The Abbot's Gold, A Saga Battle Report

Ragnar and his boys were here for the Abbot's gold.

My friend and I had our 2nd game of Saga. It was a 4 point game, Saxon vs Vikings. That's all we have painted at the moment, but more on the way. We just quickly tossed out some terrain, then came up with a scenario based on the terrain. Vikings need to plunder the Abbey and get the gold off the table. Saxon's need to protect the church or stop the Vikings from getting away with the gold.

 The Saxon Warlord Wulfric and his Warband emerge from the woodline.

 The Ragnar's ragged warband march up the road intent on plundering the Abbey

The Big Picture

The Saxon's Advance led by their Warlord.

 The Vikings Advance. A Hearthguard unit sprints out in front.
 

Both sides closing around the Abbey.

Viking point of view looking at the Saxon Shieldwall. The Berserkers in the foreground are not impressed.

My Saxon Warlord takes one unit of Warriors around the back of the church leaving 2 units of Warriors to hold the Shieldwall.

My Warlord, supported by his own Warriors charges into the Viking Warriors!

Using Bretwalda and one of the extra attack dice abilities, I see off the Vikings. They used Valhalla(I think) for the extra dice, but my increased Armor and rerolls of failed saves just gave me free kills. Even if I had taken a hit, my Warriors were there to "Look out M'Lord!"

Viking point of view. Berserkers charge into my Warriors trying to guard the front door of the Abbey

I had a hot hand and wiped out the Berserkers. Sadly I lost 6 of my lads in the process.

Meanwhile off camera. The Viking Warlord and a unit of Hearthguard bust their way into the church(Activation) and spend a turn looting(Activation). My Warlord and other unit of Warriors is circling around the back of the church to cut off the Viking Escape.

 The Viking Hearthguard counter attack the Saxon Warriors by the Abbey door, keeping the escape route open for the Vikings inside doing the pillaging. 

 

The Saxon's launch an attack on the Vikings. Driving them back, killing 2, but loosing one.

 The Viking Warlord and a 4 man unit of Hearthguard come out loaded with Gold and head for the boats.

 A lone unit of Viking Hearthguard holds off the Saxon warriors from chasing after the gold. Even with only 2 of them left, they are a formidable foe and treat the Saxon warriors roughly. Again trading 2 for 1.

 Finally the Saxon Warlord and warriors get around the Abbey and try to cut off the Vikings from escape.

 Last of the viking rearguard is cut down and the Vikings with the gold race for the table edge(Yellow Line).  So I have one unit chasing the Vikings and gold. And 2 units moving to cut them off. Actually I didn't have the dice to move the warriors chasing them. I just used all my dice on my Warlord and warriors moving to cut them off.

It's interesting to note as you lose units, you get less dice and it gets harder to move your troops around. It has a good feel to it as both warbands are getting tired and worn down.

Both Warlords didn't want to commit as neither of us felt we have an advantage. So we both continue to head for the corner. I eventually get them cut off from their board edge. Finally it's getting late so I make my move. Advance my Warlord and warriors and charge. I drove them off from the gold. I forgot Warlords Pride and charged the Hearthguard. So we called it a draw, I was too tired to fix it or continue playing. The Vikings butchered the Priests of the Abbey, and got back to their boats, but did not get the gold. My Saxon Warlord will put that gold to good use. As far as the church knows, the vikings got away.

So this was our second outing with Saga and we are having a good time with it. So far my friend LL has been doing most of the painting and we have a 4 point Saxon and 4 point Viking warband. We hope to add some more soon. I was going to buy an Anglo-Saxon warband at Fall In, but now I think I might get Normans or maybe both. These Anglo-Saxons are hard to play. Seems like the Vikings have such better abilities. Everytime The Viking player discards a die, it feels like he gets 10 extra dice for every combat. I've read that AS plays better at 6 points. We will see. Must do a campaign soon.

Thanks for reading, it was fun playing, hope it was fun reading.
Xin

Painting Dwarven Forge

I just got my Dwarven Forge Kickstarter package. My first Kickstarter and I think a really good one. I wish I had jumped on the 1st Reaper Bones Kickstarter as well.

But anyway I'm very excited to get this project off the ground. Of course it's not like I don't already have some pokers in the fire. What with running 2 LOTR games at Fall In and no terrain finished. Here are some pics of the DW pieces as I ripped open the first box.

D&D mini's added for effect! 

 Bonus points for Id'ing the set of teeth in the last pic!

