Salute 2025 and a common takeaway was how many smaller i.e. two or three foot square boards with twenty or thirty miniatures. Here with Cardiff Dice Studz we were amongst the first to fall for more accessible games like SAGA. This was after decades of DBx style games that really had dominated for decades. This week’s game play was a chance to weigh up the two approaches.

In 15mm a standard 200 point game is usually played with 100-150 minis but it is still an army game.

I wouldn’t describe it as a “beginners” game as such. Dave is an accountant by trade and this is his go-to system. It’s definately not beer and pretzels, more Redbull and calculators.

They say that the reasons for divorce are present when people first meet. The DBa system never quite conquered the problem of how to align elements and L’art de la Guerre still suffers in my opinion. Try charging an Arab line of spearman with impetuous knights: get your ruler, protractor, 40mm square and see how they line up!

You can’t not enjoy playing an old pal with great minis but it’s not my current favourite system. I hear that the competition circuit is very healthy but a lot of players have moved over from Field of Chorey ( ed: Glory!).

Now SAGA is a very different beast, being actually designed to recreate heroic combats! Tales of derring-do are encouraged with an innovative battle board and bespoke dice. I was planning for a historical game with my Moors but Sid had other ideas….

I was hooked in!!! My Moorish raiders became the desert people liberated by the Unsullied of Game of Thrones fame.

Sportingly, Sid quickly set up the terrain with woods on each of his flanks and a village full of bears on my left. Sid proceeded to line up his diminutive arquebuses regiments between the heavily defended woods. In front of his line he placed his artillery and behind me he placed a mine exit that allowed him to deploy behind me. I really must thank Sid for this scenario!

There was nothing for it but to charge my Unsullied forward to meet their fate. They had two attacks each but had to make contact first!

And the Unsullied behaved magnificently! They tore through the bears, ducked arquebuses and cannon fire, bounced off dwarf magic bolts! God I love Fantasy!

Now my desert horsemen were unleashed! Sid helpfully used arcane spells to both bolster his armour and number of attacks. He really does all in his powers to get new players to enjoy themselves!

The battle reached a climax; dwarves and Unsullied tore pinto each other. The cannons beached no more but the Dwarf magic continued to crackle!

I really enjoyed SAGA magic! Despite being slaughtered! Very different from the mathematical puzzles of ADLG but isn’t that what makes this such a great hobby? Paint what you like and play what you enjoy!!!!