Koyote

Another unit facelift has been completed. This unit of warriors will be the last of the models that I recycle from my Adepticon 2017 Irish warband. The rest of my 2022 Irish warband will be new models or refurbished models that didn’t make it into my 2017 Adepticon lists. The model pictured above on the far left is Footsore Miniatures Irish Hero. As you can see from the photo below, the model and shield are one piece. Equipping the model with a buckler required a shield-ectomy followed up by some reconstructive surgery and hand transplant. My next “facelift” victims will be a Curaidh, and then a unit of 12 slingers that I painted in 2016. After that I’ll tackle a new unit Hearthguard, a warlord, and finally my Wargames Atlantic slingers.

My second unit of Irish slingers are ready for paint. Before tackling them, I elected to tackle a few smaller projects. In Saga 1.0, Irish warriors had the same melee armor value as warriors from other Dark Age warbands, and they could close ranks (i.e. form a shield wall). The models I used were unarmored, so to distinguish them from Levy, I equipped them with large round shields and hefty plastic spears that I sourced from a online bits supplier. As in Saga 2.0, the 1.0 Irish warriors were armed with javelins, so I equipped about half of my warrior models with wire javelins as well as spears. Now that the Irish's stats, rules, and play style have changed somewhat, I've elected to refresh the Irish models that I will bring with me to the Adepticon 2022 Saga tournaments to reflect the 2.0 Irish. These models were originally assembled and painted in 2016 and 2017. For starters, I replaced their large round shields with small round shield from Wargames Atlantic's Dark Age Irish kit. The decals are LBM transfers made to fit Footsore Miniatures' Irish bucklers. I also replaced all of the plastic spears with the thinner, wire javelins. This task was tricky, as it involved some careful snipping, drilling, and repainting. I touched up any chips, refreshed some top layers, and repainted their flesh tones. Lastly, I removed the original grass tufts, repainted the bases, and added new tufts. The flowers add a nice splash of color to the bases and match the yellow on the bucklers. Overall, I'm pleased with the results. Eight down, eight more warriors to go.

Bad news. The Adeption 2022 tournaments will not be featuring an Age of Hannibal tournament, so I am going to put my Epirotes on the back burner while I work on revamping my Irish and finishing my Mutatawwi'a and Arab themed Age of Magic warbands. Before changing gears, I (mostly) finished up the last of my peltasts. I still haven't sorted out their shields yet, so the shield faces are still quite plain.

The SAGA 2021 FAQs have been released! http://www.studio-tomahawk.com/en/saga/

Eight down, four to go.

Fingers crossed. When it comes to SAGA tournaments, I'm much more of a soft-score player than a hard core competitor, so where I like to compete is in the Best Painted category. I simply don't play enough to get really good at the game. Moreover, since my local SAGA community is so small, I don't get a chance to play against a wide variety of warbands, which helps prepare one for tournament play. I'm a bit disappointed by the line up. I was counting on an Age of Hannibal-only tournament. This is why I started to paint my Greeks. Since the Greeks aren't a strong enough board to take to an open event, I may put my Greeks on the back burner. Also, if they prohibit New Friends, Old Enemies warbands, then my Mutatawwi'a/Moors warband is limited to the Grand Melee. If I add a few more beasties, then I can use them in the Age of Magic event as well. Unless I paint my Pagan Rus, it looks like my Irish will be doing all the heavy lifting.

Rodge and Monty have announced on the Saga Thorsday podcast the Saga tournament lineup for Adepticon 2022. No word on specifics yet, such as the use of mercenaries, legendary units, or Old Friends, New Enemies warbands. Thursday, March 24: Age of Magic -Singles Friday, March 25: Age of Vikings -Doubles Saturday, March 26: Grand Melee (Warbands from all books except Age of Magic) -Singles Sunday, March 27: Age of Vikings -Singles

I've settled on a third objective marker for my Greeks. I built it from the Footsore Miniatures' Mortal Gods Seer miniature and Tropians pack. The goat comes from Gripping Beast's livestock model line.

Here are my first four peltasts. As the poorest troops in the warband, their kit and tunics are quite basic. My color scheme for this army will be red, black, and white. Since they are members of a great king's standing army, there will be a degree of uniformity that one might not expect from other Greek armies from this period. With that said, I don't want the unit to look too uniform, so the tunics will vary in color an pattern. It will be the red shields of identical design that provide the uniformity. In their current state, the shields are quite boring. My plan is to add some battle damage and weathering to gritty them up some. I may hand paint some symbols on the shields, but I haven't a clue what to add. The most obvious choice would be Pyrrhus' monogram 'ΠYΡ'. The shields are small and the big central boss takes up a lot of space, so there isn't much surface to work with. Hmm?

