Rollin' to Roskilde

Yes, we went to Roskilde.  For those not familiar with Dark Age naval history (I can't even imagine), Roskilde is the site of the most significant Viking archaeological find.  Like Oseberg and Sutton Hoo, it opened up a whole world for researchers.

For us, it was a side trip from a long weekend in Copenhagen.  We took a cheap regional train from the capital west to the island of Zeeland.  The twenty mile trip took about forty minutes from platform to platform.  It's an ideal day trip if you happen to be spending time in the area.

A side note on Copenhagen and Denmark: it's wickedly costly.  The exchange rate seems great.  You hand over your dollars or euros for lots and lots of colorful kroner which seems amazing.  Then you go to spend that and realize that everything, especially in Copenhagen, is fabulously expensive.  On our last night there, I spent 144Kr on a single bottle of good American beer.  A hot dog from a street vendor was was roughly $7.

Expensive as it is, it's still full of happy people riding everywhere on rickety bicycles, pleased with their quality healthcare and high standard of living.  It's a real socialist hellscape.

In the town of Roskilde is the site of the cathedral where Denmark's royalty are married and buried, going back as far as Harald Bluetooth, the viking who famously made the practice of talking on a cell phone while driving legally despite it being just as dangerous as when one is actually holding the phone.  Dammit, Harald.

This guy's the Danish Norm Abram.

It's also the site of the Viking Ship Museum.  For dark age gaming fanatics, it doesn't get much better.
The museum has a collection of ships pulled up from the bottom of the fjord and a group of replicas that patrols can take out onto the water.  They even have craftsmen onsite, building new replicas and fashioning ship fittings.

All in all, there were over a dozen ships in various stages of seaworthiness, with more than half of them being incredibly accurate replicas.  That means that the Danes have built more real viking ships in the last decade than Gripping Beast has.  To this day, I'm convinced that they only have those things in the catalog to round out the line-up.  It's like Honda continually teasing the idea of bringing back the NSX just so that car enthusiasts will think the company is still capable of more than boring family cars.

Let it go, Rasmus.

My Danish friend Rasmus was caught looking longingly at the ships, no doubt thinking of a happier time when his people had a much rowdier, though less informed notion of what constituted a good day trip.  I think he was ready to chuck his European sports coupe and Surface tablet for a longship and an ax.

His Australian girlfriend was present to remind us of what happened when folks put her people on ships.  No more "green and pleasant land".  Just Paul Hogan, Yahoo Serious, and drop bears.  Pretty grim stuff.

One thing that did surprise me a bit was how low these things sat in the water and just how narrow they were.  With the exception of the knarr, they all had relatively little freeboard.  I'm fairly certain it was so the rowers could dip their hands down and make ripples in the water.

A small knarr, or trading ship.

There's no way I'm painting a Gripping Beast ship like this.

Actual Danes commuting.

Not everyone was as excited about the ships as I was.

Returning and The Game

I've been away from this blog for a while.  I've been away from gaming and painting just as long.  I blame Games Workshop for releasing Age of Sigmar and ruining wargaming for everyone.

During my parents' visit, my father and I did get to play SAGA, albeit only one game.  Travel and gaming don't mix.  One long learning game.  It may have set the European record as the longest game of SAGA ever played.  During the course of it, we may have read the rule book four times trying to clarify what special abilities did and how one could cross a river.

Game length and general confusion aside, it was a lot of fun.  Now we just have to fly them back for a re-match.  Lord knows, I need something during these long dark German winters and one can only stomach so much Tatort and bourbon.

I'd written previously about my unhappiness with the green gaming mat I'd ordered from Hobbylink.  After playing on it for several hours, I came to dislike it slightly less.  It held up and books on the edges flattened it pretty quickly.  Unfortunately, someone else had a stronger opinion it and it is no more.  I'll come back to that later.

There aren't many photos of the actual game.  We started out in the afternoon, but didn't finish up until fairly late in the evening.  By then the light was rotten, especially for such a demanding cell phone photographer as myself.

The setup was pretty much your typical SAGA game.  A few buildings of various sizes, a river, some stands of trees, and one lazy cat.  She counted as high terrain for the purpose of line-of-sight.

We did get the cat to move eventually, but she got her revenge in the end.  Nature finds a way, or something like that.

The Irish faction set its dogs on the furry beast.

The Irish assaulted the farm where the Normans took refuge.

We played the Homeland scenario with the Normans defending against Irish raiders.  What this meant, was that ranged units sat back in the buildings and shot at the Irish as they slowly made their approach.  

The faction dice also weren't my friends in this game.  Turn after turn, I'd fail to get a single helmet on the dice, which ruled out nearly every single special ability.  If it weren't for sturdy walls in that village, my Normans would have been slaughtered.

In the end, the Irish failed to take out the Normans, which was hardly a rousing victory for the Norman soldiers, who saw their knights smashed by their Celtic foes while the archers and crossbowmen took potshots from inside the farm buildings.  Yup, the epic poetry just writes itself.

Shortly after that game, we were all off to train and fly around Europe, seeing Posnan, Hamburg, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Bruges.  I did pick up a Gripping Beast Wandering Bard at Battlefield Berlin, which was nice.  I'll have to paint him up for my next game so he can sing the praises of Normans who valiantly hid among the chicken coops and fired an angry band of peasants and dogs.  Huzzah!

