[SAGA] My Stamford Bridge was a nice wee dale, (to die in).

When you have a successful tactic, or formula if you will, altering it can be problematic.
I think we all learned this lesson with 'New Coke'.
In my defense I wanted to try my old two pronged Varangian attack. It failed miserably as you'll see.

My mate Martin was keen for SAGA so we had a throw down last week. He had a list of Anglo Saxons, in fact a very dangerous list for me. Four units of Warriors and two of levee, he loves his hordes! With his skill in his battle board he was able to buff them nearly every turn. Yikes, I should have been very careful around this, but as Thursday is a workday for me all of my smarts is gone. Charge!

A nice wee dale. Also a cave, our objective.

Rurik and his fellow Varangians

Dirty dirty Anglo Saxons

Levees and Anglo Saxon warriors

The race for the cave begins

Anglo Saxon levee making a run for the cave!

Martin has learned his battle board well!

His archers turn into warriors and cut down four of my warriors!

This is right after my warriors bounced off of his warriors!

After smashing his only flank protection Rurik falls to the villains. By one roll!

So my Varangian Hearthguard didn't get a single attack in.
I only killed a couple warriors in three turns.
I lost my Warlord in turn three!
Ack!
Nice work Martin, good game!
I'm going back to my old filthy habit of piling 12 Varangians onto whatever unit you put in front of me.;-)

[SAGA] Horse stew with leeks

Finally wedged in a quick game of SAGA with my mate Simon. He is working on a list of Welsh, and last I had seen, had given a Rick (using Harald Hardrada same as me) a smashing with them. Because of this I was worried.
He had Hearthguard on horses! And still more hearthguard! Also warriors with 'poo sticks', which he had taken to unappetisingly begun referring to his javelins as. (Icky!) Unsanitary!

My warriors with my warlord Rurik

Simon had advanced his hearthguard cavalry up to my right flank very quickly and got too close to my Varnagians. I was able to close with them in two moves and with a couple decent rolls obliterated them.

Some refugees loitering nearby

His other units didn't seem ready for this and weren't in position to threaten me. I pushed hard on this left and moved my warriors and Rurik up to threaten his center.

On my left flank

He was slowing me down and chucking javelins now and again when finally his Warlord thrashed out at my warriors in the center eviscerating them but unable to get the sole survivor. Lucky for me! (Somewhere in here I used 'Valhalla' to good effect!)

Varangians ready to mess some people up

My core mob of twelve Varangians, well now ten, leap into the fray smashing his foot hearthguard and throwing them back with heavy casualties.

Welsh WIP staving off the inevitable

I'm looking forward to when these are actually done as Simon is a brilliant painter.

That's twenty odd dice of hate there Welshy

Finally we catch his warlord and he can't run off this time. Twenty plus dice smash into him and only two warriors are close enough to sacrifice themselves for Wales.
The end.
So my dice rolling actually helped me for once! Nice change that. Also his piecemeal engagement helped me alot. The panzer brigade really is a one trick pony. We are coming straight for you!
No joke.
Fun game Simon! I know we'll meet again!
I love SAGA, for me it's the perfect Thursday night game. I'm knackered and can't think properly. Hulk smash!

[SAGA] It takes a village.

(To sack a village.)
Poochie and I decided to up our model size in order to fit in at Cavaliers this Thursday. Sadly he is moving up to the windy city so I need to fit in a bunch of quality games to discuss at length while he's in the north.
We wanted to try a new mission and used the Village rules. Basically you each bid on how many points of henchmen you need to successfully defend the village. We both bid four, so we rolled to see who got to try it.
I took my usual Harald Hardrada clone of Rurik, 3 units of Varangian hearthguard, one of Rus warriors and one of Slav levee. (Vikings)
Pooch had a warlord of the generic singing Celt variety(8P), 3 warriors and one levee as well. Super cool models including women and children and Irish wolfhounds! (Welsh)

At the start line my Slavic levees lurk

 Why were we at this particular village? No one can say, but I'm sure it may have had something to do with the water.

