Saga Indians vs Seleucids

An inexpert run through of the armies of Age of Alexander reveals that 2 of the easier armies to do well with could be Classical Indians and Asian Successor. So here is a run through of a match up between them. Investment in the last NewLine sale sees the heavy chariots swapped out for a unit of 4 light chariots. 4 two-handed swordsmen from 1st Corps also show up for the fray. The Indians keep with a maxed-out 3 elephants including the super-hard Raja. Of the 6 units in play the chariots and 2 elephants ensure that the army rules of only up to half the total units (excepting the Warlord) have resilience.

The Indians are first player and aim to maximise low terrain as the Successors lose the Phalanx ability in it and it poses no problem to the Indian elephants and swordsmen beyond slowing them down. We see some woods, rough going and rocky ground with the Successors doing their best to squeeze between it.

There can be a lot of luck in playing Saga. The Indians benefit from VARJA allowing the re-roll of a single attack and defense die in each melee or shooting attack. Alas in this game they did not roll a single uncommon ‘ship’ face to activate it until turn 3.

The Indians move up. The light chariots move, shoot and move back to where they started from but only inflict 2 Levy losses.

The Successors manage to squueze through the gap into the green fields beyond.

Having rolled a solid bevy of rare dice the Indians charge an elephant into the closer phalanx. Although the phalanx are +1 versus hephalumps they dare not close ranks and are down to 2 models left. Alas this should not have happened. With perfect dice and SHOCK the maximum models an elephant can destroy is 9. The stats for the Raja elephant were wrongly used here. We must assume that the phalanx closed ranks; pushing the automatic elephant hits to 8 (doubled for close ranks and again for SHOCK) and that the phalanx rolled miserably in defense (which to be honest they did). Now back to our regular programming.

The Successors play the same game and take down the elephant with the intact phalanx.

The Successor elephant seems exposed but holds out against Indian attacks.

The Successors tidy up the flank and go after the other (non-Raja) elephant and the light chariots beside it using their remaining good phalanx, Warlord and Hearthguard. These are all looking a little tired but the bulk of the Indian army is either out of the game or suitably far away.

The Indians are down to 3 units and move up for optimum bowshot.

The cataphracts charge the Indian bow but fail to reduce them below 6; so they still generate a Saga die.

The Indians take out the 2-man phalanx and a Successor Hearthguard.

The Successors knock the Indian Levy below 6 but at some cost. Other Successor units stay out of the way. On their final turn the Indians, down to 2 Saga dice fail to eliminate the last of the Hearthguard. A Successor victory (25:15 massacre points) with no need to play out the last turn.

In all a poor performance for the light chariots. They managed one turn of running up, shooting and running back all with no fatigue. Several armies have advanced abilities to do this but to make the most of it requires additional buffs to the shooting dice. VARJA would do it, STEEL DHANU gives shooting re-rolls so is also good but it all means at least 3 activations or Saga dice to get a decent chance of success. It also helps to have a juicy target, neither Levy in cover nor Cataphract Hearthguard fall into that camp. The Raja unit also failed to play well. It costs an extra point to field over a basic Warlord and should be used like the pile of bricks it is. If the Warlord’s role is mostly supporting he might as well be on foot or in a fancy chariot.

The Eastern Successors are still looking to be the way to go with Sarissa as with fair dice they can move them twice without fatigue using HEGEMONY. If that is not workable they can strip fatigue with PANTODAPOI. Two moves many only be ‘Short’ + ‘Short’ for ‘Medium’ but they could substitute a charge of ‘Medium’ for the second ‘Short’ and that is a lot better than other armies’ phalanx crawling around or chugging up fatigue.