More Scots...and Nerf!

The Scots warband steadily grows - here are the next 9 warrior figures.

Why Nerf in the title? Well, I live in one of those vile strata unit complexes. You know, the sort of place with manicured lawns that nobody is ever supposed to use, populated mainly by affluent loathsome retired people who have discovered that retirement offers them nothing except the opportunity to check what all their neighbours are doing all the time. One of those places that uses the word 'community' a lot, but only as a way of telling you that you shouldn't be doing whatever it was you were thinking of doing. Having young children, we of course tend to attract all kinds of unwanted scrutiny. Just this afternoon the Duchess was told off by some misbegotten troll because the two year old junior Dux was playing with a blind in the communal hallway. I can't wait to move out. Anyway, there are some people we quite like in the complex, mainly because the mini Duchess has met another mini Duchess. Yesterday her friend's brother was trying out his new awesome Nerf gun (where were they when I was 10!??) I went and got my much less awesome Nerf gun to show him, and suddenly about 5 other kids and dads emerged from various buildings tooled up with Nerf. It was hilarious - I met more people from the 'community apartments' yesterday than I have in the previous three years, because they were all packing Nerfs. The funniest thing was seeing several middle aged blokes (including me) desperately keen to let rip with all the Nerf hardware but trying to restrain themselves while their kids ran around blasting each other. It is amazing how simulated violence can bring people together.

Late Roman Saga Warband

(As always, click on images to enlarge).

As you may have seen already on the blog, I've been fiddling around with a Late Roman version of Saga, set in Gaul in the fourth-fifth centuries AD. I've done a bit of playtesting of the battle boards that you'll find elsewhere on the blog, and will shortly fix up a version 2.0, but today I finished a unit of 8 spear armed warriors to complete a late Roman 'warband'. In Saga terms this is actually 5 points worth, but I'll add another point of barbarian foederati at some point. All the figures apart from the 'Warlord' are from Black Tree Design, and very nice they are too. The Warlord is from Westwind Productions. Here he is, looking suitably like a Frankish warrior in Roman service.

According to my Late Roman rules for Saga, Warriors (which I call comitatenses) can be armed with bows, as here:

...or with spear and shield. According to the Notitia Dignitatum, a late Roman administrative document that includes, amongst other things, the shield designs for different military units, these men carry the shields of the Romanenses. This was a 'pseudocomitatenses' unit, which probably meant they were frontier troops taken into the field army.

And here are the palatini (hearthguard) from the unit listed in the Notitia Dignitatum as the Bracchiati Seniores.

I'm looking forward to doing some more playtesting using these chaps. I bought enough Huns to make a warband from Colonel Bill's Wargames Depot. Colonel Bill's is a real find - they sell second hand and unused figures. My Huns are from Wargames Foundry, but at a price that makes buying them actually a realistic prospect. But before painting the Huns, the next task is to finish my Scots warband.

Scots for Saga

This week I have been mostly...painting my first two points worth of my Scots warband for Saga. Here they are - 8 figures of hearthguard, all from Gripping Beast. Lovely figures to paint.

Late Romans for Saga

Black Tree Design have obviously annoyed a lot of people in the past with very poor customer service, judging by some vitriolic threads on the likes of TMP. However, I took the risk of ordering some of their lovely late Roman figures recently during a 25% off sale, and I'm pleased to say that they all arrived safely and in a reasonable time, although bizarrely some came from the US and some from the UK.

These figures are painted up to playtest the late Roman modification for Saga I've been working on. In Saga terms, the heavy infantry are three points of what I call palatini (hearthguards in Saga), and the 8 bow-armed warriors are called comitatenses. The shield design for the palatini show they belong to the Bracchiati Seniores. The figures painted up really well, and I particularly like the detail and character in the faces. Highly recommended, so long as Black Tree stay on top of their customer service and delivery.

Happy Warlords

Matt from The Hall of Heroes kindly sent me a photo of the happy prize winners from the weekend Saga competition. Here we are:

Oh, alright, not really. This is the harsh reality:

Note the great prizes from War and Peace Games. I'm the one with the most reflective head.

A Happy, Happy Dux

Carlsberg don't run wargames shops, but if they did, they would look like The Hall of Heroes (HOH). On Saturday I trekked out to HOH at Campbelltown (on the fringe of the urban sprawl that is Sydney) for a Saga tournament. It was my first time at the shop, and later in the week I want to write a separate post about why I think it is such a brilliant place. Today I'll confine myself to a quick rundown on the competition. We played 3 games, using 4 point warbands that couldn't be altered. We were originally supposed to play 4 games each, but didn't quite have enough time. The scenarios were Clash of Warlords, Sacred Ground and the Escort. I actually hadn't played the last two before, and doing so just made me love Saga more. I used my Welsh, fielding two units of Warriors, one unit of Hearthguard on foot, and one unit of mounted hearthguard. There seemed to be a lot of Welsh there on the day, actually. Could hardly move for goldy-looking chains. Surprisingly, nobody brought any Normans along.