Upon returning to Germany, we got to see what the cat had added to the game.  She vomited on the river and the mat and shed all over the rest, rubbing the hair into turf.  The river was cleanable, but the mat was a total write-off.  

  

Happy Birthday, Dad

I'd like to wish a happy birthday to the best father in the world.

Archers Return And An Update

The first batch of archers (the Perry figures) is done.  Thank the Lord.  I need a beer.

My figure painting has gotten far off track as my hobby time has been cut down and what I have spent time on has been scenery.

I'm nearly done with my river.  That was a proper time sink.  The only thing remaining is to apply the Woodland Scenics EZ water once it arrives from the states.  I'll cover my trials with the river in a later post.

These six archers don't represent a tremendous amount of time and effort, but they are my first figures to get completed in way too long.  The painting was done a while ago, but they were sitting for several months awaiting touch-ups and clearcoat.

Real life and a general figure burn out have kept me from coming back to the figures for several weeks.  Hopefully I'll get my mojo back to finish my war band by July, but I'm not holding my breath.

In other news, I've come to the conclusion that what I have for the game is going to have to be sufficient.  I've got three buildings of various sizes, four stands of trees, the cabbage patch, the river (almost), and a pig sty.

Yes, I spent time doing a pig sty, as if I was trying to top the cabbage patch and cement my place of honor among 4-H members into Medieval wargaming.  That Venn diagram must have the narrowest observable overlap imaginable.

I'll write up the pig pen later, once the pigs have arrived, been painted, and added to the sty. I'm sure folks will be waiting for that post eagerly.

But back to the lede I had buried and just unearthed in the above paragraph.  I'm done with acquisition for a while.  My replacement water is...er...on the water.  As are my pigs.  I have the buildings and trees I need.  Sure, I still want a church and some deciduous trees.  I'd love to order some baggage and extra gubbins to sprinkle around the scenery.  I still want some civilian types to populate the village.

I'm not ending this blog.  I'm just going to stop buying stuff for this project for a little bit.  I need to restock my modelling supplies.  The brushes are down to the last few bristles.  The scenery materials are running out.  The paints are starting to run out.

There are still plenty of figures to paint and work to be done on the scenery.  I'm just glad that I don't have to buy a whole lot of extra stuff to get there.

While there's plenty of work left to do, the scope has finally been limited.  There's now a light at the end of the tunnel.  This, the largest, most complete gaming project I've ever embarked upon now has an end point.  While I will certainly continue to add to it, I can do so knowing that the core is complete.

And now to that beer.

A Rubber River Runs Through It: Part I

For those unfamiliar with SAGA, the game is typically played through scenarios laid out in the rulebook.  The scenarios each require certain elements, like baggage trains, roads, or rivers.

These scenarios take the game beyond simply having two bands of thugs bash each other with axes.  They also require additional scenery or figures.  That's also extra investment of time, money, and effort, all of which I'm increasingly unable to give.

I did decide my last big scenery addition would be a river for the scenario, Battle At The Ford, which requires a river running across the board with two crossings.  I also just wanted a river.  I've never had any water terrain pieces and my small scenery collection seemed empty without it.

After spending a few days searching the Internet, I settled on Burgh Terrain.  I liked the look of the bridges more than any of the other offerings I'd seen and the price were certainly good.

 Within a few days, a package was at my door containing the seven sections I'd ordered.  The long sections are roughly 12" and the bridges are a bit under six.  They were all cast in a soft brown rubber.

The casting was nice, with only very small air bubbles.  There was some warping on a few pieces but I'm not too worried about it.  The only thing that's causing me some concern is that the rubber isn't very stiff; excessive flexing may cause paint and acrylic water to separate from the casting.  We shall see.

In the mean time, I've started work on the river sections.  Using PVA (white glue) diluted with water, I've added some ballast to the river bed.  The pieces were then primed black and sprayed with Krylon Ultra-Flat Khaki.  It's from their Camoflage line, which is readily available at PXes and Wal-Marts everywhere.  For wargamers or casual mercenaries, the stuff is phenomenal.  The superflat finish takes washes and drybrushing well and it's quite durable.  Conveniently, you can base-coat your figures on the hood of your MRAP and not even fuss about overspray.

In the mean time, I've got to go place an order as it turns out that I order the Woodland Scenics Water Effects when I meant to order the EZ water.  Whoops.

I've Got A Boat!

To recap, SAGA is a game of skirmishing factions from across Europe and the Middle East during the Dark Age/Early Medieval period.  There's quite a bit of variety to the factions, especially in the later expansions.  The game goes beyond Anglo-Danes bashing Anglo-Saxons.  There are also Skraelings (Native Americans), Pagan Rus, Byzantines, and Merovingian Franks.  It's a real United Colors of Benetton ad.

While those other factions add depth to the game, the one faction that is above all others as an icon for warfare in the period is the Vikings.  When we think of Europe in the 800s, we think of raiders rowing longships across stormy seas to plunder and pillage.

Outside of gaming, I love of all things maritime.  It therefore stands to reason (that word probably doesn't fit in this post or even in this blog) that I should endeavor to build a Viking ship model to decorate my SAGA games and give my wife something else to shake her head over.

