stoke Fury on the right unit.

Composition:

Disclaimer, I am playing Age of Magic so I can bring out all my old fantasy armies. Given the size of my collection I can pretty much take any combination units I want and I have so far.  But based on my games so far this is what I will be taking next.

Warlord - Mount: Animal

Lieutenant- Mount: Animal (cull 2 HG)

War Chariot (1 point)

Sorcerer - Mount: Animal (Chrysalis, Stoke Fury and Rites of Battle) (1 point)

6 x Heathguard - Mount: Animal (2 points)

2 x Quadruped Creatures (1 point)

2 x Quadruped Creatures (1 point)

8 x Warriors - Mount: Animal or with Composite Bow (1 point) 

1 x Behemoth Monster (1 point)

Battle for Pelisium Moor

Great Kingdoms v Horde Battle Report

using

Menoth (Privateer Press) and Warriors of Chaos (Games Workshop)

A cold wind swept over Pelisium Moor, dispersing the mists into cobweb like clouds across the fields.        The discordant sound of jangling armour broke the morning's silence, disturbing the water foal into the air and small animals to seek shelter.

As the sun's ray burnt away the last of the morning mist, the two warbands could clearly seen facing off across the wet and marshy moor.  Ready for battle.

The Great Kingdoms warband consisted of:

• Warlord on foot
• Captain on foot.  This is the Great Kingdom's lieutenant which has We Obey as its special rule
• Paladin on foot
• Sorcerer on foot 
• 2 points of heathguard on foot with heavy weapons (1 point turned into the captain and paladin)
• 1 point of biped creatures
• 2 points of warriors on foot
• 2 points of levy, 1 with firearms and 1 with bows.

The Horde warband consisted of:

• Mounted warlord
• Mounted lieutenant
• Mounted sorcerer
• War Chariot. Horde special hero unit
• 2 points of mounted heathguard (6 figures after 2 replaced for the lieutenant)
• 3 points of warriors (in 2 units of 12)
• 1 point of behemoth monster

Book of Battles - Battle of Heroes set in Marshy Country, with Refused Flank and Unknown Length.

We mucked up the setup and deployment reading the refused flank rules after setting up so the terrain was concentrated along the Southern long edge, leaving the North sparsely covered.  We also forgot that placing Sacred Ground is part of regular terrain deployment and left it for last.  So The horde entering from the East decided it needed to play the game in the Great Kingdom's deployment zone and hence the 2 sacred ground pieces were in the North West.

Turn 1

The Horde place half is warband North of the woods and then the rest South after the Great Kingdom deployed.  The aim was to sweep in around the southern flank.  With a 6 Saga dice to start, the horde was able to fill up the battle board including a rare on "For the Horde" and maneuvered up to just outside of L of all the Great Kingdom units aside from the level bow, which moved its warriors to within charge range.

The Great Kingdoms moved filled its board, moved the firearm levy forward and shot it and the bow at separate warrior units using "Enfilade" causing 1 casualty to each unit.  

Turn 2

Using Magic support "Stoke Fury" (on a rare), "Strengthen" and "Me First" Saga Ability; the Horde's warriors charged the levy bow in the swamp, killing 7 with 1 units; and then charged the levy firearms with the other killing 10. 

The Great Kingdoms then counter struck the northern warriors, first with its creatures who ended up exhausted without inflicting any damage.  Then their warriors charged winning combat and charging again, wiping out the Horde's warriors and distributing fatigue to the warlord, sorcerer and behemoth. 

Turn 3

The Horde repositioned its units for charging in its next turn.

The Great Kingdom sorcerer seeing how his enemy controlled the power of his magic (just) decided to risk the "Abuse of Power" to remove all the fatigue from his creatures unit only to roll double 1 and disappear in load smelly puff of smoke.  

Turn 4

The Horde trigger's "For the Horde" and with a combination of "Let the Blood Run", "Violence" and "Stoke Fury" charge the southern Great Kingdom units.  The levy bow were wiped out, but the warriors survived the war chariot's charge and only lost 4 (not enough to lose a Saga dice).

Seeing his enemy isolated and fatigued the Great Kingdom's paladin charged the behemoth kit and the warlord ordered his creatures into horde's warlord and destroying it too. 

Turn 5

With only 2 Saga dice left the Horde charged the war chariot back into the Kingdom's warriors only to die a horrible death and the lieutenant charged the captain only to end in an exhausted draw.

Ahead on points and will all its units within charge range exhausted, the Great Kingdom's warlord orders his units to rest awaiting the killing blow to land in turn 6.

Turn 6

The horde rolls a 3 on a D6 roll and the game ends.

Key Takeaways:

1. Read the scenarios first before setting up. This is not a mistake we normally make, but in the excitement of getting an 8 point game in, both of us forgot.  Knowing the the Refused Flank deployment in advance would have changed the game.  The Great Kingdom's wood would have been centre field, the hordes one in a corner and its Sacred Ground at the edge of the Great Kingdoms deployment zone.  Once the Great Kingdom's Sacred Ground was placed, the horde would have called time and there would have been less terrain. Maybe?
2. The horde is aggressive and there were times when it should have really pushed harder.  Its deployment was all wrong and should have just left the bows in the swamp and dealt with the rest of the army.  
3. Remember that War Chariots have Javelins and their +1 bonus in melee on the charge.
4. Fatigue management is critical. Even with resilience 2, you need to not only know when to spend your opponent's fatigue, you also need to weigh the risk of taking fatigue from that extra activation. Each point of fatigue is one closer to death and all it takes is a un/lucky roll or two and poof!
5. It was a great game which seesawed multiple times and 1 or 2 dice rolls made the difference.
6. Still have lots to learn about the synergy between units and the battleboards.  There is going to be a lot of fun learning the intricacies of Saga:Age of Magic.