Careful study of the Saga Indian list reveals that we can cram in 3 elephants and 5 chariots by running an 8-unit list. No more than 3 points can be spent on elephants and not more than half the units – not including the Warlord – may have resilience. So we can run Warlord in chariot, 3 elephants, 1 unit of 4 light chariots, 1 unit of 12 Levy and 2 units of 6 Levy (or 2 other half point throwaway units). As a bonus an 8 unit list pulls the full 8 Saga dice (at least for the start of the game).
Here the Indians are first player and put down some ruins to hide the small Levy units in and a big wood to block Persian shooting.
It all goes wrong for the Persians from the word go. Their army is only pulling 6 Saga dice in this configuration. The key combined formation Hearthguard unit only has an Indian Levy as a useful target plus as it can only move ‘S’ is unlikely to get much more action. The Indians move up, their Chariots get some shots off but with no effect.
When the Persian Hearthguard do get in range of the Indian Levy they fail to cause enough losses to stop them generating a Saga die.
On the other flank the Indians are tearing the place apart.
The Indian Levy are finally sent back to the locker room. Coordinated work from the hoplites and cavalry deal with the light chariots.
Cavalry do not last long against elephants, the hoplites are not doing well either.
The Persians pullback what they have left. Although the game continues for a few more turns the remaining Persian cavalry is wiped out and the only effective units left to them are the Hearthguard, Warlord and Levy. The Indians only need to stay out of the way to force a win.
The game all seemed to go wrong starting with the Persian deployment so we’ll try again with much the same terrain, keeping the Indian as 1st player but changing the Persian army by dropping a point of Warriors in favour of 4 mounted Hearthguard. A useful bonus to the Indian load-out here is that if they are first player and need to deploy 4 units before the opposition they can choose the 3 rubbish Levy and the Warlord. This leaves putting the good stuff down until after the enemy is laid out.
The Persians put their shooters up front and hide the cavalry behind.
The Indians move elephants up and run the light chariots back and forth to shoot. Some solid die rolling sees 2 Hoplites and 3 Hearthguard back in the box.
Persian shooting back is none too sloppy. CONCENTRATED VOLLEY also helps as it puts an unsaveable hit on elephants with a 5+. Scratch 1 elephant.
A charge by the Indian Warlord knocks the Persian Levy down to 4 models. In retrospect this was a poor move.
The Persians knock out the Indian Warlord with some lucky shooting
The Indians still generate 6 Saga dice; they shoot as they move up.
The Persians use UNNUMBERED HORDES and find some more Levy behind the sofa. The original unit counts as lost but the new one can still shoot and is back to generating a Saga die.
The Indians kill 2 hoplite models, scarcely worth the trouble.
The Persian cavalry move out of the way.
An Indian elephant just fails to wipe out the Persian Hearthguard.
Another elephant is down. The last elephant is looking shaky.
Through careful Indian use of DYNASTIES the Levy are down to 8 models and the elephant has less fatigue than it started with.
Shooting and a final turn charge buy the Persian Warlord sees the last elephant go down. Final scores on the doors are 16 for the Indians and 21 for team Persia.
A much closer game this with several units doing absolutely nothing beyond contributing Saga dice to the battle. Missile combat played a major part in the game. The luck involved in shooting evened itself out with both sides getting some good and some poor results. The Persian Hearthguard might be better as 2 units of 6 combined arms as having more targets means that a single bad incoming shooting turn is less harmful. The 4 Hearthguard cavalry were chosen to get additional activations for the infantry through COMBINED ARMS. On the other side; by staying out of the way, running up, shooting and running back the light chariots did much better here.
Gaming in Blackshaw Head 