I played Kim in the first game of Clash of Warlords. Kim also fielded Welsh, but with a unit of Levies and all on foot. Very interesting match up fighting Welsh with Welsh. I was lucky to pull off a win, killing Kim's warlord in the final turn of the game. I think his decision to bring Levies along had a fair bit to do with the result. I was pretty much able to ignore them and bring everything in on his warlord, although I suffered cruelly from a unit of his warriors over on the right flank that hammered me with javelins.

Homing in on Kim's warlord

In game two, I fought Dickie in the Sacred Ground Scenario. Again - Welsh vs Welsh, although Dickie's warband was very interesting - everything mounted except for a unit of Flemish mercenaries. I was able to use Taunting on the Welsh battleboard effectively to get his cavalry into range of my javelins several times, and although his Flemish would have been incredibly hard to budge from any piece of Sacred Ground they occupied, they moved so slowly (especially when I slowed them down - heheh), that I had effectively broken the rest of Dickie's warband, including his warlord, before they could get into action. Another win to me, and an unlucky match up for Dickie, where his mobility actually turned into a liability against taunting Welsh with javelins.

A depressingly common sight for Dickie as my warriors taunt his cavalry into range of their javelins.

The third game was the Escort scenario, fighting Barks' Anglo Danes. God I hate the Anglo Danes. I also must have offended the Dice Gods by this point in the day, because in 6 turns, rolling 6 Saga dice each turn, I rolled a grand total of one dragon. This really stuffed up my plan to use Taunting and Hit and Run a lot to get his troops out of the way of my baggage. If you aren't familiar with the scenario, my goal was to get at least two of my three baggage units off the opposite board edge in order to win. Barks' Levies were definitely the Men of the Match, steadily slaughtering my warriors while I waited fruitlessly for some good dice rolls. Eventually I tried a dramatic, Schlieffen Plan-esque outflanking move with the baggage, preparing to sacrifice all my surviving troops to get them off the board. We had to call this game a draw, with two of my baggage possibly going to make it off the board, but certainly my entire warband doomed. I loved this scenario though, and would play it totally differently next time. The baggage elements in particular are actually very tough, and it is a mark of how badly Barks had mauled my men that I was thinking of using the baggage offensively by the end.

Trying to take advantage of my men getting hammered in the centre, the baggage head try to put a wood between them and the Anglo-Danes So, two wins and a draw, which meant that Barks and I drew overall in the tournament. We resolved this epically with a final confrontation between our warlords, with one retainer each. The Dice Gods smiled at last, and I won this comprehensively. Result - I won a tournament! Hall of Heroes presented the first three places with a very spiffy trophy, and from the very generous prize pool I scored a Breton starter warband! I think everyone involved in the day had a brilliant time. The atmosphere was incredibly friendly and generous-spirited. I thoroughly enjoyed playing against my three opponents, none of whom I had met previously. All in all, a golden day, and the feasting of the Welsh homunculi went on all night. A huge thank you is due to the guys at Hall of Heroes for hosting the event and running it so well, and also to Ian at War and Peace Games who together with HOH provided the fantastic prizes. Thanks and congratulations to the other Warlords, and special thanks to Barks for giving me a lift home!

Damian's Jomsvikings get stuck into Dickie's Welsh

Huns for Late Roman Saga

Here's another battleboard for SAGA in the late Roman period - the Huns! Huge thanks to damianlz from the SAGA forum for helping put this together.

This warband represents the Huns of the late fourth and fifth centuries, and particularly from the time of their incursions into western Europe under Attila. The only literary sources for the Huns in this period were written by their enemies; Roman (Ammianus Marcellinus) or Romano-Gothic (Jordanes) authors who didn’t really understand Hunnic social structure and who described their customs with a mixture of horror and disgust. The Hearthguard of the warband are Nobles, who may be armed with javelins or bows and who are always mounted. According to Ammianus, there was no rigid social hierarchy in Hunnic society, and the ‘leading men’ influenced others largely through persuasion. It is likely that prolonged contact with the Roman empire helped to create a noble class. The Warlord is also armed with bow or javelins. I have simply called the Warriors of the warband Hunni, representing the great mass of Huns. They may be armed with bows or javelins, and are always mounted. The army of Attila that was defeated at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in AD 451 contained many defeated Germanic peoples (Goths, Heruli, Sciri etc). The Levies of the Hunnic warband represent these, and are called Vassals. They are all on foot, and may be armed with bows or javelins. They may also be armed as spearmen without missile weapons, in which case they roll an Attack Die for each two figures in Melee. Their categorization as Levies reflects their lack of enthusiasm for serving the Huns rather than innate lack of military ability. All Hearthguard and Warriors are governed by the usual SAGA rules for mounted figures. In addition, mounted units armed with bows fire as Levies at ranges between M and L, but fire as normal at ranges up to M.