Rurik and his brazen followers demand water.

 Water you ask? Yes indeed, fresh water that was said to impart everlasting youth and perfect pitch!

Some of Rurik's seasoned Varangian fellow travellers glowering with thirst

 Some of Rurik's grognards knew better and were there for the carefully worked silver jewelry and the women.

Irish warriors defending their village

 There were no illusions on this side about why they were here. Clearly it was for the wagon that they had stolen last night in a drunken stupor!

The women and children of Eire ready to defend to the death

 "Look! Vikings! Let's kill em and take their stuff," cries Siobhan.

More Irish warriors

 The grog has just run out and the warlords men congregate outside the keep. "What's that?"

The wolfhounds at the gates

 The snarling dogs show a fondness for fresh meats, the fresher the better. Whimper snarl! Ralf! Grrr...

Very tough Irish warlord,"No water for you Rus scum!"

 Rurik never takes this type of behaviour sitting down. "Someone's feelings are about to get hurt," he mutters.

Right then guys, form a line, echelon left...

 We move forward rapidly, with the warrior unit screaming for Valhalla right at the warlords men. The crash of sword and pike is audible over the blood curdling screams for glory!

Just before all of the warriors around the Irish warlord died

 This field will sprout heavily next summer...

And right after the Varangians finished him off

 The veterans roll in and pummel the ville's hero to death laughing. Another hero dies in vain, some think.

The last unit of Irish ready to fight to the last man. The Varangians see their profit margins declining rapidly.

 Then they too are assaulted by the Irish warriors, only one survives. He charges straight back in needing to avenge the insult of being spat upon. Never again!

A single warrior left! Shall I even waste my time?

Ruriks decides to pop on in and save having to give a bonus to his levees. Before he can however he gets jumped by the single 4 die buffed warrior!
 Oh jeez! Three hits and one failed save later...

The new Irish warlord has some unit building to do, better raise the taxes!

Super fun game Chris! I really thought I had you!
The insolent Irish have their own blog now!

"Why we fight" - 28mm objectives

Just finished up my baggage train for my Impetvs army of Bulgars as well as a cool wagon for use with SAGA.

Refugees or battlefield scavengers?

Should probably make some baggage eh?

My yurts that I started nearly a year ago!

Shields represent Tengri and the Pechenegs respectively.

Note cart of pillaged firewood and Bulgarian coin representing Asparakh.

"If it keeps on rainin..."

"the levee's gonna break."
So I finally got most of my Slavs finished. I plan on using them for both my SAGA warband as a levee unit, that won't break of course but will in fact die to a man on order.;-)
I will also use them as an infantry back up for my Bulgar army. They will be FL Warriors, again representing Slavs with javelins.

Somehow, I'm out of practice with the bloody 28mm figures, must be all the 6mm tanks I've been doing.
Also, these Gripping Beast sculpts aren't as good as some of the other 28's I've done in recent memory. Overall the poses are good though, so suitable for backup troops, hopefully everyone will just look at the shields.8P

Axe wielding lunatic Slavs, on old shield sketches

A couple 'javelins', next time I'm using different spears, these were fiddly as.

Some of my fave mini's from this set

One unit in their sabot

The two axe, three spear mix looks good.

Add a caller with an ox horn and you have a warband!

Kind of missing my FoW army and their collection of .50 cal MG's for some reason.

In other news, I got some time to bust out the Saharianas this weekend, hopefully I won't get distracted by too much 6mm Soviet stuff.
I'm working so I'm jsut going to have Saturday at Conquest. I think that Pooch and I are still going to do a LRDG vs Saharianas demonstration.
Other ideas are 15mm Force on Force Vietnam, or our 6mm EPIC Modern.

SAGA - Scotch is a drink.