There are only  a few options for 28mm Viking ships.  Old Glory will sell you one for only $36 without crew, but in order to get the rudder, you have to buy the crew.  Getting it with the crew adds another $30 dollars.  The Tapestry did a write-up of it a while ago. Sixty-six dollars puts this one at the high end of the offerings.  Then again, that Old Glory Army card saves you 40%, which is great if you plan to spend enough in a year to justify the $50 cost of the card.  I'm not totally sold, given that I don't know if I'd use that membership to full effect.  I do know that if North Star offered such a card, I would have abused the snot out of it this year alone.

Plastic model maker Revell produces a very nice kit that comes in right around $28US.  The only downsides are that it doesn't have a crew and it has a full hull, so it will need to be cut to the waterline.  Still, for someone who just plans to park it on the beach as scenery (as I do) and is willing to break out the razor saw and miter box, it's an easy choice.

Option three is Gripping Beast.  They do a series of Dark Age vessels.  There's a large trading ship, a small trading boat, a "Pictish/Scots/Irish boat", and the "Oseberg Style Long Ship".  The last one is the largest by a wide margin.  I find it impressive that Gripping Beast has a bothered to create a full line of vessels to populate the beaches near your little resin abbey.  What's frustrating is that the images on the website, with one exception, look like they could be spy satellite imagery imagery taken during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Tiny, fuzzy little pictures and little sense of scale do not sell these models.  Also, no masts or sails.  Old Glory at least provides dowels for the masts.  Even if you were willing to take the leap on such an unknown quantity, you've got to deal with the fact that they're frequently out of stock.

That last hindrance is the most baffling to me.  Try Googling these things.  There aren't a lot of bloggers writing up their experiences with them.  In fact, there are only two that I can find.  One fellow built up the knorr trading vessel to use as a raiding ship (it's a bit small) and another bought the Oseberg ship for a fantasy game.  Beyond those folks, no one seems to own one.  I've asked in several SAGA groups and just get crickets.  My suspicion is that they're made in small batches and then immediately scooped up by one those large English wargaming groups that love to stage those massive convention demonstration games showing the entirety of the fall of Incan empire or a 1:1 model of Wagram.

I really wanted a Viking ship, but wasn't quite willing to lay out that much cash on such an unknown quantity.  As luck would have it, a gentleman on Facebook happened to be selling off some SAGA things and put an Oseberg long ship up for sale.  As he was only in the Netherlands, that would make it a quick ship to me and not terribly expensive to do so.

Turns out, shipping was a bit pricier than initially thought.  Sorry, Arvid.  It was fast, though.  Only a few days after shipping, it was at my doorstep.

The ship is surprisingly large.  I measured it at 18" from stem to stern.  The picture below is with a 28mm Empress T-26 for scale.  It's certainly impressive.  Given that SAGA games are supposed to be played on 3x3 or 4x3 boards, it's almost a bit too much.  It's the size of a small village.  Anyone who has seen the real things in Oslo or Roskilde will know who much this conveys the very real mass of the subject.


The ship comes with the rowing crew shown in the pictures, a mast cap, a fitting for a crossarm. With masts and sails installed it will definitely draw the eye to a gaming table.  A Dark Age board on it's own may not make a clear impression in a convention or shop game, but adding a full-sized ship like this let's people know at a glance what the game is about.

It's about Vikings!

Cabbages & Kings

Wargaming leaves you doing some strange things.  Yup, I was spending my nights making cabbage patches.  At least, a single cabbage patch.  Rarely has so much effort had so little payoff.

The model cabbages are O scale model railroad accessories ordered from Hobbylinc.  Seven bucks gets you twenty cabbages.  Almost immediately after ordering, I realized that I should have ordered two packs.  I didn't.  It's just that it seemed like such a frivolous purchase that doubling down on it seemed insane.

Then I had to go around about making them all red versus all green versus a mix.  I really didn't like the mix option and my father weighed in with a vote of red or green but no mix.  I initially liked the all red option as a bit of color sounded appealing.  My trees are green.  My buildings are brown. Red would break up the monotony.

Then it hit me I had made the decision to exclude blues and any bright yellows from my Norman army.  The Normans are colorful, but my focus on creating color profiles for armies would be undone if my scenery was colorful.  Pieces should blend into the scenery.  After all, they are scenery.  

Without getting too nerdy with this (too late), I returned to an earlier idea I'd had that armies would be defined by a color palette and scenery by a textural palette.  Early on I had started doing tree bases differently from my building bases, but went back and re-based the trees (almost done with that) to conform in shade and base texture.  

All this goes back to some ideas I was mulling over about clarity of intent in gaming trumping scenic beauty or diversity.  That post is in the hopper now.  

So, green.  I primed all the cabbages with black primer.  The base coat was a heavily watered down, almost wash of Vallejo Olive Green.  Once that was dried, I used a Games Workshop Camo Green, dry brushed initially, with a more careful highlight followup.  Finally, I made some super light marks with Games Workshop's Rotting Flesh, which is a greenish shade of white.  

 The overall measurement is 14cm by 11cm, which works out to roughly 6x4in.

By day, I work a desk job.  By night, I'm Chris, King of the Cabbages.