 
Also here is a chart that Dwarven Forge did for testing which paints work best with the game tiles. Read the whole article at their site: http://www.dwarvenforge.com/painting

More pics when I get time to paint. Ciao for now, Xin

Dark Age SBG: Vikings vs Saxons

I've been hunting around for a Dark Age rule set for awhile. I've tried a few free rules, a few paid for rules. I liked some of them or parts of them, but for whatever reason, I couldn't settle on one.

A few nights ago, on our regular gaming night, we didn't have anything planned. So when my friend, came over I gave him a choice, X-Wing or Vikings vs Saxons using the latest version of GW Strategy Battle Game. I still refer to it as LOTR:SBG but it is officially The Hobbit: SBG. he picked SBG. We didn't make any changes to the rules or army lists as we didn't have a lot of time.

Base on what figures we had about 20 each of Sax and Vikings, I threw together 2 army lists. For the vikings we used the Isengard list. For Saxons we used Rohan. This, to me, represented very roughly Vikings and Saxons. One side better fighters with more Armor/gear. The other side, the lesser trained/armed Fyrd running to protect their homes. Basically we got some F4/D5 Warriors vs F3/D4. 

The Vikings:
Warband 1
Huscarls = Uruk-Hai w/shields
Warband 2
Bondi = Wild Man of Dunland
Berserkers = Uruk-Hai Berserkers
Warband 3
Bondi = Wild Man of Dunland
Archers = Ruffian w/bow

The Saxons:
Warband 1
Huscarls = Warriors of Rohan w/Shield
Warband 2
Fyrd = Warriors of Rohan No Shields/Throwing Spear
Warband 3
Fyrd = Warriors of Rohan No Shields/Throwing Spear
Archers Warriors of Rohan, Bow

Since the Vikings were raiding the Saxon's, the Saxon's setup first. The Vikings rolled to see which board edge each Warband would come on. They ended up with one Warband per board edge.

I had my Saxon Huscarls on the right. Archers on a hill in the middle and Fyrd cowering behind walls on the left.

The Viking perspective, Huscarls on the left, Bondi up the center and right.

 The Vikings advance into the village center. My Saxon's fall back to form up.

 The Bondi advance towards the Fyrd behind the walls. They did not realize my Fyrd was waiting to shower them with Throwing Spears.

First Blood goes to the Fyrd. The Bondi Leader begins to rethink "I'll just storm over the wall" approach. Both Viking Warbands that came in on the side edges move into the center.

 The Vikings are forming up to assault. 2 More Bondi die to Throwing spears. My Archers couldn't hit the ground if they tried. 

 My Fyrd on the extreme left get cocky( it will cost them later) and hop the wall to go after the Bondi that pulled back from the field, but there is a Viking rearguard.

The Fyrd hold the line, chucking more spears. My Huscarls fall back to the cliff edge. I'm afraid of the Viking Huscarls. Better Fight and Defense scores. I let my Fyrd do the fighting against the weaker Bondi and it's paying off.

 Steady men, let them come.

Saxon Huscarls zero kills. Fyrd has 5 kills!

Fyrd claim another victim with spears on the left. Too be honest here, I had a hot hand when I was throwing the spears and I always went for the less armored Bondi.

The Vikings move up and get ready to charge. I've run out of "redeploy" room. Time for my Huscarls to earn their pay.

The Fyrd and Bondi go at it hard. Both sides taking casualties. The battle goes back and forth. For the rest of the game we each will feed more troops into this fight. My Standard Bearer, a Saxon Leader was outnumbered fight after fight. He was surrounded by corpses at the end of the night.

My 2 little Fyrd on the extreme left got cocky and charged a lone Bondi. What is the growling mouth foaming beast before them? Oh crap one of the two Viking Berserkers. They where very brave and will be missed.

The Bondi and Fyrd battle continues to rage. I feed in more Fyrd and since my archers couldn't hit anything, I threw them into the fray.

The Main lines clash! I couldn't avoid it any longer. He had Priority so he charged in and picked his fights. My response was to bring my archers off the hill to lap around the sides.

The Fyrd are heroes, tying up the 2 groups of Bondi and 2 leaders.

The Huscarl fight was hard, but I hang on. One mistake I made was not leaving myself room to fall back, In the SBG rules, if you can't fall back after loosing, you fall to the ground and your opponent gets double the attacks. This cost me 2 Huscarls.

On the far right it was a straight up fight, 3 vs 3, but his troops were better. After the first round, it's a 2 vs 2.

At this point The Vikings reached 50% casualties, which means for them to charge they would have to take a moral test every time. And it was late so we had to call it. I was 1 or 2 models from breaking myself. It was a Saxon Victory but costly. The Vikings will have to sail back home licking their wounds till next year.

