Painting Challenge Report #2

This is long overdue post, as the original entry published in the Painting Challenge blog was dated January 7th 2024. My second contribution to the Challenge this year is a unit of Late Roman mounted light archers.

The unit is part of the project that slowly is taking shape to have an 8 points Saga Late Roman warband: more cavalry will arrive soon and I have the Heavy Cavakry and Light Infantry boxes already at home. 

The models are part of the multi-pose Gripping Beast plastic range (Late Roman Light Cavalry) offering two different options (armed with bows or with javelins). These are vey well designed minis and the box offer (in my humble opinion) one of the best quality for price combos in the market.   

The unit together with some bonus points add 100 points to my Challenge score, to a total of 140 points. I'm now at 35% of my Challenge target of 400 points by March 31st, and I'm confident that will reach the target on time with the pipeline of models currently sitting on my desk.

Painting Challenge Report #8

A milestone achieved in my Saga project, as last week I finished the last two units of guards for my Dark Ages warband

 

Guards units have 4 men, representing 1 point  in terms of the Saga point system. Together with the previously painted models, I have now a total of 6 points (1 levy. 2 warriors, 2 guards and the warband leader)  to deploy a warband on the table. 

 

Given the generic design of most of these models, they can be used for any army list between the period of the Late Roman Empire to the beginning of the first Millenium. So any list with the terms "Anglo", "Saxon", Danish", even Vikings can be used with the mdels al ready painted.

My plan now is to start painting some cavalry units which a re featured in many of the Age of Invasion lists like the different "Goths" (Otrogoths, Visigoths,etc), Franks and other horse mounted peoples beyond the Rhine and the Danube rivers.

As of today, my total points score on the Challenge has reached  482 points or 69% of my 700 points target.

Painting Challenge Report #6

 January is gone and I'm happy with my progress so far in the Painting Challenge. Usually, by this time in the competition my painting mojo suffers; but not this year. I think the Saga project is keeping me engaged and committed.

The past week I finished a second unit of 8 warriors (1 Saga Warband point equivalent). The minis are from the Gripping Beast plastic Dark Age Warriors box, straight from the sprues. Shileds as usual from the superb Little Big Men Studios range.

 

The unit is generic enough to play a rol in any Dark Age warband and even later periods, like for example acting as light infantry for an El Cid/Reconquista army. I'm now close to conclude a 4-point starter warband: I already painted one levies (1 point) and the two warriors (2 points) units. I only need now to paint the Guards, which hopefully should be ready next week.

 

I have also started looking for a suitable warband leader.For a cavalry-free army, I have already prepared this chief standing on a boulder. Happy with the final work but I may add in the future a stardard bearer. I'm planning in any case to paint some other warband leaders, and at least one riding a horse.

 

Following this week's submission my accumulated scoring has reached 442 points, representing 63% of my 700 points target for this year's Challenge.

 

Painting Challenge Report #5

 Time flies, I can't believe that 5 weeks are already gone since the beginning of the Challenge (and the winter period)

Very satisfactory progress this week. Despite having less time available for painting, I managed to finish another 8-men Warrior unit for my Saga warband. These were initially to be part of an Anglo-Danish warband, bu the models are so generic that can be part of any Saxon, Viking, etc unit in the Dark Age period.

 

 

The second part of the entry are Saruman and the Palanthir. These were painted to win some bonus points by visiting the 80s Studio site of the Challenge Studios. The model is from an (very) old Mithril range bought in the 80s literally (it was even in the sealed original blister pack!)

 

Quite happy with the painting work, depicting Saruman in the act of conjuring Sauron's Eye in the Palanthir.

This week I scored 67 points, taking my Challenge's accumulated to 377 points. I have already covered 54% of my March 21st deadline target of 700 points, so not bad at all. Now I need to keep the momentum.

Painting Challenge Report #4

As expected, the end of the Christmas holidays has reduced my total paint time and slowed the output. In any case I have been able to produce one new 12-men levy unit for my Saga Late Roman Army warband.

Being levies I wanted the unit to lack uniformity. So instead of using the Gripping Beast Late Roman Infantry box, I decided to scavange different pieces from the Dark Age Warriors box and spare heads with helmets from other different boxes.

My idea was that likely they were supplied with helmets,  Roman army tunics and shields when called for service. But being conscripted, some may be have been arriving late or the army's depot may have been depleted, and therefore they had to provide their own clothing and weapons.

 

Another example of the flexibility allowed by the Gripping Beast plastic boxes, many of whose parts can be interchanged, providing endless configuration options. The shields are transfers from Little Big Men studios. I went for a similar pattern to give the unit some uniformity.

With this entry, my scoring stands now at 310 points, representing 44% of my Challenge's 700 points target this year. 

 

Painting Challenge Report #3

 Third week of the Annual Painting Challenge concluded and my progress is good. Clearly having been on holidays for a couple of weeks helped, as I consider myself a slow painter. Now that I'm back in the office, I'm afraid that some momentum will be lost, and the weekly scorings will decrease.

This week I went back to the Saga related projects and finished an archers unit. These are rated "Levy" in the Saga rules and the unit must have at least 12 minis. The models are 28mm plastic straight from the Dark Ages Archers box.

You may remember from three weeks ago, the Arab archers unit also included some minis from the same bow. I only needed to swap heads from the Araba Spearmen box. This is one of the great advantages of the Gripping Beast boxes, the pieces are fully interchnageable between boxes, enabling an infinite number of poses.

 

The second part of this week's entry is a Darth Vader model. It is 3D printed and was given to me by one of my club pals, pushing me to enter into the Star Wars period. The model also scorer 20 bonus points in the SciFi studio of the Challenge. 