They Live?! Not So Much

The big release this year at Salute for SAGA was the new boxed Revenant faction.  It appears to be quite a deal.  It's got 48 revenant figures, two grave pits, a set of eight special SAGA dice, rules, battleboard, bases, and an exclusive necromancer figure and scenario available only in this box.  It's reportedly enough to get started with a six point warband.  Nice.

And yet, I'm not in.  Sure, I was chuffed when it first came out.  It's a nice set.  It just isn't for me right now.  Part of it is definitely the price tag.  85GBP puts it just above what I want to spend on gaming in a month.  It lands just beyond the thoughtless splurge threshold.

The biggest point, though, is the figures.  The sculpts are not bad.  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  They're just not "Wow!" level.  They aren't quite evocative enough to make the cut. I really like Gripping Beast miniatures, but I think I could do better with some of the Wargames Factory zombies I've got sitting around and a few sprues from their Numidians, Germans, or Celts.  While I'll be the first to acknowledge that I'm not that I'm a great modeler, modelling zombies allows for a more relaxed approach to details and plastics make customization relatively easy.

Another concern is that these are going to be like the Jomsvikings, initially a terror and quickly negated once everyone figures out their weakness.  My understanding is that the rules were developed by an independent wargaming group. That doesn't mean it isn't properly playtested, but I'm not sure about paying $130 to find out.  Gripping Beast has already said that this won't be a tournament army and is supposed to be a fun one off.  While I hope they do more fun limited edition armies, this one isn't for me.

Finally, it comes down to comparing the set against other things I'd rather have right now for SAGA.  That 85GBP represents a new resin church as a centerpiece with money left over to finally populate my village with civilians.  It's two new warbands made up of nice metal hearthguard and warlords with plastic warriors.  It's a pair of really nice new printed gaming mats.  Good ones this time.

Mad Mats: Furry Load

In race to get things together for this game, the pace has definitely picked up.  Turns out those months I had to leisurely assemble a little skirmish game have somehow disappeared.  What hasn't been winnowed down as quickly is my shopping/to-do list.

Every few weeks, another package arrives and each time I open it and smack my head as I remember something else that should have been bundled into the order or ask myself why I felt the need to add some really pricey 1/600 Phoenician galleys onto the order and maybe one of those new packs of Bavarian infantry.

What do you mean there's no dignity to be had in here?

What's also a given is that my little helper will find her way into the order as well.  If the great sagas were written in blood and iron, mine is written in cat fur.  Long, black cat fur.

The latest was no exception.  My Hobbylinc order showed up with some more Squadron green putty as the last tube bizarrely went dry after a few months, some model railroad O scale cabbages, Woodland Scenics acrylic water, and a big green Woodland Scenics mat.

The mat was the highlight of the order.  All the other stuff could have stayed in the warehouse, but that mat was the essential element.

As I've said before, I try to put a hard limit at $80/month on my gaming madness and usually keep it far under that level.  That sort of limit keeps me from piling up stuff faster than I can paint and assemble it and staves off the worst impulses when browsing new releases on Board Game Geek or The Miniatures page.  I can be really impulsive.

So back to cats and mats.

A decent mat seemed like a literal good basis for a game.  I also really wanted some more trees.  Maybe some animals for the pens I had yet to construct.  Some Renedra fencing for those pens.  Some Renedra barrels and sandbags to paint up as grain sacks.  Oh, and maybe some of those nice Woodland Scenics plants to make the fields look lush.  And doesn't every village need a good church?  From either Grand Manner or Curtey's that'd run a fair bit, but how could my village remain so impious?  Can't have that church without some clergy, so add them to the list.  It goes on and on.

There was now so much on that list, and I still hadn't decided on a mat yet.  Deep Cut Studios makes beautiful mats for around $70US that would fit the bill.  I had already IDed a mat by Cigar Box Battle Store for my Hellenic galley project, so one of their other mats would fit the bill.  The Mat O War offerings looked really nice as well.  I had plenty of options.  I also knew that whatever I ordered, it would pretty much take up the month's gaming budget.  That meant no more trees.  No cabbage patch, and no pig pen.  Just the mats, ma'am.

One night, after work and unwinding with a few tall glasses of water, I was assembling my latest order.  No Phoenecian galleys and no Napoleonic infrantry.  Just the essentials.  Yup.  I had resolved that this order would be my April expense and then I'd buy the mat in May.  It made sense.  The mat wouldn't require work, whereas the gubbins I was buying now would all require assembly and with time running down, I'd have to prioritize my projects.

As I was browsing Hobbylinc, I found a section of grass mats.  Really cheap grass mats.  It was like the I was suddenly told that, in fact, I could have my cake and eat it too.  I could place an order for some extras for that river project I hadn't started and still get the mat, all while keeping the order cost low.  There was one Bachmann 50"x100" mat for just under $20US.  How could I go wrong?

Well, I could first go wrong by ordering a smaller mat.  I had ordered the smaller Woodland Scenics mat that was 50"x33"  Why would I do that when the game size is 36"x36" or 48"x36"?  Three inches isn't much, but why?

Another way I could go wrong was by not just ordering a quality cloth mat, instead getting a cut-rate sheet of craft paper covered in green flock.  Unrolling that thing out onto my dining room table tonight, I realized that I had seriously erred.  The crinkly thing shed green dust everywhere.  It will have to do for now.

