End of a Saga

Another Saga game last night at the club, as the Saxon lord I was being invaded by Alex's Carolingians, at least I didn't have the Byzantines. After the preliminaries to win the game we had to kill the opposing leader, fair enough. I had thought the Saxons would have the option for javelin armed levy, but no, all bows, these have been completely useless in my battles so far and very often do not even get to loose a volley.

Alex did not do anything in the first round apart from load up his 'board' for the coming battle, the Carolingians have a certain Saga thing, along with others armies, which can give them a large advantage in battle but it needs three dice. This suited me as I managed at last to move and shoot my archers, they dealt out death from above to the Carolingian Warriors, five out of eight hit the deck, great start.

Alex responded by charging the archers, these guys bravely held off the Hearthguard by not dying in droves but merely retreated a short distance. There now followed some back and forth fighting which resulted in more horrendous Carolingian losses and one of my small Hearthguard units being wiped out. I was still in a good place, Alex was having a dice crises and I almost felt sorry for him, but I have had it rough myself for the past several games. Things now came down to an even fight between both Warlords, what the hell we decided to end things one way or another, Alex won by one hit, my man fell with a mortal wound, the game was over.

We then had a chat about the game, Alex has played the first edition but is not keen on the second, for me I am sure it is great as a game but it does not have any real historical flavour and the differences in the armies feels contrived simply to be different rather than being based on historical precedents. So it's a no from me Simon. If it is possible and I am not required to keep the numbers up I will resign from the campaign, I don't like doing it but my heart is not in it.

Elsewhere we had Age of Sigmar, a boardgame and a Battlegroup WWII game with Andy's excellent 20mm collection, every time I see this I wish I had gone for 20mm. His Waffen SS despite the size also look better than mine, great work. I was pleasantly surprised to see two King Tigers on the table, I will get the Rubicon one when it makes it to the shops.

My stowage and other stuff arrived this afternoon from Debris of War, so I have plenty to do over the next few weeks before buying more troops.

I have now picked up the book I bought recently on the AWI, it is well written and easy to read, I also now understand the beginnings of the war (militarily) far better than I did before. Bunker Hill (Breed's Hill) was a disaster for the British and a pointless battle, I used to think we got something out of it but we didn't. We were cooped up in Boston without a clue what to do, at least so far, the initial commanders have just been relieved so maybe things will improve, don't spoil it for me. 'The British are Coming' by Rick Atkinson, I recommend it.

One of my own Bunker Hill maps for the Atlas

It Can't be the Dice

Saga campaign game again at the club, one of my two defending games, Saxons had invaded the empire and I had to sort them out, they had obviously heard of the fabled wealth of Byzantium and came to grab their share.

Once the preliminaries were out of the way we had five turns to play, in a line I had Hearthguard, Warriors, Warlord, Hearthguard and archers, I cannot not take archers as far as I know, I had decided this time to plonk them in some terrain which helped their defence if attacked. The Saxons (Dan) put most of his men on my left and at when it looked like his hearthguard might suffer from some archery (yeah right) he turned these towards his right as well. So I moved the archers forward as you would do, but this was a mistake, back came the Hearthguard at the trot and smashed into the archers, shades of Manzikert again.

Byzantines

 But this time the archers did not die in droves, well they did but enough remained to fall back, this opened up some opportunities for me, I ran my cavalry into the Saxon Hearthguard and killed all but one, who legged it, on my left I threw more cavalry into the Saxon Levy. Now with elite Byzantine heavy cavalry coming at them these should have been a mere speed bump, but no, they managed to survive in large numbers and fell back, leaving my cavalry open to being shot to death next turn. Surely having been beaten by cavalry these guys would have ran as fast as they could, not merely dawdle back and prepare a killing storm in the next turn, but, it is Saga not history.

Saxons

Shortly after this I had another chance to wipe out the one remaining Hearthguard and take a control dice off the Saxons, a miserable dice throw ruined this perfect opportunity. I had shot my bolt, the Saxons recovered and I was left with all my units but with only one or two men in each. The game ended and I had narrowly lost although looking at the table is seemed to be a mini Manzikert. I felt I had a slightly better grasp of the game but I get caught out by how many initiatives you can give one unit and hence how far it can travel, one minute it looks safe next you are getting hammered. Low grade javelinmen in numbers seem to be the way forward, to hell with bows, or is it just me.

My third British cavalry squadron is complete, the 4th Horse later the 7th Dragoon Guards, I enjoyed painting these and have now jumped right in with the second squadron for the French Apchon Dragoons. I am almost there for the forces I want to play one of the Honours of War scenarios, I ordered up two more cannon, one for each side so the artillery is also now covered. This leaves a couple of built up areas and I still cannot decide on which buildings to get, one possible set are MDF and a decent price, the other is resin and far more expensive, I cannot leave the decision much longer.

