Koyote's Britons & other SAGA Stuff

[Koyote]

I've finished the second baggage marker.  It's titled The Reluctant Bride.

Here we see the kingdom's Bishop extolling Mordred's virtues and trying to convince Guinevere that her impending marriage to Briton's new king is certainly no reason to cry.

 

[generalripphook]

I love it! Although I would think about maybe moving the shrub right in front of Mordred at least from this angle its hard to see the bottom of her chains. 

[Koyote]

I've finished the third and final baggage marker.  It's titled Merlin's Arrest.

With Arthur away, Merlin is the greatest threat to Mordred’s primacy. As such, Mordred has ordered the arrest and imprisonment of Arthur's most trusted advisor.

The tree adds some height to the diorama and gives me a place to put an owl, which, like Merlin, is a symbol of wisdom and watchfulness. Merlin's magic is comes from Britain's pagan past, hence the rock with the Celtic swirl engraving, the dead tree, and the many skulls. At these angles you can't quite see it, but next to the tree is a pile of 4 skulls.

[Koyote]

Here's a mock-up of my warband display board.  The finished board will have a hill in the upper left corner, upon which the baggage markers will sit.  Where the rocks are now, will be some kind of uneven ground, either trees or rocks.  I haven't decided.  I'm still undecided whether to include the casualties.  It guess it will depend upon how much time I have to work on it.  Sorry for the lousy photo.  I shot it by hand with my iphone.

 

[Romans832]

Awesome

[Frowbakk]

20 hours ago, Koyote said:

Here's a mock-up of my warband display board.  The finished board will have a hill in the upper left corner, upon which the baggage markers will sit.  Where the rocks are now, will be some kind of uneven ground, either trees or rocks.  I haven't decided.  I'm still undecided whether to include the casualties.  It guess it will depend upon how much time I have to work on it.  Sorry for the lousy photo.  I shot it by hand with my iphone.

 

Maybe position Mordred at the front of his column of cavalry with the casualties scattered amongst and behind the horses with the panicked looking about-to-be-casualties still on foot looking at their oncoming doom from the bottom right corner in the above photo..

Swap the unit of  infantry closest to the casualties in the center with the unit of six cavalry behind them, have Mordred about where the lead figure is laying down and the carnage would take place in a nice wedge down the side of your display board.

[Koyote]

I've made some progress on the display board.  It needs to fit in my suitcase, so the trees won't be glued to the board.  Instead, they will sit inside of inserts.

I used a rubber mold made by a railway scenery company to cast the rocks.

My original plan was to paint the trees foliage in Autumn colors, but now that I see the full warband displayed, I think that green (likely a darkish green), will look better, as it's a opposite of red on the color wheel.

I have another sizeable painting project to take care of before Adepticon, so it's looking less and less likely that I'll be adding the Saxon casualties to this board.

[Koyote]

I ordered some of these 5x7 cards printed on card stock.  I will use them as army lists to give to my opponents and tournament organizer, and as part my display for the painting judges.

I spent all that time on my baggage markers only to learn that none of the scenarios in this year's tournaments require them.  Boo.  Instead of baggage markers, I'm calling them vignettes and making them part of my display board. 

 

[Koyote]

Progress.

 

[Koyote]

 

[Koyote]

I've made some good progress.

All that's left to do is touch up the black on the sides of the board and add grass and flower tufts to break up the open areas and strengthen the visual connection between the board, trees, and my models' bases.

My hope is that all the green areas will contrast nicely with the red on my models.

 

[Koyote]

Here's a not-so-great photo of the finished product.

 

[Romans832]

Wow, well done sir

[Koyote]

Here's my team's "army list" for the 2018 Adepticon SAGA Team Tournament. The fleeing Roman soldier is guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of our opponents. 

 

[InfestedKerrigan]

Is that DnD latin for god damn?

[Koyote]

7 minutes ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

Is that DnD latin for god damn?

Nope. It's Google Latin for 'God dammit'. 

[JMGraham]

Go Koyote!!!!  Good luck at Adepticon!

[dalmer]

best of luck to you, sir!

display board and minis look outstanding!

[Koyote]

Wow!  What an amazing three days of tournaments. 

