Koyote

Yup, we are demoing SAGA to Greenwood and Duskseer. You can play one and I'll play the other. Much Viking blood will be spilled, tonight.

From time to time, Jim Graham, the proprietor of Worldsmith Industries gives me some of his miscasts and other resin terrain goodies. One such gift was a circular 6-inch diameter area terrain base. He plays Wood Elves, so I suspect that he made the original to serve as the 'free-forest terrain' that Wood Elves get to bring to the table. The Aetius Arthur mercenary unit, Guides, have a mechanic similar to the WFB/9th Age Wood Elves, except that the owning player may remove or move an existing piece of terrain or add a M x M element of uneven ground to the table. I've used Guides in my last three games and they've been nothing but win, so it was certainly worth my time to paint a purpose-built piece of terrain for them. The Celtic swirls work great for my Britain based warband. Also, I decided at the outset of my Briton project that my Guides are Cymry mercenaries, so the swirls symbolize these largely, non-Romanized Britons. The modular nature of the terrain lets me decide between terrain types. The photos below depict Rocky Ground, which doesn't block LOS, but it does give my Guides hard cover. If I need terrain to block LOS, then I replace the rocks with trees and voilà, it's a Wood. The rocky outcrops are made by Worldsmith Industries. The gnarled tree comes from GW's, Citadel Woods kit. The GW trees work great with the Worldsmith area terrain because the diameter of the GW tree bases match that of the Worldsmith Industries' spotface recesses.

I've (mostly) completed my first 10 Briton warriors. I need to do some experimentation with basing materials and I'm still waiting for my Ammo Autumn leaves to arrive, so I haven't added any static grass and/or tufts to the bases. Once I figure out what I'm doing, I'll post another photo of the completed models. Their shields are so large that getting and angle that shows more than just shields is difficult. I suppose I should include shots from the side and the rear. I will need to take their shield size into account when determining how to arrange the models on my army display base. The Briton warriors will need to be angled so that a viewer looking at the display from directly in front of the display will see the models' bodies and not just their shields and heads. I've been complaining about this for years, but I really need to buy a better camera and get myself a decent backdrop.

I use Tablewar case. Love it. It lets me safely transport minis with thin pokey parts, like spears and warbanners. The case is good quality, but the design is such that even if your bases are well magnetized, your models will launch from the trays and bounce all over hell if the case is dropped. The movement trays with metal bottoms rest on shelves that pull out like drawers. If you aren't going to use the movement trays in game play (e.g. as a unit movement trays for 9th Age), I recommend gluing the movement trays to the shelf-trays. In the event the case gets jostled, this will keep everything in place.

I have another Norman horseman for you, assembled and ready for play. If you want to try out a second job unit cav, you better get to work assembling the rest of your knights.

SAGA!!!!

Frostgrave - Ulterior Motives (June 2017) The Frozen City harbours many secrets, and not all of them are ancient. While most adventurers who brave the dangers seek wealth and lost magic, some journey into Frostgrave for more personal reasons… This expansion for Frostgrave consists of 40 Ulterior Motive cards, which add variety, depth, and new tactical challenges to wargames in the Frozen City. Each card presents the player with a specific task to accomplish and offers rewards if they succeed. Some of these missions must be revealed to all of the players, others must be kept secret. Will your wizard seek to slay a great demon? Rescue a desperate captive? Bring retribution to an enemy? All wizards seek power, but what are their ulterior motives? 42 oversized cards (40 Ulterior Motive cards, 2 cards of rules) The Ulterior Motives Terrain set contains 7 pieces of terrain and 1 zombie. Many of the Ulterior Motive cards call on you to use certain terrain pieces, both as mission markers and red herrings to send your opponent in the wrong direction. North Star and Osprey have produced a set featuring all the terrain pieces (and one zombie) a player would need to use the Ulterior Motives expansion. All of the terrain pieces are made of resin, the zombie from metal, and all are supplied unpainted. Terrain Pieces: Arcane Disc, Gateway, Pit, Runic Stone, Sarcophagus, Statue, Trapdoor, Zombie with Scroll carved on it's back. Kornovik the Barbarian Outcast Frostgrave Barbarian character riding woolly Rhino. 15 part highly detailed resin kit.

I hope to put some Norman scum to the sword.