 

I'm still resisting to jump into that wagon... but who know if this might be the project for the next winter Challenge XD 

 With the points scored this week I'm now at 250 points or 36% of my 700 points target for this Challenge

   

 

Painting Challenge Report #1

The first week of the Challenge is over and I have managed to score 80 points total in two different entries, 60 points coming from the painted models and the remaining 20 points the bonus from one of the Challenge Studio locations.

 

This firrst week I focused my attention in completing a Moor/Sarracen warband unit: 12 archeres for 1 point Saga levies section. This comes to complete an old (actually very old) army project of early 2000s when I was heavily playing WAB.

 

Saga Campaign in the Age of Invasions

We have started a new Saga campaign at Club Dragon using the mechanics described in the Age of Wolf supplement (a full self standing campaign book set in the Vikings period)  and the lists of the Age of Invasion book. We have enrolled six players using Picts, Late Romans, Saxons, Huns, Goths and Sassanids armies. 

Roman cataphracts guard unit

The campaign rules are easy to learn an fun to play.

The first step is deciding a motivation for your leader: do you want to be a land or a gold hoarder? Or you want to become a legend because of your heroic deeds?. Then create a Saga 4-points warband, acquire some distinctive features for your leader by rolling in a table... and finally go invading or raiding your neihghbours fiefdoms.

A campaign usually lasts 8 seasons (or turns) and the player with a higher victory point scoring at the end of the eighth season wins. When a season concludeds, you recover part of your losses in battles and can recruit new forces. A  table of special events (plagues, revolts...)  must be also rolled, potentially affecting your next season plans. 

As you can see, the campaign system is fully aligned with the Saga complex-free design policy, easy, fun and fast.

In this campiagn I'm using the Late Roman Army lists. My initial warband includes of course a leader, a unit of cataphracts (guards), two units of warriors on foot (regular infantry) armed with bows and hand weapons respectively, and a unit of levies armed with javelins.

Roman in line formation awating the beasty Huns

The Late Romans are basically oriented to defend rather than to attack, based on their table of characteristics; but they are not easy to play with. I have already played two seasons, defending against the Picts in Britain and against the Huns in the Danube or Rhin borders...  and have lost both games.

The Hun archers harassing  Roman cataphracts

So far lucky with the special events rolls, that facilitated recovering many of the losses inflicted in my units. But scoring zero victory points after two turns is not looking good at all. 

Next game would probably take place after New Year, as the main festivities are on the weekends this Christmas. I'll keep you posted about the progress but it looks like I'm going to face an "Edward Gibbonian" sort of campaign end this time.   

The Hun horde ready to attack

 

    

Thoughts About Saga Rules

 

In September this year I caught the Saga fever, which had previously infected many of my club's closest gaming buddies. To being now almost less fully dedicated to Saga will come as a surprise to readers of this blog, for two  reasons: it is not a set of rules from the TooFatLardies stable and I´ve  always pretended to be a historical wargamer (or so I say).

On the first, nothing to say; I´ve been more than once unfaithful to my beloved Richard Clarke ;-) 

The second may need more elaboration as arguably Saga design is only loosely based on history, but hardly anything remotely close to the "play the history, not the rules" experience. Actually this has been blocking me to take on the rules for a long time, until I conceded to the club's gaming group pressure after the summer.

 

Foedatari Visigoths defending the limes vs the invading Huns

Surprisingly though, I'm enjoying Saga a lot: the rules are very easy to learn; you need just 25-30 minis to put a warband on the table; many of the minis are interchangeable between warbands (Vikings, Saxons, Anglo Saxons, etc); games are fast (60 to 90 minutes) and perfect for a Sunday morning at the club; battles are bloody and fun; and game scnearios are highly replayable.

Saga's success secret sauce falls in my view on two main ingredients:

1. Streamlining the typical skirmish game mechanics,  avoiding the more complex issues like using formations, variable (dice driven) movement rates, or frontage/flak/rear rules.
2. On the other, the national (or better said, warbands) characteristic tables, enable each warband to use some special features singular to each, making them act different from each other and also allowing replayability.
   

The Saga books (all titled "The Age of___ Hannibal, Vikings, Invasions, etc) cover  between the Hellenistic Alexander's battles (circa 320 BC) and The Crusades and The Reconquista (circa 1000+ AD). In addition a Fantasy battles book was also issued.

 

 

 Some of my Saga books collection

Do all lists work fine with the rules? Yes ... but only if you are not a  picky historical player. My take is that typical warbands not trained to fight in formations are probably a better match for Saga. 

To clarify: a typical unit of warriors comprises 8 models and a guards unit just 4 models. A unit of Roman legionaries (or a Maecedonian pike phalanx) with such few models does not feel right at all. However a group or irregular Vikings, Saxons, Gauls or Iberians raiding neighbouring villages or ambushing other units will do the trick.

 

Sample of Army Lists

In addition to period books, Saga has also released a specific campaign book in the Age of Vikings and a battles supplement with several types of scenarios, including rules to setup a table, objectives and alternative schemes to deploy troops.  

All the books are printed as high quality hardbacks, nicely edited and lavishly illustrated with beautiful colour photos of the correspoding armies (useful also as painting guides for your units). The national characteristic lists are printed in thick board sheets and are worth laminating or protecting with a plastic cover.

The Saga Dice

Summarizing, an easy, fun, and well crafted set of rules, offering a with a wide array of army lists, highly replayable thanks to the national characteristics tables. Perfect to introduce new players directly into historical gaming (or indirectly using the fantasy battles book); or for the seasoned gamer to play a casual afternoon game in your club.