I played doubles with Fluger. We won second place overall, but the most rewarding part of the tournament was getting a chance to play SAGA with six amazing opponents. In the first round we played against Tracy Beech and THE Andy Lyon.  The outcome was never in doubt.  We lost handily. Our next two rounds were played against great guys that I met at last year’s SAGA events, Farshad & Chicago Mike, and Rich & Missouri Mike (or is it Michigan Mike?).  By winning both games we secured second place overall.

My first round opponent in SAGA Singles was played against the host of the SAGA podcast, SAGA Thorsday, Joe (aka ‘The Dude’, aka the ‘Wiscohorndog’).  He played a beautifully painted Byzantine warband. Ultimately the Byzantines triumphed and sent the Briton provincials packing. 

In round two I got another shot at Missouri/Michigan Mike. He avenged his earlier loss from the day before by holding me to a draw.  What a great game.

My last game was played againt Jeff and his devious Moors. This was my first game against Moors, so it was really fun learning about what they can do.  Using his superior knowledge of the game and Moorish trickery, Jeff pulled out the win.

I ended the Day 1 Singles tournament with a losing record (my first ever), but I did win ‘best painted’. Woo-hoo!

I began the Day 2 Singles tournament with a game against Chicago John’s gorgeous Spanish Warband.  The Spanish gave John a huge advantage in the scenario, so I was amazed when I ended up losing by only the narrowest of margins.  BTW John went on to win Best Painted, and if you ever get a chance to see his spectacular hand-painted shields, you’ll know why.

I played game two against the overall winner from the Day 1 Singles tournament, Nicholas. Midway through the game I believed that I had him, but then he played (with my urging), The Long Dark, and took back the advantage.  Left with only one SAGA die, my only chance to narrow the scenario point gap and avoid total annihilation eluded me when I failed (two turns in a row), to roll the SAGA die I needed to move my last unit of warriors into the safety of a nearby forest.  On the last turn the Rus Princes’ Warlord and Druzhina cavalry charged and obliterated my last unit of warriors. He kept apologizing for me tabling me. I told him that he had nothing to apologize for. He played a great game and was a fantastic opponent. I was very happy for him.  

I played game three (my very last game of SAGA 1.0) against my good friend Seth.  The game was played with a crowd of friends around the table and plenty of trash talk.  It looked like I was doing really well, so in a stunning display of cockiness, I used my final turn to pull my entire warband back, out of Seth’s vikings’ reach. I did it to be funny and to tease Seth, but in the end, my hubris was my undoing.  My initial count of the slaughter points put me 4 points ahead of Seth.  Then I realized that I had forgotten to count my 4 hearthguard casualties, so the game ended in a draw. That’s what I get for being a jackass.  We all had a good laugh at my expense, and after thinking about it, a draw against good friend was the perfect way to end 3 days of SAGA tournaments and my last game of SAGA 1.0. 

Champions of King (SAGA Doubles) and Rune Carver (SAGA Singles).

  

[Romans832]

Hot dam!
That's awesome man!

Congratulations!

[Koyote]

Sadly, I didn't take very many photos and the pics that I did snap were taken with my iPhone and in bad light, so they aren't very good.

Here's a couple of photos take by Bill Thornhill, owner of Footsore Miniatures.  I nabbed them from the Footsore Facebook page.

Here's one of my photos.  It was taken mid-game against The Dude's beautiful Byzantines.  It's a shame that I didn't take any close ups.

And here's my Britons castling-up against the Moors.  The Moorish battle board punishes opponents who spread out, so I thought it best to deploy everyone within 6" of my Warlord.

Here's Mike's berserkers charging my doomed guides.  This was a hostage scenario, so the individual viking models standing directly behind my Briton units are prisoners, not active units.

Here's a shot from my game against John's Spanish.  The decision that he's making right now is what won him the game.  By using Battle Chaos to place 2 fatigue markers on each my warlord and healthguard,  he saved one of his two remaining mounted units of warriors.  If I had been able to catch and destroy both units, the game would have ended in a draw.  Curse you John and your Spanish trickery. :)

Lastly, here's the set up for the game against my buddy, Seth.

 

[Romans832]

Hot dam, nice!

