Posted by Ash
My small casual group of gamers are about to start a SAGA age of the wolf campaign and this inspired me to add some more units to my small collection of dark age warriors. I tend to use Vikings or Anglo-Dane warbands as the minis are generally interchangeable apart from a couple of Hearthguard units - Dane axes for the Anglo-Danes, Berserkers for the Vikings.
One thing I am currently lacking is any kind of Levy unit. I tend to shy away from these as they are pretty poor in combat but I've decided to give them a try to see how ranged attacks work out in SAGA. My new levy unit will also be usable in my in progress Norman warband. Normans gain some advantages with ranged attacked if the SAGA dice gods favour you!
Gripping beast are a great source of dark age miniatures which they sell to compliment the SAGA rules. They also sell Shieldwall miniatures which are a nice alternative to the gripping beast range. Shieldwall miniatures are slightly cheaper but do not come with bases and the sculpts are marginally poorer than Gripping beasts own line. I picked up 3 lots of shieldwall archers,
Hereward the Wake (a named hero for the Anglo-Dane faction), a Pagan priest (simply because he's kewl) and a bard. Gripping beast also slipped in a free miniature as the order was delayed by a week or so. Hats off to Gripping beast for the ongoing excellent customer service. They have always been pleasant to deal with.
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| All the metal minis I ordered from Gripping beast. |
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| Crazy Man McShaman-face the pagan priest. |
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The bard. This chap follows your warlord around in SAGA
and provides you with additional victory points. |
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| The free guy given by Gripping beast. I LOVE YOU GB! |
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| Hereward the Wake. He means business. |
For the Normans, I decided to pick up a pack of
Conquest Games Norman knights. This boxed set provides you with 15 knights on horseback which will give you 3 units of Hearthguard and a warlord in SAGA currency. I've also ordered some extra sprues from Conquest games so that I can get another unit of Hearthguard on horseback, 1 unit of Hearthguard on foot and 2 warrior units. I'm quite impressed with the Conquest games models for the price. Some of the horses heads are a little tricky to attach but other than that they look great.
I've already assembled the Norman knights, based them and airbrushed the base colours for the various horses with Tamiya paints - the king of airbrush paint.
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| 3 Units of SAGA Hearthguard. |
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| An unwell looking Norman knight. This will look nice as scatter scenery. |
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| William the Bar Steward. My Norman warlord. |
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| William the Bar Steward - When it comes to weaponry, he likes to branch out... |
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| The horses heads didn't quite sit right for me. |
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I bet those spears become a sore point further down the road
as they will bend and snap, which is why I only added them to
4 of the little chaps |
UPDATE
William and the bard - now known as gheylord are done (apart from basing).
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