I got two pots of contrast blue paint at Phoenix last week, the light blue is Talassar and the other Ultramarine, I applied them to two spare figures with a white undercoat, I think they would have been better with grey. I will get a chance to try them out in the coming months once I get back on to painting more SYW infantry, I am already sold on the red.

Manzikert comes to Lancaster

Not a bad night last night albeit still not what I would call summer, I had a Saga campaign game to fight, we had to move rooms due to our usual room being decorated and the smell of fresh paint prompted horrible memories of the missus wanting jobs done.

I was leading my Byzantine raiders in an attack on Fran's Carolingians, after my surprise win in the last game I was if not confident fairly positive about the upcoming struggle. My first choice was a bad choice and I forgot completely how the army had faired in a training game, I went for mounted archers for the Hearthguard, I mentioned before the real army had a lot of archers both foot and mounted but this seems to have been ignored by Saga, at least in respect of their Saga abilities. We had to split our forces into two, so I put my foot archers and some Hearthguard on the left with the heavy spearmen, more Hearthguard and the Warlord on the right, my plan was to shoot to death the enemy opposite my left and then turn my men to help on the right.

The Byzantines get to put down some Saga dice before the game starts and I expected Fran to be aggressive and put them on defensive abilities, big mistake. The game started fairly well for Fran and his peasant mob with javelins started to cause casualties to the Skutatoi, not bad for a pile of Wurzel Gummidges. I  tried to get to grips with the peasants but found I couldn't do everything I wanted to, so I moved up my own archers on the left only to find they had all brought rubber arrows. The second turn proved horrendous for me as the mob slew every one of my spearmen, I also lost half of my Hearthguard on the left, so much for having numbers in shooters.

The Byzantine line, all show and no substance.

Useless archers.

Desperate charge which failed.

I threw a desperate charge into the javelin Levy, but didn't kill enough and only pushed them back, they retaliated in the next move by almost wiping out the horsemen who had charged them with another accurate volley, one man retreated. This left me with nothing to throw at the enemy who remained virtually untouched, while I only had one half decent (in numbers only) unit left, my useless archers, Fran offered to accept my sword and I handed it over. He also offered a 'fun' game as I had been defeated in record time but I had had enough fun and probably would not have recovered from any more.

The Battle of Manzikert in 1071 went down in Byzantine history as 'the terrible day' this was mine.

We had an interesting discussion on the game as we cleared thing away and Fran basically saw the game in the same light as myself although he has stuck with it and now enjoys it. Once again rightly or wrongly I found myself at the mercy of the enemy 'board' as against my seemingly useless one, it also did not help that I had set up for defence and Fran did not attack, and yes, his die rolling for shooting was exceptional. At the end of the day it was still my own fault I was fairly trounced and given a lesson, Fran hardly broke sweat. There was only one more game last night so it was pretty empty, I hope to kick off a Bolt Action campaign next week so will have to confirm it with Simon.

Nothing else on the go at the moment, I do have some new cavalry to prepare and will probably get on to that this evening. I am building up a large wish list in my head and am fighting against getting deeper into WWII, Rubicon are not helping with new kits and hints of what is coming in the future, Tiger II anyone?

SAGA, slaughter and a surprise

Summer has not yet caught up with the north of England and I braved the cold and rain to go to the club last night. I was fighting my first SAGA game of the club campaign, my Saxons had decided to attack the Pagan Rus, my Byzantines have raided the Carolingians and this will be fought in two weeks.

Dan who is running the campaign helped with the set up and we had to kill each others Warlord to win the game, I don't think this is easy in SAGA but I may be wrong, I set up with the Warlord and his Hearthguard on my right and Warriors and bow armed Levy on my left, Paul had Javelins and Warriors facing my left and his Warlord, Hearthguard and Javelins on my right. I got nowhere with my archers so had to move them forward while I put my Hearthguard in defensive ground to their front, the Warlord started inching towards my left.

Paul was aggressive and attacked my Levy, his men lost the fight and were then attacked by my Warlord who slaughtered most of them and caused the survivors to retreat, I now had the upperhand on the left flank. On my right the Hearthguard found themselves the target of the Javelins and one of them fell, thankfully after that nothing struck home. Paul now made his move, he played a set of SAGA dice which meant he attacked and defended with 27 D6 against my reduced Hearthguard while I hit back with eight or something like that, it looked like I could call a taxi.

Paul's Warriors advance towards my centre.

Saxon's fatigued but jubilant.

