More Normans

More Normans! Four knights on foot with spears, and a warlord! And a banner! And two extra guys for good measure.

I know, they would do better in Saga with horses. But as I noted before, I have to believe a significant portion of the Norman army still fought on foot. So there it is. And don't worry, I have at least one more unit of mounted knights to paint. And with word of Footsore Miniatures Normans coming, I surely will be tempted to get a unit of mounted warriors. And some archers.

Wait, wasn't this supposed to be a quick side project?

I actually thought I would need to paint up at least one more unit to reach a four-point Saga force, then I realized I could just spend a point on a priest. So technically, I think they are good to go. Anyone?

Oh, the knights with spears are from Black Tree Design, while the warlord and his pals are from Crusader Miniatures. All very nicely done, clean and easy to paint with the usual mix of paints. 

One final note, I had planned on using some Little Big Men Studios transfers on the shields, and while they are very nice and I have had great success with them on Saxons and Scots, they didn't quite fit these shields as well. Not their fault, they weren't designed for BTD. So I used them as a guide to paint the shields. They turned out all right, I think.

A Late Summer Saga

After just dabbling in hobby stuff the last couple months, it was time for a full blown gaming day to kick off Labor Day weekend!

So up came my regular opponent, Jon, with his Vikings in an attempt to conquer Essex sometime in the 9th century. Yes, it was time to finally get those dark age minis on the table and give Saga a try!

Certainly Saga has been reviewed plenty of times elsewhere, so there is no need to go into details here. Suffice to say, our voices now join the chorus singing the praises of this system. We had a blast. In only about five hours, we got three games in. Not bad at all considering we were both learning the rules and playing for the first time. And every single game was incredibly even matched and literally came down to the last roll as our warlords went at it mano a mano. In the end, my Anglo Saxons won two of the three.

As we were learning, we basically just lined up some troops and went at it and didn't worry too much about scenarios. A brief recap of our 4-point games...

Game 1 saw the Vikings attempting to advance on a Saxon village. A line of Saxons came out to meet them. After an initial volley from my archers, Jon moved in and it turned into a nice slugfest. After eying each other for a couple turns, our warlords finally advanced on each other to settle the matter. I won. :) Lessons learned here were a 12 model unit of levies doesn't do much. Better to split them up. On the other hand, Anglo-Saxons definitely do better in larger groups, and may be better suited to a 6-point game.

Game 2 had a road running down the center, mostly open terrain. Both sides advanced, with me placing a unit of 12 warriors in the center, with two groups of six levies on the flanks. It worked for a bit, but my hearthguard was unexpectedly taken out. Some of those Viking abilities are wicked! Loki? Wow. And when my warriors got knocked below the 10 threshold, it turned into another even match before his warlord finally mustered the courage and (with a lucky roll ;) ) took mine out.

Game 3 we experimented with terrain. We put lots of trees and hills on the table, which really slowed movement and made us think more about our approach. In the end it was another close fought game, with my warlord finally putting an end to things. The thing that bothered us most in this game is the lack of any sort of penalty for attacking uphill. We thought perhaps one's armor could be reduced by 1 when attacking up hill, or at least be given an automatic fatigue beforehand. Doesn't seem like it would be that tough to employ, and would reward a player for gaining the high ground. Or perhaps the defender could simply be considered to be in cover? Something needs to be done there.

Anyway, without further ado, some photos of the festivities. Figures are a mix of Old Glory, Black Tree Design and Crusader. Jon's Vikings are plastic.

Too many levies put in one place.

Some warriors from Black Tree Design.

Sneaky Vikings trying to come through the woods.

Battle is joined!

Whew. Getting tired.

You looking at me, punk?

Hey, where did everyone go?

All right, let's do this...

Game, 12 Anglo Saxon warriors ready to rock.

Splitting the levies up helped.

Table overview. Love that Saga doesn't need much room.

Another view.

Game 3. That's a hill, not a Mayan pyramid.

Claire checking out dad's toys. And yes, the table is set on my Mustang. Poor Mustang.

Anglo Saxons go over the top! Sort of.

It's a race to the top!

I won. But did it matter?

My warlord, on the hunt for Vikings.

Random archer shot.

Funny Looking French There...

I think I mentioned a while back that I was waiting for some early WW2 French I ordered to complement the platoon I picked up at Spartacon. Well, they've arrived. For the most part, they're good. But this one gave me pause...

Clearly it's labelled as a French Hotchkiss gun. Clearly those are not French gunners, and though it's a little hard to tell in the photo, that's not a Hotchkiss gun, either. Most definitely Germans. I contacted FRP Games, where I ordered them from, and let them know they apparently have a collection of mislabeled stock. I suspect it was a mislabeling done by Crusader USA, and isn't FRP Games' fault. Still, I asked them to let me know if they have any actual French. I haven't heard back yet, and I may not, as I suspect Crusader USA minis are getting scarcer by the day.

In the meantime, I guess I now am the proud owner of a German machine gun team. And while I do have a Bolt Action French gun team, I still wouldn't mind getting a Crusader one as well.

I do have to say over time I generally have had good luck with mail order, which has become the lifeblood of all my hobbies, including the Mustang restoration, the model cars and the gaming. Oh, there is the occasional foul-up with a shopping cart (how did I get two vials of the same paint?), and the occasional long waiting period, but for the most part the vendors I've dealt with have been good. And again, in this case I can't really blame the vendor, if you just read it, you'd think these were French if you didn't take a look or didn't know the difference.

C'est la vie. Or should that be, so ist das Liben?

British WW2

Eventually I'll go into more detail on how I got interested in WW2 skirmish, but suffice to say I have had delusions of getting enough early war British together to take on the German juggernaut in Norway and hold the line against the blitzkrieg in France. And this is as far as I have gotten on that little adventure. Just a handful of Crusader minis done. There are several more in the pile, even a couple that have some paint on them, so hopefully one of these days this project will simmer to the top again.

My plan is to use Arc of Fire as well as the Skirmish Campaign books. For these, the books on Norway and Dunkirk are of course most appropriate. One of my main hangups on WW2 is vehicles, both in terms of cost and ultimately storage. Given my limited gaming opportunities at this point, it's hard to justify either one. And so, they wait.

Before closing, I have had my eye on some minis and vehicles from BEF Miniatures for a while, but see they have been sold to Warlord. Must keep an eye on that.