As far as the cat?  She loved laying on it.  She shed on it and it shed back.  I'm sure that for years I will be finding green flock mixed with black fur on my gaming materials and furniture.  SAGA, memories to last a lifetime.

Feast of Figures: Plastics

In keeping with my earlier promise to cover plastics as a separate entry, I present the historical plastic possibilities of SAGA.

Conquest Games - Beyond their limited line of metals, Conquest Games has foot and mounted Normans.  For only 20GBP you get 15 Norman knights on horseback.  The box includes an equal number of round and kite shields, so you can use the round ones and call them Bretons.  The box also features a dead horse and rider.  The infantry box includes 44 troops casualties, and weapon and shield options for 20GBP.







Fireforge Games - These are later, more appropriate for the Crescent & Cross games, but wow are they nice.  Two boxes of cavalry give you two dozen horses and riders and run you a bit under 60 Euro.  These figures must be seen to be believed and at 24 figures for the cost of 5 Games Workshop Terminators, they make a strong case for putting your Games Workshop figures on eBay and placing a substantial order for Crusaders.  Besides, wouldn't you fee like so much less of a dork when guests ask what's on your workbench, telling them that you're modelling knights of the Templar Order as opposed to Terminator Dreadnoughts of the Imperial Fists?  One will make you look like a history nerd.  With the other you don't get to use history as an adjective.



Gripping Beast Plastics - Really nice plastics.  Slightly larger figures than the GB metal line, which works if you're pairing them with a larger line like Crusader or Dixon.  The box of generic Dark Age warriors has 40 unarmored figures, where as the Saxon Thegns and Viking Hirdmen incongrously come in boxes of 44.  Given that lower ranking troops come in larger groups, this doesn't make a lick of sense to me.  The price is a reasonable 22GBP per box.  Unlike the Wargames Factory boxes, there are no bows provided.  You do get lots of slings, though.  The figures area really nice, relatively easy to assemble and a box of warriors and a box of thegns/hirdmen provide you with everything you could need to put together a force.  Think about that.  For the cost of two 10 figure boxes of Space Marines from Games workshop, you can get 84 figures, all the troops you'll need to make up your force and still have plenty left over for options, or casualties, or both.

Wargames Factory - Really reasonable plastics.  Their Germanic warriors and Numidians can also be easily repurposed as generic Dark Age warriors.  Some people have expressed frustration at the poses, it's a matter of carefully finding what works.  The best poses may not be the most obvious.  Spears are really thin and should be replaced by metal ones from Crusader at the first possible.  All that aside, they can be had really reasonably.  I picked up a box of Saxon Fyrd and a box of Saxon Thegns for a touch over $31US for the pair and that was enough to build a full force with plenty of options.  For someone short on cash and longer on time, it's a tough value to beat.

So I know I said early on with this blog that one should never compare anything to GW, but I have repeatedly failed that.  GW is what people know.  It's also so ludicrous that people who have reached escape velocity from the GW world are constantly in awe of what else is out there.  You can still spend a lot to get really nice figures, but now you don't have to.

A Feast of Figures: Metals (and a few resins)

Recently I was talking with some colleagues for whom gaming begins and ends at the Games Workshop store.  I was trying to explain how I was able to collect SAGA armies without either breaking the bank or buying from a single line of figures.

The only analogy that seemed to get through to them was when I pointed out to one of them his resin Death Korp of Krieg army and the other his 30K Space Marine army.  Both are from Forge World, which is as close as one gets to an alternate vendor in the 40K world.  Sure there are a few vendors for shoulder pads or replacements for long ago discontinued metals, but they aren't cheap, common, or welcome in GW tournaments.

The guys still seemed confused.  "But how do you know you're buying hearthguard figures?"  "What if someone else thinks they're warlords?"  It's hard to wrap your mind around just putting figures on the board when there isn't a $2,000 collection of rulebooks to guide your purchases.  Caveat emptor!

Here's my list of sources for SAGA miniatures:

Artizan - a nice line of characterful figures.  Notable for having a full line of Franks.  Spears not included.
Black Tree Designs - their sculpts are mostly middle of the road, as is their pricing, but they frequently run ridiculous sales that make it easy to come away with a large bag of perfectly good metal soldiers for a silly price.  Keep an eye out.
Brother Vinni's - a Russian company doing a few resins of figures you may know from a show about Norse raiders.
Conquest Games - a small range of metals, including an impressive number of monks, largely a complement to their plastics.
Conquest Miniatures - yes, it's a different company.  They do a lot of French and Indian War miniatures, which means their 17th/18th century native warriors are perfect for Skraelings.  Nice sculpts.  A little on the small side; pairs well with Foundry.
Crusader - an extensive line of Dark Age miniatures, on the thicker side, spears not included.
Curtey's - their focus is Romano-British and early Saxon, but much of that range is perfect for SAGA.  Beautiful sculpts, including a line of civilians.
Dixon - small line of Vikings, notable for having some interesting packs that would make for nice vignettes or scenery enhancements.  Oddly, Vikings have spears but no shields.
eBob - a little line of slim, beautifully sculpted Normans on foot.  Spears are attached.
Footsore (used to be Musketeer) - a nice line of Viking miniatures, though many can be used as generic Dark Age types.  Sold through Gripping Beast.
Gripping Beast - distributors of SAGA, they're the default choice for many gamers.  Nice figures although several folks have reported excess flash and model issues on recent metal orders.  Still, a broad line with interesting sculpts and non-combatants which is a plus.
Newline Designs - they carry the usual Normans, Vikings, and Saxons, but also Carolingians and Arabs.
Old Glory - Old Glory are a mixed bag.  Some of the ranges are older and therefore smaller and to a lesser standard.  Others are much more modern than many people given them credit for.  A very impressive line of figures by any measure.
Perry Miniatures - not a specifically Dark Age line, their First Crusade range features figures that work well for Normans and Byzantines, includes generic civilians and monks.  Perfect for Crescent & Cross players.
Redoubt Miniatures - have a Viking line that works as generic Dark Age types.
Renegade Miniatures - a line of Saxons, quite a few sculpts.
Saxon Miniatures - a growing line of beautifully detailed Vikings and Saxons
Shieldwall Miniatures - a small line of nicely sculpted Vikings.  Distributed by Gripping Beast.
Stronghold Terrain - tiny line of very nice individual figures, several of which may look very much like characters from a historical drama on television about Norse raiders.
Tanatus Miniatures - a small range of Saxon and Pict miniatures, a bit more realistic proportioning than Crusader and Black Tree Designs.
V&V Miniatures - Ukrainian company, resin, little known, but they appear to be beautifully sculpted.  Planning to order some figures soon for comparison.
Wargames Foundry - an attractive line of Vikings, Saxons, and Normans.  A bit on the short side, but quite usable.  Lots of characterful sculpts.
Warlord Games - included in the interest of being complete.  Other than selling Gripping Beast Plastics and a model of a Viking ship, they sell one (1) metal figure for the Dark Ages.  They seem to realize that they got to this era late (Hail Caesar be damned) and figured "why bother".
West Wind - a line of Irish, Saxons, and notably, Welsh.  Spears not included.

The plastics of SAGA will have to be another post.  This post just kept getting longer and longer as I discovered or remembered new ones.  The buildings list will have to wait as well.  For now, I'm going to sleep.

Crossbows!

The first unit I've finished is a warrior unit of crossbowmen.  The figures are Crusader, which should come as no surprise.  

I'll admit that the painting isn't so hot, but I set a personal record for getting them finished.  As one of the world's slowest painters, I was thrilled to get them done in under two weeks.  I know, I know.

This photo is dedicated to all the people who like their photos blurry and poorly staged.

Still, I'm pleased with them overall.  They painted up quickly.  I've come to appreciate the delicate balance Crusader strikes with regard to detail.  There seems to be a trend these days toward over-sculpting figures.  Unless it's a warlord figure, I really don't want ornate armor and flowing clothing or ridiculous facial expressions.  As far as the last one, I just don't want that at all.

How did I not notice the guy on the far left's wonky eyes until now?

Each figure is based on a Warbases 2mm thick 2 pence-sized MDF base.  I've got enough GW plastic 25mm bases to top-off a landfill, so I nearly went with them.  I went with the thin MDF because I wanted something with a lower profile that stood out less from the scenery.  And the 2p sizing?  I guess I just thought 25.9mm just looked so much better than the 25mm ones used by commoners.

"Shoot like your fitrep depends on it!"

Finally, I know they come across as a bit shiny.  I finished them off with Vallejo matte brushed on because it was too cold to use a spray finish.  I'll fix that as soon as the weather here starts to pretend like it's Spring for more than a few hours.

Measured Response

It should be abundantly clear by now that there are many things involved with putting together a game.  Dice, rulebooks, scenery, figures, etc.  I have a shopping list that continues to grow despite my nearly constant attempts to trim it down or at least purchase items off it.

The order in which my purchases are made has largely been based on the timeline.  Items that require a lot of prep work and are especially critical go to the top of the list.  Basic buildings and trees, those move up.  Extra scenery details, those go to the bottom.

So why did I go and purchase something requiring no prep and already existing in the SAGA rulebook?  Weakness, I guess.

SAGA, like many miniatures games, requires measuring tools for movement and shooting.  The good folks at Studio Tomahawk were nice enough to put the templates in the back of the rulebook, which I scanned with every intention of printing out and mounting to balsa like a good frugal gamer.

That was before I saw the Kraken Skulls SAGA templates.  They have beautiful faction-specific laser cut MDF measuring sticks that put everything else to shame.  You really have to see these.

I excitedly put in an order for Irish and Norman sets.  At $8 per set and a total of $2 shipping, it was an easy splurge purchase.   To top it off, the guys at Kraken Skulls were amazingly patient as I repeatedly botched the order using a Paypal account that apparently was no longer my pal for paying or doing anything else.

The laser cutting is crisp and the designs are quite nice, even if my lackluster photography doesn't capture that.  The Celtic designs on the Irish pieces are deep and stand out well.  On the Norman items, the images from the Bayeaux Tapestry are remarkably detailed.

If cornered as to whether I'd prefer SAGA dice and generic measuring devices or these measuring sticks and generic dice converted to SAGA, I'd go for the nice measuring sticks and generic dice every day of the week.  These are that nice.