Five of my Hearthguard fell leaving two, then the God's played a foul trick on Paul, he only managed to save one hit with all his dice and my own lone SAGA die meant he took more casualties and in a surprise to everyone his men lost and fled. I could hear a howl of despair. Meanwhile the rest of my army attacked and destroyed the Rus right flank. There was one move left and I felt discretion was the better part of valour and moved my men out of range of the remaining Rus, I had won.

I am new to this as I have said before and have decided to simply attack where possible and hope something goes right, I did however give a bit more thought to this game and held my right back while taking advantage of the disarray of the Rus on my left. Once again I thought the enemy board had far more deadly options than mine, sour grapes from the winner, that's new. I fight Fran next and he is a SAGA expert when measured against my experience, so interesting times. Elsewhere we had a Normandy game using Andy's lovely 20mm stuff supplemented by Rob's I think, a second SAGA game, X-Wing, Bloodbowl and Age of Sigmar, a busy night.

A customer came in yesterday who I have seen quite a bit of recently and I mentioned this and in a roundabout way I found out he was mailing MDF buildings (Laser Models). We got talking and he showed me some pictures, the range has Fantasy buildings which could probably be used for 16/17C and some modern pieces mainly for Railway modellers but again nothing which could not be used for modern wargaming. The detail is very good and I like the way the buildings fit together seamlessly, I admired the Pithead, the old type with the large wheels on top and John very kindly brought me one in, this means I shall have to do a small industrial area at some point to use it. If you go to a show S&A Scenics have them for sale.

The missus and I sat down to watch the latest movie detailing the life of Mary Queen of Scots, well she did while I googled around on my iPad. Mary landed at Leith, Scotland had harbours you morons, every time you see Mary turning up she is wading through surf on to a beach. Then begins the scenic march over hill and glen with majestic mountains in the background, no, Scotland has a lot of flat bits! This ludicrous homage to the Highlands began to get right up my nose as did Mary's posh Jock accent despite living in France from an early age. Why do film makers keep insisting that Elizabeth was so reluctant to kill Mary, the Tudors killed everyone without remorse whom they thought could endanger their tenuous claim to the English throne, why would the execution of Mary have been any different. The 1971 film was better entertainment.

On the Bolt Action front I expect delivery of their new D-Day campaign book tomorrow, appropriately 6th June as I have just seen the Postie head up the street without ringing the bell. I hope to get back to the French cavalry tonight having had to rein back due to map work, but the good news is the 40+ maps for the Battle of Berlin now only await the final OK from the author.

I am grateful to the Yanks for WWII but can't we just once see the British on the covers/stills/newsreel clips.

Where's all the size 6 Shieldmaidens when you want them.

I had my second introduction to SAGA last night in preparation for the club campaign, first of all I normally would not play the game and if I really wanted to do a Dark Age skirmish type game I would jump for Dux Britanniarum (the only good thing I have ever seen from Too Fat Lardie's). Nonetheless I find myself co-Emperor of Byzantium and at the same time a Saxon warlord in Northern Germany, last night I was being taught the basics in order to prepare me for my conquest of the West.

We started off with only four units, one being the Leader, I had cavalry hearthguard, some warriors and some archers, I fought Ian (Vikings) with Dan umpiring and keeping me straight on the rules and tactics. In the first move my archers took a pounding and became exhausted having not loosed one flight of arrows. The were then charged but managed to survive and fell back. My warriors in turn managed to kill off the men who had thumped the archers, things seemed to be going my way, the Vikings were now down to three Saga dice and I still had my original four. The barbarians now got the drop on me and charged my cavalry, this was a fight between two hearthguards and I expected to either win or inflict heavy casualties. Once the pluses and minus' from the battle boards had been brought in to the melee I watched in horror as I was reduced to one cavalryman while the Vikings were almost untouched.

No, not Byzantines, they were being used elsewhere, but pretending.

 Never fear this effort had left the Viking hearthguard in a vulnerable position so I charged them with my Leader and his two henchmen, they managed to escape the slaughter with one man, I had narrowly failed to knock Ian down to two Saga dice. The battle now came down to a fight between the leaders, a titanic struggle now ensued in which both nearly killed each other, but it was my man who fell while Ian's was battered but still standing. Working out the result of this combat was fairly Byzantine and I am still not sure I understand it.

Things looking good.

Things looking bad.

 I don't know a lot about the game but the Viking battleboard did seem to have more going for it than the Byzantine one, the choices on mine had quite a lot to do with archery and only one was specific to cavalry, which you can only use of course if all your cavalry are not dead. The Byzantine armies were mainly known for their cavalry and use of mercenaries, not so much for their archery albeit much of their cavalry did carry bows, but mine did not. Perhaps I am being a tad ambitious about conquering the West. Elsewhere we had another Saga game, Bloodbowl and Age of Sigmar, the latter although not my cup of tea must be admired for the figures and the painting abilities of both Ryan and Julian, I shall take some pics in the future.