It's time to bring back my Irish. After a 3 year hiatus, I hope to attend the Adepticon 2022 Saga tournaments. To limit the number of warbands I have to transport via my carry-on, I had hoped to use my Moors (or Mutatawwia) as Umayyads in the Age of Viking tournament(s). However, if the 2022 Age of Viking rules match the most recently published Adepticon AoV rules (2020), then warbands from the the Old Friends, New Enemies warbands will not be allowed. As a fall back plan, I am going to prepare my Irish for the trip. I don't want to simply reuse an old warband. Additionally, the V2 Irish warband is more focused shooting than the original Irish warband, so some updates are in order. My new list will include 2 units of Levy slingers. One unit will be the levy that I painted for the original warband, but didn't use in the Adepticon tournament. The second unit will be an entirely new unit, converted from Wargames Atlantic's brilliant Dark Age Irish Warriors kit. My only criticism of the Wargames Atlantic kit is that out of 30 models the kit includes only enough slings to arm 5 models with slings. WTF!?!? What use is 5 slingers? I made my original unit of Irish slingers from the Gripping Beast Dark Age Warrior kit, which includes plenty of sling bits. However, the GB hands are noticeably larger than the hands on the Wargames Atlantic Irish models, so I couldn't perform simple hand swaps. Instead, I carefully carved each hand into the shape of a small peg, and then inserted that peg into a hole I drilled in the hand of each Wargames Atlantic model. Since the pegs aren't long enough to stick out from the bottom of the Wargames Atlantic hands, when I removed the original weapons (mostly javelins), I took care to leave a little nub sticking out of the bottom of each hand. I'm quite fond of the Wargames Atlantic hound models, so I am going to replace my current hounds with WA hounds. Also, if the Adepticon Age of Viking tournament allows Swords for Hire units, my plan is to include a unit of Gall-Gaedhil. I assembled the "foreign Gaels" from Footsore Miniatures' Viking and Irish model lines. The plastic axes and swords come from the Victrix Viking kit. The shields are made by Brother Vinni Miniatures.

When I start a new warband project, I tend to buy way more models than I will actually need. The extras end up in bits boxes or being used to make objective markers and the such, or eventually given away. I've used some of my "extra" Aventine Greeks to make a Soldier and a Brute for the [i]Old Feud[/i] scenario. The Soldier is well armored and has the We Obey rule, so I chose a model that looks like a well armored commander. The original model had a really tiny head, so I replaced with a plastic head from the Victrix Athenian Hoplite set. The Brute has an aggression of 8 and is equipped with a heavy weapon that doesn't lower its melee armor of 5/5. Aside from sarissas, Greek infantry from this era weren't much for two-handed weapons, so for my Brute I selected a large, well armored fighter and armed him with a shield and big spear that dwarfs the metal wire spears and Victrix plastic javelins carried by the other models in my warband. The model's left hand was originally held up, palm out, but I want him to hold a shield, so I changed his greeting into fist. The model's right hand had short, stumpy fingers so I lengthened them. The Soldier and The Brute Below are two of three objective markers for this warband. The first are "extra" Aventine command minis. It's not an especially creative objective marker, but it looks cool. The Second is a pair of minis made by Westwind Productions. It comes from Westwind's Death of Arthur Diorama. I replaced the heads with heads from an Aventine head pack. The model holding the dying Arthur wore a chain shirt and a long sleeve tunic underneath. I carved away the chainmail detail and sleeves and sculpted a shaped cuirass, short sleeve tunic, and bare arms. I carved away "Arthur's' right trouser leg and sculpted a bare leg. I left "Arthur" wearing long sleeves, mostly because I was tired of carving away at this mini and I had cut open my thumb pretty good Except for the "extras", my Greeks have been assembled and based and are now ready for paint. Last night I began experimenting with various bronze paints on test models, as well as color testing on textured mock-up bases. Once I settle on some workable recipes, I'll start painting Greeks in earnest.

My Greeks are almost ready for paint. All the models that needed it have been patched with greenstuff, and I added greenstuff cushions and ropes to the bottom of the howdah. Except for my elephant, I've added rocks and grit to all the bases.

With the addition of GS straps I’ve turned the white plastic disks into proper bucklers.

I built the models pictured below to serve as Destruction Teams for my Masters of the Underearth list. I used them a couple of games, but I wasn't impressed. It's is shame that Destruction Teams aren't more effective, because they really are some fun models. My plan is to play my goblins in the Adepticon 2022 Age of Magic tournament. The tournament rules have not been published yet, so I searched the Adepticon archive and found the rules from the cancelled Adepticon AoM 2020 tournament. The 2020 rules instruct each player to bring 3 objective markers. Players may bring themed objective markers to gain extra points for their appearance score. Problem solved! My shaman war drummers may not have a future as destruction teams, but with the addition of a 3rd model, I can use the models as themed objective markers. Below is what I've come up with for my 3rd themed objective marker. The statue is a ceramic tiki statue bead that I bought from a seller on Etsy. I purchased a half dozen of these to decorate my goblins' Sacred Ground terrain.

That was my same thought process when 'Kickstarted' them. I thought that perhaps I could use them as a Mordehim warband or in Frostgrave. Then a few months later they announced SAGA: Age of Magic, and I knew I had a use for them.