The Buildings: Part 3

Here are the photos of the recently completed buildings.  Overall, I'm pleased with how they turned out.  They're pretty much stock, except for the bases, which are just quarter inch foam core board and the ax in front of one of the buildings.  That little bit was taken from the Wargames Factory Saxon Fyrd box and modified to look a little less martial.

Doing them again, I'd probably add more stuff to the bases around the buildings.  They seem to need tree stumps, sacks of grain, and crude wooden barrels.  I had intended to include them in the buildup, but I haven't gotten around to it.  My gaming budget is restricted by choice (I'm not returning to my old acquisitive ways like when I got started with 40K) and little decorative gubbins are way down the priority list.

The Buildings: Part 2

Being resin, the buildings were subjected to a vigorous cleaning to eliminate an mold release chemicals that would make it difficult to get paint to stick.  As it turned out, there were little blue bits of the mold wedged in the thatched roof.  These were easily picked out with the tip of an X-acto knife. 

Black basecoat, browns overpainted, increasingly light browns dry-brushed.  The result still looked a bit flat to me, lacking any depth.  I re-primered, starting with a darker brown and going lighter with highlights.  Still not the result I was looking for.  

The next step was breaking out the Army Painter Quickshade.  While I know some people really like it, I've only one time liked the result, and that was with a Wargames Factory zombie I painted and dipped as a test figure to see if it would be feasible to crank out a a super fast cheap zombie horde.  The result looked good and painting was a snap, but assembling WF plastics annoyed me more than any fiddly GW stuff has ever managed.

The dip didn't make me happy either, but it was closer.  The result was just too dark.  Taking one more stab at it, I lightened the colors, painted on a thin coat of Quickshade, highlighted that, and then clearcoated with matte varnish. 

The result is far from perfect, but I was mostly happy with it.  This approach is one I've got to remember to keep with me on this project so that it doesn't die out like so many others, killed off by a search for "great" when I should stop at "good enough".

The Buildings: Part 1

It appears I need at least three buildings of varied size.  My first thought was to place an order with Grand Manner.  Their stuff is really beautiful in the pictures on the website. 

Taking a look at their prices, I realized that I might have to break up the order a bit.  Two smaller building one month, one larger building the next.  It's not that I can't order things all at once, but it keeps my hyper-acquisitive nature in check to keep my monthly figure sprees to $80 or less.

I packed a few small buildings into the virtual cart and went to check out.  Forty pounds for two small buildings was tolerable.  It was all fine until I hit the checkout.  With shipping to continental Europe, the total hit 64 pounds.  Then I modified it to ship to my American post office box.  And then it hit 72.  That put the cost of those two fist-sized building at more than $100.  Ouch.  Nice though I'm sure the buildings are, it'll be a cold day in hell before I pay $50US to have a few small chunks of resin dropped at my doorstep.

On to Plan B.  I went back and forth between lasercut MDF and finding an alternate source for resin scenery.  I wanted my buildings to look similar, so it was one or the other.  Nothing I had seen had rivaled Grand Manner's pieces, and while waffling I discovered the Norman keep by Grand Manner.  Not only was it a really cool structure, but the price was surprisingly reasonable.  I could justify it as a centerpiece.  So resin it was. 

And then I put the whole project on hold for several months.  Coming back to the project was marked by two linked discoveries. The first was that Grand Manner had purged their catalog,  including the keep. 

I also discovered Gripping Beast resin buildings.  They're well-molded with crisp detail and few bubbles.  Where they do fall down slightly is in lacking a base or a removable roof.  On the other hand, they're really reasonable priced.  The three buildings I ordered ranged in price between 5 and 10GBP, with the total for the three being only 18GBP.  The nucleus of my little village for less than 20 more than made up for having to fab the bases. 

Gripping Beast's shipping was really fast and reasonably priced.  A week after ordering, a grim-faced postal worker was dropping the box on my front steps.

Thoughts on the Rulebooks

I know this has been hashed out several times before, but I don't know if the Studio Tomahawk folks realize how off-putting the rulebooks are to people. 

I know, I know, their value is in the rules themselves, not the actual book, and I'm genuinely impressed by the rules.  So there's that.

But $40 for a slim paperback is all sorts of ridiculous.  Twenty for the pamphlets that are the expansions seems downright reasonable.  Battle boards be damned, it still feels like a bum deal.  People have compared them to the cost of GW rulebooks, which is patently ridiculous.  First, GW pricing shouldn't be your frame of reference.  Ever.  Second, GW rulebooks are giant glossy art books.  They're monstrosities of shiny, over-designed eye candy. 

I caught a podcast with one of the publishers who talked about how the price was based on the initial assumption that they wouldn't sell very many copies.  Same thing with the $20 dice sets.  The success of the game surprised them and that's why were constantly out of stock of books and dice in the first year.  

That makes sense, but why not publish a shiny new updated version?  

The German version of the rulebook and expansion just recently came out from Stronghold Terrain and it's everything the original should have been.  It's hardcover with  additional pages being filled out by errata, the mercenaries, and new pictures.  Oh, and it's under 33 Euro.  Ouch.

German SAGA fans have it even better when it comes to the expansions.  All the factions, Skraelings and Steppe Nomads included, are in this hardbound book.  Granted, it's just under 40 Euro for the book, but that's still cheaper than the $60US one would pay for the less complete, flimsy English version.

