Fjord Serpents - Vikings at War!

 

Last night at the Wollongong Wargamers we had our inaugural game of Fjord Serpents.

This was the culmination of several weeks of feverish painting and hoovering up the excellent and entertaining 'how to' vids on YouTube.

In particular Jarl Keegan did an amazing job in painting up his entire starter set right down to all the crew figures! This allowed us to get six ships on the table, one each. Jarl's Keegan, Caesar and Mark were the aggressive, thieving Norsemen:

Whereas Jarls Daniel, Alan and I were the friendly, honest Danes!

We were playing the Salvage Run mission where the winner has to grab at least half the loot scattered on the wreck in the centre of the board and outlying large skerries and make off the board with it.

Fjord Serpents has many layers of complexity and period detail that you can add in - you can even try to enlist the help of the Norse Gods! However for this first game we eschewed even the Faction and Leader enhancements, keeping only the varied sailing qualities of the ship types - there was still a lot to think about, a good deal of tactical richness. But other than that we based both fleets on the recommended Jarl default fleets:  

It all started out so well!

But then the glint of gold led Mark to cast all caution to the winds and drive straight into the wreck! Ignoring the damage to his hull he immediately started loading up with the loot. Caesar moved up to protect his flank.

Alan was enraged by this naked greed and moved fast to ram the closest Norse ship:

Meanwhile on our left I attempted to squeeze my Karvi between an outlying skerry and Keegan's Karvi, whilst on our right Daniel liberated the loot on the far skerry:

Whilst Alan and Caesar where engaged in a furious exchange of javelins, arrows and axe to axe shieldwalls across the strakes, Mark just kept grabbing all the gold off the wreck!

Beware the trickery of the Norsemen! Keegan manoeuvered to force me onto the rocks! I took damage both from his collision and from the unforgiving rocks. Meanwhile, laden down with more gold than his ship could carry, Mark left the wreck, attempting to leave all the havoc behind him!

Fortunately our farsighted Daniel had sailed deep into Mark's rear in an attempt to cut off his sneaky retreat. 

Meanwhile the combat between Keegan and I on the left...

and Caesar and Alan in the centre continued its bloody course...with many a brave Viking being selected by the Valkyries to join the ranks of the Einherjar in Valhalla... 

The combat between Keegan and I was sadly interrupted by my ship being pounded to matchwood on the rocks. All its gallant crew drowned and were thus harvested by Ran to dwell with her in Hlesey, the Hall of the sea-god Aegir. Daniel's ship didn't quite have the legs to foil Mark's getaway, so he was now a very rich Jarl indeed! A terrific saga with many more to come I hope!