I am now, after years of prudence beginning to gather a small lead hillock, I am halfway through my Grenadiers de France so ordered up my next batch of SYW figures, two cavalry regiments and a couple of mounted officers. While idly googling I came across Offensive Miniatures and was very impressed by their Fallschirmjager and Waffen SS figures. As you know I bought Fortress Budapest, have just finished a series of maps for tank battles in East Prussia and am now working on a large project to reissue Bloody Streets which is the definitive day by day battle for Berlin. All this has me thinking of last ditch defences against hordes of Soviets; a broken Heer, SS, Volksgrenadiers and Volksturm on the edge of Gotterdamerung. So, I have ordered up two squads of Waffen SS the excuse being that they were in Normandy and I can use them on the Eastern Front and the defence of the Reich, if I ever go there of course or should I just give in and say it is only a matter of time.

The upshot of this renewed interest in WWII is that the SYW project will have to share my time with the expansion, I also have a lot of map work on the plate for the time being as well, the large American War of Independence Atlas is back on and the Berlin maps are a challenge.

Attack on Seelow Heights.

 Lastly here are a couple of battlefield pieces for Normandy, the figures are from Warlord and were disappointing, the legs of the cows were a bad fit and the 'horse' is more like my little pony.

Just noticed, I have not painted the harness, grrrrrrrr.

Saga Cross & Crescent

I had almost made my mind up to give the club a miss this week and concentrate on some painting as I am leaping ahead with the Auxiliary cohort at the moment and I suspect I will finish it today, basing etc. by Friday at the latest, so I have got another unit ready in the wings for the tray.

Anyway I got an invite to take part in one of Dan's large scale Saga games and as I had watched many of these from afar and always wondered about Saga I jumped in the Batmobile and braved the Lancaster traffic. I suspect most of you have played Saga as it is an extremely popular game and well supported with rules and especially some beautiful figures, one of which I 'stole' to lead my Saxons. The game is usually a skirmish game where you have a set of dice which represents your army and you use these to activate certain traits on a battleboard, these can help with melee, shooting or can disrupt something the enemy wish to do or just generally give you an advantage during a turn. You know how I feel about activation systems but this presented no problem during the game and although a few times I was unable to move a couple of units that was more down to how I used my leaders than the dice.

The Templars in all their majesty.

Dan uses 10mm figures and has enlarged the size of the units so the game presents a small battle rather than a skirmish and it does look good on the table, in keeping with my love of proper armies. We fought a simple meeting engagement as I was completely new, I chose the less fanatical crusaders while Dan took the military orders, I was opposite the less fanatical Saracens while Dan was up against his opposite numbers, whose name escapes me.

The Saracen fanatics.

These were a really lovely unit.

 I deployed with levy and shooters in the front line with cavalry on the left flank, everything else along with the good infantry was backed up behind, this was daft and I think I got off lucky that the enemy did not or could not take advantage of this. They did try and threw an early cavalry charge into the line but despite my horror at the casualties inflicted my boys stayed put, even the levy only fell back, a counter charge by my knights wiped out the enemy, a great start. It was now that my useless deployment held me up as I struggled to get my more experienced fighters into the front line, Simon kept playing one of his ploys on me which stopped my knights from moving and letting the infantry in, that was extremely annoying. Dan meanwhile was suffering from ferocious attacks by Ian's fanatics and was losing quite a few men, but luckily so were the enemy, one bug bear for us was a huge archer unit which kept us away from the centre of the battlefield for quite a while.

The enemy infantry advance against the Christian line, brave men.

With time running out I charged a unit of knights along with my Warlord into the enemy cavalry, I had some good extras to add to the fight but then only managed five hits from sixteen dice, only my bloodied Warlord survived to hobble back to my lines. Dan's Templars had charged the enemy infantry and been bounced back, but now my Sergeants charged them and drove the infantry back.

Dan had had all the fun and just as Simon and I were at last getting to grips time was called, the points totalled and we won! I think Simon would probably have lost his infantry but his cavalry could have destroyed my flank having lost my best knights, but it was not to be.

Dan took some more professional photos and when I get a few I will add them in.

A good evening's wargaming and a nice introduction to Saga, again a game which seems easy to play but requires thought to play well, very clever. Elsewhere we had a Sword and Spear (10mm) game and a Black Powder Napoleonic (28mm), sadly none of which I took much notice of as I was engrossed in my own game.