Sure, there's the Crescent and Cross rulebook, which is hardbound and $50, but to twist the knife further, the German version is under 38 Euro.  Go figure.  

Yes, the books are on my shopping list, even if my German sucks.  

So that's my little rant.  As far as rule sets go, SAGA is still great and I recommend it all the time, especially to my gamer colleagues who insist on complaining to me about the cost of GW products and yet continue to spend hundreds on them.  

Trees: Part 1

Given that the game is supposed to represent pre-industrial northern Europe, I was going to need some trees.  Probably quite a few.

Sadly, the Grimdark world of the 41st millennium hadn't prepared me for the need for conventional plants.  As usual, I had to go shopping.

Having a model railroading background, I immediately started looking for trees from those sources.  Woodland Scenics has some nice stuff, but I needed to keep cost in check and didn't feel like paying for serious model railroading foreground quality trees.  Instead, I looked to the staple brands of cheap model railroading: Life-like, Model Power, and Bachmann.

I was surprised to find that only Bachmann remained.  The others had disappeared in the overall collapse of the model railroading hobby in the last decade.  Still, Bachmann had what I needed.

The Bachmann Scene Scape line has several varieties of trees in multiple sizes.  Best of all, a box has six trees and has an MSRP of $15US.  That meant that for less than $60, I could forest my game board.  Hobbylinc has the 5'-6" trees for $10.49 per six pack which worked out perfectly.

There's a Woodland Scenics pack of 24 4"-6" trees for $24.89.  They definitely will do for gaming purposes but having seen them, I had to give them a pass.  The Bachmann trees are 5-3/4" to 7-3/4", whereas the Woodland Scenics trees are the height advertised.  I know it's fussy, but I don't want my knights to be able to look over the tops of the trees, even in games that don't use true line of sight.

Now on to figuring out how to base my new forest...

The Archers

My first batch of archers.  My current plan is for a single unit of levy, so 12 figures.  Despite my initial concerns, I was really pleased with them.  They fit right in size-wise with the Crusaders figures. 

I will acknowledge that the figures look more medieval than dark age.  One reason for going with these is that they look a little cleaner than other ranges' archers.  I wanted my figures to stand out with peasant simplicity.  I also wanted them to fit better with the look of figures on the Bayeaux tapestry and not just a bunch of Viking raiders.

Besides, I'm fine with them looking more AD 1200 than AD 800.

As a side note, I had to do this batch of six because I have no more.  I ordered one pack thinking I was ordering two, or that packs had 12, or some such.  I'm honestly not sure what I was thinking.

The Figures

For a starting force I chose the Normans.  Not entirely sure why I did that.  Sure, I've got family ties to Northern France.  Maybe I just wanted to find out for myself if all the gamer whining about painting horses was justified.

So I ordered up several packs of crossbowmen and mounted knights from Crusader Miniatures, plastic cavalry bases from Wargames Factory, Perry archers from Architects of War, 2p infantry bases from Warbases,

Yes, I could have saved a good bit by going with plastic Norman knights from Conquest.  Why pay $80 (including spears) for figures you could get for $30?   Was there no budget in place?

First off, yes, there was a budget.  Was.  Second, I really like metals.  Third, my biggest previous projects had been GW armies and a Flames of War Soviet infantry force.  Paying anything less than the cost of a heavy-lift aircraft for the core of my army seemed like a steal.  Finally, I REALLY like metals.  So weighty, so solid, so little fiddly assembly required.  

How It Began

Half a year to get a war game setup doesn't seem that difficult.  Heck, it seems downright leisurely.  This is not even one of those projects like 1:1 Borodino, or the entirety of Hastings on a garage floor.  So why bother documenting it?  What's the problem?

Part of it is just me.  As a novice in all this, I've always had terrible follow-through on wargaming projects.  Plenty of people do these sorts of projects all the time.  Olicanalad blasts through massive projects leaving a wake of masses of beautiful figures and cool game photos.  The folks on Frothers and Lead Adventure roll out amazing games by the truckload.

I'm not there yet.  My start happened in the early 2000s as a recently discharged (honorably, thanks) sailor looking for a hobby while going back to school and something to bond with the younger brother over.  A trip to the local mall and $200 later, we had two boxes of plastic and metal figures that would become a Space Marine army and a Tau army.

Fast forward over a decade.  My wife and I live overseas and my parents are coming to visit this summer.  I had heard about SAGA through the web and it seemed to have caught the imaginations of quite a few gamers, including many who didn't do a lot of historical gaming. 

After mulling it over for several months, I gave it a pass.  30GBP for a thin paperback rulebook?  Pricey proprietary dice that were apparently out of stock everywhere?  No thanks.

As fate would have it, my wife and I were meeting my parents in Dublin Ireland that year.  I knew that my father loves his Irish heritage and historical miniatures.  So being a good son, I ordered up some Irish skirmishers and Brian Boru from Crusader to take to Dublin.  He was thrilled and we ended up drinking beer and talking historical wargames. 

I came home enthused about the game and quickly snapped off an order for a rulebook.  After mulling over what it would take to start playing the game, I put the book aside and got myself into other projects for the next eight months.

That brings me to where we are now.  My parents are coming to visit this summer and I've got roughly six months to get off my duff and put together an army and all the extras to get a game on.