Assault on the Stronghold of S'Antar

Last Friday night saw an epic struggle through the streets of S'Antar's stronghold as two warbands of Anglo-Danes and one of Scots fought each other and waves of angry elves to pillage the riches of The Man in Red himself.



All-round excellent bloke John Shoemark invited Steve, Dave and I up for a game of SAGA with a festive twist. Essentially, we were playing something like the Feast of Crows scenario from the main SAGA rulebook, but over a table laid out with Christmassy terrain.



The target for our warbands was S'Antar's workshop in the middle of the table, wherein seasonal loot was stashed. However, every time one of our units approached a patch of woods or a building there was a chance that a unit of angry elves would appear to attack, or possibly even S'Antar himself. John controlled the Elves, using (appropriately) the Pagan Rus battleboard for them.



After a great BBQ we got stuck in, with Dave's Anglo-Dane's slowly hacking their way through fanatical elves like Russians in the streets of Berlin. Steve had more luck, making his way rapidly towards the middle of the table while causing my Scots some grief with his Anglo-Danish ability to inflict fatigue. Despite this, I had a lot of luck with my dice rolls early on, and was the first to raid S'Antar's workshop, although angry elves flinging lumps of coal rapidly massacred my Scots as they tried to escape with their loot. From that point on everything rapidly unraveled, with S'Antar emerging blearily from a building to slaughter my Levies, only to fall victim to a flurry of Steve's Dane axes. So if anyone misses out on presents this year, you know who to blame.



Thanks to John for a great night of fun, tinsel and festive slaughter!

Hallowing the Dice

Next Saturday the Scots go to war for the first time in the Hall of Heroes Saga Tournament.

As is their custom, the Homunculi prepared for battle today with a simple but impressive ceremony to beseech the blessings of the dice gods. I was lucky enough to get a photo of the climax of the ritual.

Cry Havoc!

Kenneth MacAlpin

Before moving on to other things, I spent last week adding two more points worth of figures to my Scots warband for Saga. These were made up of 12 bow-armed levies, and a hero of the dark ages to lead them - Kenneth MacAlpin. Kenneth has the great ability in the game of potentially messing with an enemy unit before the game even begins. This could mean that an enemy unit becomes enraged, and spends the game throwing itself fruitlessly against a wall of Scots spears, or it may even mean that a unit switches sides at the start of the battle. I really want to see this happen to an opponent! All the figures are from Westwind's Pictish range. I love the command figures, although I'm less enamoured with the levy. They're ok, but some detail is a bit soft and a couple of garments don't make any sense to me (those worn by the standing firing archers). I also wish the pack came with a greater variety of heads - all the included heads were bareheaded, instead of the really nice hooded heads Westwind do. Maybe they would respond to requests to put in a mix? Who can say? While we're on Saga, had a great game at the school club last Friday involving 6 points of Bretons vs a combined force of 4 points of Welsh and 4 of Scots, on a really big board. The Bretons were outnumbered, but gave us heaps of trouble riding around and avoiding contact. They scared my Welsh boyos quite a bit.

Scots Warband Finished

I've finished the four point Scots warband for Saga that I bought when the Northern Fury expansion came out. I spent a fair bit of time on the checked clothing and shields of these chaps, and I'm pretty pleased with the result. Good enough for the likes of me, anyway. So here are the warlords to lead them to glory (always handy to bring a spare warlord along as mine tend to die). And the final seven warriors... And here are the whole gang, ready for hijinks. Freeeeedddommm!!! (God I hated that movie). What next? Hmmm... Maybe another couple points of Scots? Or the Bretons I won? Or Huns? Choices, choices... No idea why the images are all over the place, by the way. Sorry about that.

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.