New Ordensstaat VS Solo Saga
New Ordensstaat vs Solo Saga
I have always been a fan of the Ordensstaat. It has an interesting history and the famous helms that look so cool as 28mm models. The recent FAQ gave a big upgrade to the faction. There were no less than five changes. The two biggest changes were in the basic activations and the addition of a new ability.
The Activation Pool was changed to Servants of God. This ability was in the Advanced abilities. Now that it is in the basic ability, you can trigger it multiple times. This is a great ability for late-game. The old location of Servants of God was replaced with a new ability, Enlist. Enlist allows you to add figures to a warrior or levy unit that has taken causalities. This makes the board work. There are so many sacrifice abilities that one can decimate your army. However, this is a great ability to make the sacrifice mechanic work. During the test game, I had a crossbow warrior unit get reduced to 4 models from the original 10 after a couple of charges on them. I quickly brought the unit back to a workable level by adding 3 models with a rare. They returned the favor on the unit that had charged them and eliminated it.
The other notable change was Din of Battle, a much-maligned ability. In the past, you had to reroll all your defense dice that canceled hits…very risky. Now, you simply place a fatigue on the unit charged and a fatigue on another unit within M of your unit. The cost is now two saga dice, a common and a rare. I played this ability on two Hearthguard units. I charged in with a warlord/lifeguard unit that had two fatigues. The target was a 3 figure Hearthguard unit with 2 fatigues. I played Din of Battle to add a third fatigue and placed another fatigue on a 3 figure Hearthguard unit that was S away from the target unit. The second unit had 1 fatigue and now had 2. In Solo Saga, the raiders always spend my fatigue to lower my armor but I wanted to see what would happen if I was playing an opponent. Most people wouldn't spend fatigue on a warlord since they need 4 hits to go through so I left the fatigue on the warlord. I used Resilience 3 and 8 attack dice. I raised my armor to 6 and lowered theirs to 3. I wiped the unit and that created a fatigue bomb that put a third fatigue on the other Hearthguard unit. My warlord was now exhausted but so was the second raider HG unit. Note that a unit that gets 3 fatigues while working through the steps in melee does not suffer the -1 to attack dice. However, if a unit starts the melee with 3 fatigues it does get a -1 to the attack dice even if you spend the fatigue. I had used Slay the Pagans to activate the charges and my unit of 3 Hearthguards wiped the exhausted second unit of Hearthguards. Din of Battle at its best. I have done this with Din of Battle in the past but now it is less risky to use it. This is a great mid to late-game ability.
Another useful change was Dark Crosses Pure Hearts. This was a much-needed change to make the ability usable especially when coupled with Enlist. Now it is completely feasible to play and only remove 1 or 2 figures to gain some dice. I played this to gain 2 attack and 2 defense dice during a few melees. It worked well. It is versatile, it can be used for attack, defense, or a mix of both. The cost is less, only one uncommon saga dice. It only allows for 4 sacrifices generating 8 dice. This is a significant amount and will still allow me to play the wrecking ball with the warlord/lifeguard unit and generate 18 attack dice with resilience 2.
The final ability change was with Nach Osten. It changed "All” units to “Any” units. Overall, this is a critical ability for the Ordensstaat. The change does not affect things but clarifies some issues in the past.
I have played two Solo Saga games with the Ordensstaat. I have to say playing the test games was great fun and the changes are all positive. I can see a lot of options with the new board. I am planning on breaking them out for my next session with an opponent to see how they perform. I have confidence in the new board, it will play well.