A warband of Scots on the other hand are no easy day.
Had a last minute type of game vs Andy, frankly he wanted to play Flames of War and I hadn't brought my stuff. I wanted a lower key game as I was pretty knackered from work last week when this went down.
[I know I am behind... I will get better, probably not actually, but I have got a ton of modelling done!]

I was up against Ken Macalpin and his wily Scots again. He had Kenneth, four units of warriors broken into three, and one four man unit of hearthguard.

Red team warriors, sense a theme...?

I had the hard men of the Kyivan Rus' along with Rurik of course.
(Three units of Varangians broken into two and two units of warriors as well as Harald Hardrada.)
We rolled and got Escort, with the Scots defending, I started to worry immediately as he already outnumbered me substantially and the baggage units also had fighting abilities. Additionally I knew that Andy would use his battleboard well.
There were several scattered woods and a large castle that never really got used as it was behind Kenneth's men.
My first attack was against his left flank protecting a single baggage train, my warriors bounced pretty hard and lost three already.

Check out the sabot bases.

When he started bringing up the center we smashed right into his left flank with my other warrior unti trying to pin him when I activate my hearthguard.
I manage to partially do this but he moves out of the way.
Right before this part I move up a unit of Varangians and Andy uses the of Wood and Steel or something to counterattack them. This an awesome ability, he smashes my 6 hearthguard with his four! Ouch!

Scots getting caned.

We manage to cut him up a bit on the left.

Holding the center against the marauding Varangians

I throw another unit at the warriors in the center along with Rurik. We finally crush the center. The three survivors move back.
Ken moves back but not far enough.
Similarly, my warriors on my right have stood back from the baggage and the remaining warriors

The end is nigh for you mate.

Rurik moves in with a single hearthguard and slays Kenneth with a rain of blows from his Dane axe.
We use Loki to execute the three remaining warriors in the center.
Finally we chase down two of the baggage trains after he manages to exit one.
Narrow win for me!
Andy did mention we are 1-1 now. (He still wins the modelling competition by a long shot!)
Awesome game, very close run for the entirety.

SAGA Getting my one trick right-ish.

Jamie and I had a good quick SAGA melee a couple weeks ago now, but it was fun and I got a couple pics.
A different mission this time, basically this one is a Warlord throwdown.
Both warlords start with 12 'hit points', one starts in the middle the other within 12". Their warbands aren't with them yet...

Rurik starts in the middle and has a unit of 12 warriors move up into direct support. That takes two activations and a fatigue point suddenly appears. Using 'With Me' Rurik does his patented straight up the middle attack 'plan' smashing into Ragnar Hairypants and getting first blood. Following this we bring up our first hearthguard unit of 6 Varangians onto our left.
We are eyeing Jamie's beautiful sod house with it's outbuildings designed to keep everyone cosy with the livestock protected from roving bands of... well, Vikings.

Ragnar is wondering if he pays his battle hardened Jomsvikings enough for them to show up.

My witch laments a lack of rules that allow her to kill like every other cast member of this show.

My first hearthguard catches up with the main body.

 They decide to have a go at Ragnar as well. Urah! He fights them off using Jomsviking dirty tricks.

Our warbands are a little bit away from each other. No pictures but on the right my (now favorite posthumuous) other unit of 6 Varangians smash into another unit of hearthguard. With some good rolling we utterly destroy them, leaving a sole survivor.

The throw down continues. He attacks me, I attack him.
Insert dirty Jomsviking trick # whatever here.
Again, the Kyivan Rus charge into the fray.

Finally there is only the two warlords; and one disheartened Jomsviking out of command distance providing Ragnar with another activation die. But anyway.
Just the two warlords, we battle, then battle some more.

Finally after much hand wringing and die rolling the final turn arrives. We both have 6 hit points left.
A tie! What is this Soccer!?

Very fun game as usual Jamie! We will throw down again soon. I couldn't remember your warlords name, so went with your old one. Sorry dude, will edit.