“Return to Normal” Gaming Challenge

I’ve decided to take upon myself what I’m calling the “Fauci-Ouchi-Gaming Challenge” (I saw somewhere on social media a small child use the term for the COVID vaccine, and I’m using it from now on). The challenge is to pick a new game, and complete at least two small forces for it before the summer. This serves two purposes: (1) to give me a project to distract me from the daily WFH grind, and (2) allows me to run demo games when things start being more “normal”.

My pick: Saga, Age of Magic by Gripping Beast Games.

Saga AoM is a miniature agnostic fantasy game, like Warlords of Erehwon, allowing you to use any company’s minis. This makes it great for players with orphaned fantasy minis. What I also love about it is it has force themes, rather than armies lists. Each army has mostly the same units: Warriors, Levies, Hearthguard, Creatures, Monsters, War Machines. What makes armies unique is their “Battleboards”, sheets of special rules and abilities that can be purchased during the game.

Army themes are made to cover play styles, rather than races. The Great Kingdoms, The Lords of the Wild, The Undead Legions, the Otherworld, The Horde, and the Masters of the Underearth. This means not only could the same theme cover very different races, but the same army could be played using different themes game to game. The “Lords of the Wild” can represent Spider-Riding Forest Goblins, Wood Elves, or Beastmen, while beastmen could be played as “Lords of the Wild” one game, and “The Horde” the next. This format gives an enormous amount of both gaming and modeling flexibility.

If interested in learning more about the gameplay, you can watch videos on the Saga Thorsday challenge. A warning, he doesn’t have the most engaging vocal delivery.

My planned forces are a respin of my Warhammer Fantasy Battles Dwarves, and my own alternative take on a Sea Elf army. More to come on these.