Saga: Clash of Warlords

Preparing for the Painting Challenge is going forward fast with many miniatures being built up and a lot fewer being painted. I've been finishing a couple of projects that have been in a semi-finished state for ages. I finally got around to finishing the roofs of my 4Ground buildings and painting the doors for Gripping Beasts Dark Age Church. All in time for a game of Saga this week!

It's been a while since the last game again, but as a fellow club member wanted to try out the rules I was happy to oblige. He'd been building up a Viking force and was sort of familiar with the rules, but just hadn't played the game yet. I decided to leave my normal Anglo-Saxon list of Alfred, a bard and 5 points of Warriors home as it's a bit cheesy and opted to try out the Jomsvikings for the first time. I've played against them quite a few times, so I'm pretty familiar with how to beat them, but not really with how to play with them.

Anyways I went with a Dane-axe wielding Warlord and 4 points of dane-axe carrying hearthguard backed up by 2 points of regular warriors. All this was split into 2 groups of 8 hearthguard, a group of 8 warriors and two groups of 4 warriors to give me command dice.

My opponent Jaakko played regular Vikings with a Warlord, 2x6 hearthguard, 2x8 warriors and 12 levy with bows.

The mission was Clash of the Warlords and we set up the table so that it would be centered around a Saxon village which had become the battleground for two groups of marauding Vikings. I piled all my forces on one flank to concentrate my smaller forces in one area and hopefully pick out some lone units on the way.

My initial moves were to rush the unit of Warriors on my right flank in a bid to quickly get them killed and to remove some Saga dice. However everything went to hell and I lost 6 of my Hearthguard taking out the unit. Not a very good trade. On the following turn the remaining two were wiped out by attacking Viking Hearthguard. However they were then in turn left vulnerable to a combined attack by my Warlord and Warriors.

On the other flank the levies had moved up to shooting positions, but only managed to get out one round of shooting the whole game, which ended up in one dead Warrior. I did need to reposition my forces a bit though as I couldn't just rush them either as they were well supported.

The Vikings then made a bold dash towards my two small units of warriors who had been bravely hiding behind the building only to lose the fight without killing a single warrior. As revenge I used the Jomsviking board to pull out his Warlord from any entourage and bravely attacked him with my own Warlord and 8 Hearthguard. The end result was quite predictable, but he didn't go down without a fight and took two of my guys with him.

I'm not too impressed with the Jomsvikings. I didn't really help myself by telling my opponent that he probably should avoid giving me Wrath whenever possible, but it was a practice game for him so maybe it was in place. Still without Wrath a lot of the abilities become pretty much useless and the most effective way of gaining Wrath "Northern Tempest" is pretty much negated if there are Levies on the board. Still quite fun to play, but I think I'll stick to Anglo-Saxons and Norse Gaels.

At the same time two other club members were playing Bolt Action, this time with a Pacific setting. There's been a build up of both Japanese and USMC to give some variety in addition to the regular Western Front games that are running around. Anyways splendid basing on the Japanese with small palm trees etc. going around. Really makes the minis stand out.

Painting Challenge Vol V

Winter is arriving again and with it Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge with it's fifth edition suitably announced on Fawkes day or the 5th of November. I'm joining the fun for the third time. Last year I ended up with something around 1300 points, but this year I'll be aiming for a slightly more modest 1000 points.

This year the entrance fee is an "Anti-hero". This will need some figuring out. Thinking of a good subject and finding a suitable mini will definately be difficult this time around.

I need to start putting together minis to paint during the challenge. The bulk of my entries will probably be an Flames of War Barbarossa era German Panzerschützen force and 28mm Napoleonics for Waterloo. Just the 28mm French would get me some 700 points already and the Germans another 300-400 points, so I guess that should be already quite close to my target and probably a lot more than I'll be able to paint up in the space of three months.

The bonus rounds also make a reappearance again with new categories. Some will need some thought as I really want to try to stick to some projects that I'm already doing instead of painting something completely random for them.

• December 14: Cold - Some final Winter War Finns. A boring choice, but hey it's probably the only way I'll ever get them painted :)
• December 28: Mount(s) & Rider(s) - Cavalry would be obvious, but boring again. Modern cavalry in the form of Panzergrenadiers might do the trick or some aircraft in the form of "Knights of the Air"
• January 11: Victorian - Steampunk would be another pretty obvious choice here for me. I've still got a few minis for my Gentlemen's Club INHM group lying around.
• January 25: Myth - I have both Chimera and Dragon models lying around waiting for paint so maybe along some of those lines.
• February 8: Hot - This one will be quite difficult. Though what's hotter than a dragon. Hell it's a 80s era classic Citadel Dragon :)
• February 22: Comedic - Another difficult one as I don't really have anything "Comedic" immediately. Maybe some sort of a diorama. Last minute panic will be needed again to find a suitable subject :P
• March 8: Anti-Hero - As with the Comedic thing, I really have nothing readily available so this will need some inspiration again.

Crisis report

Well I've finally managed to go through all of the pictures I took during the trip. So much to see and so little time so I missed quite a bit and forgot to take photos of a lot more.

All in all a great trip and a great show. An epic effort by the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp. Everything went super smoothly if you don't count the main lights sometimes going out in one hall, but that didn't matter too much anyway.

This was my first Wargaming show outside of Finland so I didn't really know what to expect from it. The one day nature makes the whole thing a bit hectic as there's really just too much to do in just one day and maybe the emphasis turns a bit more to shopping, but still it was a great show with loads of great looking games going on everywhere. It was nice to see some of the faces from other blogs and see the games some of them were hosting. Anyways ramblings aside, let's let the pictures tell their tale.

Arriving 20 minutes before the show left me with roughly a 150 meter queue in front of me. Luckily everything went quite fast and I got in about 15 minutes after the show started.

Some Space Marines were patrolling the halls. Judging from the amount of sweat that was dripping from their faces, I'd hazard a guess that those suits are pretty darn hot :)

 Immediately when the Bring & Buy opened up there was a mad rush when everyone wanted to get in there first for good deals.

Burkhard of DHC Wargames fame was hosting an excellent WW2 game. Those firing Panzerwerfers really add a lot of dynamism to the table.

 

 The THS club table that ended up winning the Best Presented Game Award. A really nice choice of subject with the Maximilian in Mexico theme. Superb looking terrain and minis too. A well deserved award indeed.

I'd really been wanting to see this Battle of Keren table as there had been tons of images going around the internet after other shows like Salute. The vertical nature of it really makes it stand out from the rest. Epic stuff indeed.

There was a nice Arab-Israeli war table with the hosts dressed accordingly.

 

 

 

 

This snowthemed table was really an eye-catcher even if the game wasn't exactly my taste. Superb work all around.

 

A nice Saga Crescent & Cross table featuring a siege battle.

 Some 40k to be seen also in the form of one pretty darn big mega-battle featuring Imperial Guard and Space Marines versus Orks and Tyranids. Some nice custom built vehicles on the orks especially.

This table with Orky WW2 planes was one of my favorites. You can't go wrong with Orks flying stylized versions of WW2 planes.

The South London Warlords who are behind Salute were running a large Bolt Action table with British troops making a two-pronged attack agains the Jerry.

 



 


There was a really nice looking D-Day table next to the Warlord stand. Too bad it didn't seem to see too much gaming and I never really saw anyone hosting it.

And last, but not least a collection of pictures of different tables in no particular order.