Nope.

Overall it’s a great kit, but it it does have some limitations. Three of the five body bits (torso and legs) on each sprue have the same heads. Plus the models don’t really have necks so the heads attach to the bodies in only one way. Thus, turning the head to the left or right really isn’t an option. With that said, each sprue has plenty of weapons, shields, and extra heads, so there is quite a bit you can do with the sprue without having to resort to conversions. The wide rigid poses, forward facing heads and design of the bow arms make it impossible (without major conversion work) to pose these model like they are actually shooting their bows. Also, the wrists on arm bits that aren’t holding weapons are bent slightly to accommodate shields. This is fine if you want to add shields, but as-is they look a bit odd if they aren’t holding shields. With so many extra arms on the sprue, I wish the kit included some arm bits with open hands or hands pointing. Each sprue has so many extra weapons and heads, that when you use up all the bodies and equip them, each sprue us left with tons of unused bits. I wish Shieldwolf sold just the bodies -perhaps as resin bits. With extra bodies I could build twice as many goblins and still have bits to spare.

I've added some ferns to my Chasm marker. The Masters of the Underearth battle board has 3 advanced SAGA abilities that are assigned to a specific unit and remain in effect until the end of the player's turn. I've created a marker for each of these abilities, to help me and my opponent remember which ability affects which unit. Each marker is built on a 32mm base. Bases large enough for a small diorama and to stand out from my infantry models, but not so large that it takes up too much space on the table. From left to right: Traps, Tenacity, and Cave Dwellers. Since spiders are already an important part of this warband's themes, I reasoned that massive web would serve nicely as a physical representation of the Traps ability. The web is another bit from GW's Arachnarok Spider kit. Tenacity means possessing a strength of will. Synonyms for this word include determination, persistence, steadfastness, grit, and also courage. This SAGA ability gives extra defense dice, with the trade off of suffering a penalty to the unit's attack dice. Coming up with physical representation for this thing that happens in one's mind was a bit tricky. However, when I boiled it down to the question, what can make one both brave but less skillful, the answer became obvious -alcohol/drugs. This fella is drinking down some "liquid courage". The ability’s name, “Cave Dweller”, doesn’t give one much to work with, so I had to look beyond the title for inspiration. Like Tenacity, this is a defensive ability, but instead of providing extra defense dice, it provides a unit solid cover. The answer came to me when I was digging around in one of my bits boxes, and happened upon sigil stone with a peculiar carving on its surface. The stone is small enough to fit on a 32mm base, but large enough to hide a goblin. A goblin warrior crouching down and taking cover behind a huge stone seems like a fitting physical representation of this ability. Plus the stone has this great carvings on it, that kind of looks like a primitive goblin holding up a sword and spears. Perfect!

I've made some good progress on my Chasm marker. I've designed it to fit my goblin's theme. Rather than causing the earth to open up beneath the goblins' enemies, the goblins conjure or release a nest of giant spiders. You can't see it in the photos, but in each large trunk section there are holes from which spiders are crawling out. I can imagine hundreds of giant spider spiders pouring out of the knotholes and from beneath the trunks, spreading out and skittering over everything and everyone nearby. The marker measures 6 inches by one inch. I built it from bits from the GW's Arachnarok Spider kit, GW's Citadel Woods kit, and Green Stuff World's resin mushrooms. I still need to add foliage and texture. (click on photos for larger versions)

Thanks, but for someone who hasn't played Frostgrave in 5 years, I already have more than enough Frostgrave master and apprentice pairs.... And some are even painted. 😉

I’ve added some reinforcements to my growing goblin horde. The model on the right is my warband’s new sorcerer. It’s an Avatars of War Forest Goblin Shaman 3D print. It’s a huge improvement over my original Shieldwolf mini shaman.

I found this AoH post of Facebook -8pt Greeks vs Romans. Lots of great photos. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1512883212323934/permalink/3072688316343408/

This battle report linked below provides a sneak peek at the Sassinids and the Franks. It looks like cataphract armor is a new equipment type. The batrep mentions a new few abilities. Once lets the Franks move or rest 3 units, and another that lets them receive no fatigue after a melee. The Sassinids have an ability that allows their elephants to activate and do damage to units within S. Another Sassinid ability appears to give comp bows the ability to shoot like regular bows. " Having played the Sassanids now I feel there build is a rather unique one in SAGA. While they are all mounted with composite bows they dont feel like a skirmish faction. They feel very much like a list that can control the table would be the better build. Having pondered this theory i shalll be trying them again veery shortly in the following build. My warlord shall be in his cataphract armour with 2 points o f hearthguard also as cataphracts. I shall try the elephant again although I am considering a point of levy with bows. I shall then take 3 point of warriors split into 2 units of 10 and a unit of 4. I will include a unit into one of the warrior units as well. I feel this will allow better use of the abilities that want to focus on one unit at a time. While another rests. " https://northerntempestnews.wordpress.com/2021/08/22/age-of-invasions-battle-report/

I found these pics online.