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.