I finished my test model. I think it turned out ok. Painting eyes is always challenging, but painting them in the recesses of a helm is even harder. I tried something new. I added a light red wash to the models lower lip. As always, I am very pleased with the LBM shield transfers. I went with the iconic white and red motif that you see in many modern illustrations of shields from this period. I also have the same design in white and black. I haven't decided if I'm going to mix them or use the colors to distinguish different units or just stick with the red. I tried using some of my Skull Craft Autumn Mix Leaf Scatter to add some fall leaves to the base, but it just didn't look right, so I removed it. More experimentation needed. About a month ago, I ordered a set of very cool mastiff mins from Sgt Major Miniatures, but after receiving the order confirmation I haven't heard a peep. No minis. No notice of shipment. Nothing. He won't respond to my email so I opened up a dispute with PayPal. It's too bad, because the set included a mastiff posed perfectly for my Mordred display base. Oh well, Sgt Major Minis' loss is Footsore Minis' gain. Looks like I now have an excuse to order Footsore's new wolfhound minis. Oh darn. In the meantime, to give you a better idea of what I have planned, I have place a proxy war hound on the base along with the Saxon casualties. The doggy is one of the Dog Companions from Zombicide. So I can play this warband as either Britons or Romans, I purchased Gripping Beasts' Late Roman Manubalista kit. I question its effectiveness, but how could I resist trying out SAGA's first war machine.

Sure. I have assembled a bunch of metal vikings, archers, and Pagan Russ cavalry that can be used to field 6 points of Vikings, Jomsvikings, Pagan Rus or Rus Princes. All of these use the Viking dice, and Sherbert will let us borrow his.

Sigurd, will you have your Normans assembled and ready for Tuesday? ... Je ne suis pas une grenouille! Also, if anyone else is interested in a SAGA demo game, let me know.

Queen Guinevere arrived in the post yesterday. The model is made by Dragon Bait Miniatures, which sells several lines of quirky minis. I am very pleased with my purchase. Both the sculpt and the quality of the cast are quite good and my order arrived fairly quickly. It's hard to make out in the photo, but her wrists are manacled and connected by long chains. The Bishop, who is extolling Mordred's virtues and trying to convince Guinevere that her impending marriage to Briton's new king is certainly no reason to cry, is made by Gripping Beast. The guard is a Footsore mini. The other two baggage models include a bird (the owl and the two headed eagle banner topper), so I added a feathered friend to this model as well. The bird reminds me of this little fellow: "Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole."

Looking good. Once I'm done with my Britons, we'll have to get to work on our Muslims for the team tournament.

I didn't make much progress on my Britons this weekend. I spent most of my hobby time assembling some Vikings for use in demo games. I did get my Cymry Guides (Footsore Miniatures' Scots), assembled and mounted on bases. So they aren't confused with Picts, I equipped them with the bucklers that came with my FS Early Saxons. Because these fellows operate best in uneven terrain, I used the extra white-stuff to sculpt some logs and stumps for their bases.

Sure. I'd be down for more demoing. I don't have a game with Sounder this week, so we can get in a full game. -Shawn

I've played a few games with my Britons and I'm beginning to wonder if I should add some 'shooting' to my list. The Sea Wolves' Marauders ability gives me a nice advantage in scenarios where the objective is to be somewhere or capture something, but Guides, Deserters, or Briton Levies will give me shooting attacks to degrade certain types of units that I'd rather not tackle in melee, such as Beserkers, Attecotti, or mounted Hearthguard. Also, shooting attacks can be used to encourage a reluctant opponent to close with me. Hmm? More play testing required. Also, my first test-model is ready for painting.

Cool. 5:30ish.

Cool. I'll supply everything needed to play. And yes, the Picts look awesome.

I'm playing Sounder at 7:00, so we could probably get in a quick demo before that. Can you be there around 5:00? If anyone else would like a demo, you can play against SigurdBC and I'll referee and answer questions.

Below is a (very) rough sketch of the plans for my display base. Guides are A&A mercenaries that are armed with javelins and not slowed by uneven ground. Guides permits the owning player to: 1) move one element of terrain, or 2) remove one element of terrain, or 3) add to the table one M x M element of terrain. I have the perfect piece of 6" DIA modular terrain (made by Worldsmith Industries), that I will rest in a circular insert in the display base.