The rules worked very very well for Dark Ages. We will do this again. Time to make up some army lists as opposed to using LOTR stats. Also I have a small campaign in mind.

Historicon 2013 Day 2

Another long day, but it's at HISTORICON!

It's late, not much to say. Uploading 198 photo's. Should be done about 3am. Will post the link in the morning. Got to get up and get ready for the flea market.

Later.

Update: All photo's updated, here's the link

2nd day photo's

Historicon 2013 Day one

Greetings Wargamers,

I will type this recap as I upload 172 pictures to Photobucket. Stressing out the Hotels network!

It's the end of the first day of Historicon. Or if you are checking the time stamp, 37 minutes into the 2nd day. A very long day. Actually our trip started Tuesday as we came down early to tour some Civil War battlefields prior to the convention.

We hit Manassas on the way to Historicon. Got there after 1pm and spent maybe 2 hours looking around the First Manassas Battle on Henry Hill. We watched the lighted map program of the battle which clearly lays out the course of events, and took the free guided walking tour. Our tour was cut a little short as it seemed the Earth was moved about 37 million miles closer to the sun. We picked 2 of the hottest days of the summer to walk around battlefields.

On Wednesday we went to the Chancellorsville Battlefield. A great thing about this battlefield, LOTS of trees. It's located just a few miles outside of Fredericksburg. We went to the Visitor Center to get info on the battle and taped to the door, "Closed Wednesdays" @#$$ $$#@ &*&^!@#. Ok now that is off my chest, we hop back in the car and go back to Fredericksburg to Barnes and Noble and get a driving Guide book for the battle.

A bit of a pain, but in the end well worth it. Figuring out the 1st day engagements and then driving Jackson's actual flank march route is pretty cool. I think we as wargamers tend to discount the effect terrain has on battles. Bull Run is not a little stream to cross. The woods in this section of Virginia are no joke. So Jackson had to follow small tracks and back roads to flank the Union. We enjoyed it immensely.

On to Historicon! First day had a battle of Dystopian Wars in the morning. My Brits drove off the French, but at a cost. Lots of things get destroyed during the game. Fun game but I don't think I'll dive in. At 12noon the doors to best wargaming shopping in America opened. It was not long before I started spending money. Not as much as I thought I would, or I have in the past. My unpainted pile is too great, and I'm really trying hard to be disciplined  about my shopping.

I picked up the new Ronin rules from Osprey. When I get home we will bust out some Clan War figs and have at it. I had a 2pm game but completely forgot about it in the shopping rush. No biggie. I made a great score in the flea market. I picked up some rare/oop LOTR figures beautifully painted for less than the cost new or current prices. He had so much he couldn't get it on the table or unwrapped fast enough. I dropped maybe $150 there. I didn't mean too, but some of this stuff I've been looking for for months on ebay.

36 minutes elapsed and 30 pics uploaded. I will need to sleep soon and finish post in the morning.

After the flea market a quick late lunch and back outside to cross what felt like the surface of the sun to get to the car/oven. Holy Cow is it hot. Here's a tip, near the hotel, is a Sheetz, gas and convenience store. Go inside and they have a beer room, It's essentially a walk in freezer. Shear heaven on a day like today. And it's stocked with BEER!

Back to the hotel at 6 to set up our Ancients battle Ipsos, which I forgot to take pictures of. 172 pictures and not one of our game we ran. Hmmmm.

Anyway Good night. I will finish the post in the morning when the pictures finish uploading.

Ok it's now 8AM and I am up, bleary eyed but up. All 172 pics uploaded. It was too late to sort thru the pics and delete the really crappy ones, I apologize. Also I tried to take pics of a given table all at the same time, but occassionally something caught my eye and I went back and took pictures out of order. If the GM's had a rulebook out or some sort of sign, I snap a picture of that as well. Other than that, I snap the pics and move on.

Enjoy, Xin

Slideshow:
http://s158.photobucket.com/user/Xintao/slideshow/Historicon%202013%20Day%201

Rohan Tower

I registered to run a LOTR game at NJCon5( LINK). Boy did my ego write a check that my painting hand could not cash. I figured I had 6 weeks and it would be a motivation to paint troops. So the scenario I submitted for the game was a Uruk-Hai raid on a Rohan Village. I had no village, no Rohan painted and only about half the Uruk-Hai painted. How's that for motivation? I had a few Aces up my sleeve, but more on that later. This is about Rohan buildings. Well one building, ran out of time for the others.