[Koyote]

One of the brilliant aspects of SAGA Age of Magic is the ease in which you can bring your historical SAGA warbands into AoM.  

I had already planned to add a unit of 12 levy archers to my Britons to take advantage of levy rules in SAGA v2, but now that AoM has landed, I've decided to expand the warband even further so that my Britons can be played as a Great Kingdoms warband.

I want to keep my original Arthurian "villains" theme, so I am going to restrict my weapon selection (e.g. no crossbows or firearms) and monsters to the early Welsh Arthurian stories.  My first AOM additions will be a mounted Captain (or Paladin) and a Static War Machine.    The Captain will be Mordred's oldest (half?) brother, Sir Agravain the Hard Hand.  Like Mordred, in the earlier versions of the myths Sir Agravain is a flawed character but he isn't the villain Mallory makes him out to be.  Sir Agravain is a brute so he'll make a good enforcer, but he isn't especially charismatic, so Mordred needn't fear his men switching loyalties.  The model that I'm using Sir Agravain comes from Footsore Miniature's Late Roman Cavalry Command set.

The war machine is Gripping Beasts' Late Roman Scorpio.  Like most of GB's older minis, the sculpts are meh.  

Warlord Games sells a much better scorpion, but it's triple the cost of the GB model.  If I find that the war machine works well for me, I may break down and order Warlord Games model and donate this one to a friend.

Stronghold Terrain sells a very nice Late Roman Manuballista (which I own), but the models are very small, even for historicals.  It's advertised as 28mm scale, but compared to GB and Footsore 28mm historicals, the Stronghold Terrain manuballista looks like it is being crewed by children.

The next new addition to my AoM Britons will be much more fantastic in nature.  Giants play a prominent role in the early myths of Britain's founding, so it's not surprising that they pop up, time and again, in many of the Arthur myths.  In a Welsh myth, Arthur uses treachery to kill 3 giantess sisters and when their brother, Cribwr Gawr, reproaches Arthur, Arthur threatens Cribwr Gawr with death.  

In my warband's AOM backstory the giants are no friends to the Britons, but when Mordred offers Cribwr Gawr the opportunity to kill Arthur, an uneasy alliance is formed.

I spent quite a bit of time online searching for a model that fits my vision of a giant from Celtic myths.  Even though it's a giant, I don't want the model to be too tall as this could make it look too out of place among the rest of the warband.  Even though it's monster in a fantasy warband, I don't want it to have any armor or carry any weapons that would look out of place for the semi-historical period that my warband inhabits.  I finally settled on a hill giant miniature printed/cast by a seller on Etsy.  The model is a bit too plain, so my plan is to gussy it up some using greenstuff and plastic bits from other kits.

[Koyote]

I’ve started work on a Sacred Ground terrain piece for Age of Magic. It can also be used as a Ruins terrain piece in standard Saga.

In both my “historical” and AoM warbands, most of my Britons are early-Christians, but Mordred, Morgan Le Fay, and many of their men keep the old gods and the old ways.

In my “historical” version of the warband the unit of mercenary Guides is represented by Morgan and her Celt Warriors.  In my AoM version I am going to use the same idea to add crossbows to my warband. Instead of Guides, Morgan’s contribution to my AoM Britons will be a unit of Picts armed with crossbows and the giant, Cribwr Gawr.

My AoM Britons’ ties to their pagan past give me the excuse to incorporate some terrific standing stone models (made by Scotia Grendel Miniatures) into my Briton’s AoM Sacred Ground terrain.

I purchased the the rocky hill from Terrainify, a 3D printer that sells on Etsy. They sell this hill in 3 different sizes. For this project, I’m using is the middle size. It measures roughly 7.5” x 6”.

Below are some WIPs.

 

[Koyote]

I've completed Sir Agravain and the first four Levy archers.

I need to do a bit more work on Agravain's face. Right now he looks like Sir Agravain the Terrified.  Narrowing his eyes should help.

To signify the Levy's lower rank and distinguish them from my Warriors and Hearthguard, I painted their tunics are the color of unbleached cotton.

As usual, my camerawork and lighting are poor.  In person, the reds are a deeper shade.