The display bases at this year's Adepticon SAGA tournaments put mine to shame, but next year, things will be different. Well, at least I hope so... Like many of the best display bases at this year's event, I want my display base to tell a story. Inspired by my mounted Mordred model, which looks like it's about the chuck a spear into some poor bastard's chest (or back), my display base will depict a battle scene. More specifically, it will portray the rout of a Saxon warband. Casualties will lie scattered on the ground where the Saxon shield wall once stood. The ranks of my Britons will be advancing and on one flank the Briton cavalry will be galloping ahead of Briton infantry, in pursuit of the fleeing Saxons. The models that I will use for the prone casualties arrived this afternoon. They are made by Curteys Miniatures and sold by 1st Corps, out of the UK. The two columns on the left are Saxons and the two columns on the right are Britons. The models are resin and the detail is amazing. For casualty models, I give these 4.5 out 5 stars. Or, if you prefer, 4.5 out of 5 butchered Saxons. I ordered some blisters of birds from Kromlech, hoping to get a good crow/raven for Morgan Le Fay's base. In contrast the Curtey models, these models are terrible -poorly sculpted and cast. Nevertheless, I was able to find one that, with a bit of GS, will work for what I need. If I do, on occasion, play my Britons as all infantry, then I need 5 HG on foot to replace my 5 mounted HG. I distinguish my HG by their cloaks -HG have them, warriors don't. I'm not going to include any War Banners in this warband, but I want each Briton unit to have a Roman style Draco. I ran out of cloaked models that are suitably posed, so I broke out the GS and added a (passable) cloak to the standard bearer from Footsore's Mordred blister. The models the foreground will be my auxiliary unit of foot HG. The models in the year will be my first string HG foot. I love the model holding its helm in its arm. It's made by West Wind Productions.

The addition of the hard basing really brings it all together. Still waiting for Guinevere to arrive...

Last night, I did a little work on my Warlord's display base. Putting a Warlord on a big base looks cool, but during game play I prefer keep his footprint on the table as small as possible. This makes it easier for me to move my Warlord in between my units and around enemy units and obstacles. My solution to the cool vs utility problem is to base my Warlord on a regular base (my "game base") and then create a large display base with a magnetized insert for my Warlord's base. Below is an example of what this looks like. The last time I did this I placed the Warlord's game base on the display base and puttied around it with grey-stuff. This technique worked fairly well, but the sides of the insert weren't vertical so I had to reshape the hole with a hobby knife. This time, the plan is to use a styrene cut out to create the insert. Because of my Warlord's pose, the other models on the base need to be in motion. My plan is to have Mordred accompanied by huge mastiff. The war hound will be leaping at a hapless Saxon warrior who is reeling back in terror. The mastiff and victim models haven't arrived yet, so the mock-up pictured below includes a stand-in for the war puppy. The 60mm base doesn't leave much room for Saxon, so I've ordered some 4 inch (102 mm) bases from LITKO.

A few small updates. First, my Little Big Men Studios Arthurian shield transfers and banner have arrived. I cannot recommend LBMS transfers highly enough. They are really easy to use and they look great. Best of all, they are a relatively quick way of getting your shields. Once they are sealed with some brush on matte clear coat, you can modify the designs to your liking by painting directly on the transfer. I did this to some of my Irish shields to get a fairly consistent shade of yellow and to cover up bits of symbols that I don't like. I knew that the symbol that looks like a combination of the letters P and X was associated with Arthuruan Britons, but until very recently I had no idea what it meant. This symbol is called a Chi Rho (pronounced "KEE-roe"). It is a Christian symbol consisting of the intersection of the capital Greek letters Chi (Χ) and Rho (Ρ), which are the first two letters of "Christ" in Greek (ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, Christos). It's use as a military symbol is purportedly based on Constantine's use of the symbol after receiving his famous vision before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD. Last night, I added the hard-basing to my Sea Wolves and most of my Britons. For the larger rocks, I used small pieces of plaster of paris leftover from another project. I used my snips and a hobby knife to shape them an cut them to size. I've also added some debris from an old battlefield (e.g. damaged shields, weapons, helmets, etc.) to most of the bases. (You can see the full size image by right-clicking on the photo and selecting 'View Image'.) It wouldn't be an old battlefield if it didn't have some skulls and other bones scattered about. For these I used Toad King Casting's Skull and Bone sheets. For years, I've been cutting up plastic skeletons to add bones and small sections of rib cage to my bases. These sheets will make that task largely unnecessary. The quality is quite good, but many of the bone fragments are really, really small. They are dwarfed by a grain of rice, small. Nevertheless, $3.75 a sheet is a good price for the usable bits.

Sorry fellas, but my plans have changed. It looks like I'll have to wait for next week, when Sounder returns, to get my SAGA fix.