Games Workshop had some building guides/ templates of Rohan buildings, once upon a time. These were purged from their website during a redesign. I swear to God GW goes out of it's way to shoot itself in the foot over and over again. Why have a website that is useful for gamers? Why have a website that is THE go to site for help modeling and gaming and painting for YOUR models? Really they make money inspite of their best efforts. Once again I digress.

 I spent some time hunting around the net, asking on message boards, digging thru my 6 year collection of White Dwarfs. I finally got a hit. A very nice person that goes by the name of Haywire on TMP emailed me scans of the articles I was looking for. Excelsior!!! Now I just needed a time machine to be able to make what I needed. I did manage to squeeze in a enough time for the Rohan Watch Tower. Click on the pictures for bigger versions.

The instructions have a template. You print them out and trace them on to Balsa Wood. So I did just that. Then you are supposed to use an x-acto knife to cut out the pattern.

Fortunately I had a Craftsman Scrollsaw that I picked up a garage sale years ago

I printed out the pattern on to cardstock paper, and cut out each piece. Then it was simple just to trace this out on to the balsa wood

After carefully using the scroll saw I get this

I used some Fine grain sandpaper to smooth the edges down. With all the pieces cut out I'm ready to begin construction. My base is. a piece of MDF board I had. Cut big enough for the tower and a little extra all around. I also beveled the edges with a grinder. I applied a generous amount of Liquid Nail glue to the base of each support and put in the floor of the raised platform. Sometimes as things dry they shift some I placed some heavy objects around the tower to prevent that. Just touching each corner so there was no room for the tower to start leaning in any direction. Let dry overnight.

 Next I glued in the decorative supports. I had to sand the back corner where it attached to the support posts to make a smooth fit. Oops almost forgot at this point I also did a textured ground with Gel Medium/ mixed with sand.

While that was drying I started on the roof. I didn't read the text of the instructions and could have just made the roof out of card stock, but had already cut out Balsa wood. The Cardstock would have been easier as you can just tape it together. I had to glue the roof together, after taping it. Better to just use the cardstock.

Next up are the sides of the tower platform. You have to cut out the wall panel, support post and a front and back piece. The wall panel is one piece that you score with a pen to make it look like it's several planks. You alternate the support post and wall panels. Gluing a strip of balsa along the back and front to hold it all together. I also ran a bead of glue between the wall panels and support posts. You make a section for each side. On one side you have to leave space for the ladder.

Now Teddy Bear Fur time. Using the same template pieces you had for the roof, cut out your Teddy Bear Fur to match. Glue to the roof. Take as much care as possible to cover the seams. Once this is dry the instructions say to use a one to one mixture of white glue and water to wash down the fur. This will give it a "thatched" look. I just eyeballed it, kept adding water or glue till I got a consistency I liked. This took a long time to dry.

I did a test fit with the roof on the tower, and there was a big gap between the roof and the top of the support posts. So to correct that I cut 4 pieces to go along the top of the support posts. Then sanding the back corner to make them fit flush to the main corner posts.This covered the gap and looked pretty good. You can see an unpainted Eowyn in the tower. You might have to trim back the corners of the roof to fit snug. I had to.

That's it, ready to paint. Oh wait, I did the ladder with just strips of balsa wood, easy peasy. I did a dark brown(Americana craft paint: Asphaltum) on the tower with a drybrush of Gray (GW: Dawnstone). The fur roof I did with....uhm I can't remember. But it was a yellow brown then drybrushed with the same yellow brown and White mixed in.

Add in some Army Painter grass tufts, Poison Ivy and some static grass and your done.(Link)

I'll have a Battle Report up soon.

As for the rest of the stuff I needed. I had to sub in some non Rohan buildings for my village. A good friend of mine, Dowvoovoo, painted up the Warriors of Rohan and I did manage to squeeze out 18 Riders of Rohan. For the Uruk-hai, I cheated and bought some painted stuff off ebay. I'll post up some pics of the Riders shortly.

Cheers, Xin,

If anyone wants the file of Rohan Buildings leave me a comment. And I'll try to get that out to you.

Dwarven Forge Kickstarter

I have joined my first Kickstarter Campaign, the Dwarven Forge Game Tiles. I should have jumped on the Reaper Bones KS, but I waited to long. I have wanted Dwarven Forge dungeon pieces for a long time now. The price was always a big barrier for me. Now with this Kickstarter, it brings the new Game Tiles within reach.

Here is the intro video to the KS campaign:


Now I just have to wait till October.

Cheers, Xin