Big uglies!

These three Big Ugly Chaps with clubs are 28mm plastic figures by Reaper Bones, from their "Black" range. They are sold as Garghuk, Ogre Chieftain but I see them as a variety of jötnar, the plural of jötunn, the Norse name for a range of creatures that are often just called "giants", although in Norse mythology many jötnar appear to be human-sized, the goddess Skaði is a jötunn for example, as is Gerðr, the wife of the Vanir god, Freyr. Odin, the king of the gods is descended from the jötnar too.

Anyway, as well as jötnar being giants, they might also be what we call trolls or ogres too. These figures are pretty imposing, being around 6cm tall, but not really big enough to be a Behemoth.

I am going to use these three as bipedal Creatures in a Saga: Age of Magic Horde warband based around my Bad Squiddo shieldmaidens.

I want to use some mounted figures for my Horde, so I have bought a number of mounted shieldmaidens who I need to get painted, ideally before the end of the year.

If you want to see my shieldmaidens, they can be found in a series of posts, here.

Of course, these could also come in handy in a Dragon Rampant force, too.

Saga: Age of Magic - my Otherworld army gets a run out

Yesterday at the club, we had one of our occasional all-day sessions. This was a great opportunity to get my daemonic Otherworld warband (made mainly from Frostgrave figures, with Alternative Armies Creatures) on the table for some Saga: Age of Magic. This was going to be a learning experience as I'n not played with this faction before. I fell into the trap of thinking of this as an impact army which did me no good against my first opponents, Clive's Undead.

These Undead are a terrific-looking army, with an Ancient Egyptian theme.

Unfortunately, for me anyway, they are also a very shooty army, with lots of bow-equipped warriors.

I plunged ahead, trying to get my best killy units into combat, with the Hunters leading the way. They didn't last long, succumbing to a lot of accurate shooting. Still, I had high hopes for my Creatures.

I used Portal to get my Hearthguard into a position to charge. Two powerful units ready to bust the Undead line apart. What could possibly go wrong?

Ha! What could go wrong was getting shot at. My Behemoth and the Creatures were targeted first.

By the time the Creatures had taken a lot of Fatigue, they were easy meat for some Undead Warriors.

My Behemoth and Warlord were the next targets to suffer.

Also, the sad failure of my Hearthguard, who despite gaining Resilience via Astral Bond and were still unable to take out the Undead archers.

With the Behemoth gone, again due to shooting, my Warlord was the next one to fall.

We called time on the game. I had virtually no Saga dice left.  We set up a second game. This time I was opposed by Clive's High Elf Great Kingdom army, led by Matt, who was new to the game, with assistance from Clive.

I learnt from my mistakes and set up with all my troops in the cover of woods.

I waited to see how things would develop. Not only did the Elves have bows, they also had a Dragon and a Hero on a Pegasus.

The Elven Hearthguard was in two groups of four. My Sorcerer soon managed to get one group reduced to two figures, using a combination of Rift and the Bolt and Drain Life spells.

My Hunters were getting shot at by Elven bow Levies. So, I charged them, with predictable results. 

One Hunter left. I advanced some Warrior Cultists through the woods.

I used Portal to move my Creatures behind the Elven line, threatening the weak Hearthguard unit.

Elsewhere, the other Hearthguard led the Warlord and Sorcerer into the attack. My Warriors in the woods were having success with Abyssal Breath to shoot at the bow levies.

After some manoeuvres, Matt managed to move his weakened Hearthguard out of charge range, so I used Portal again to bring my Creatures back across the table. The green jewels indicate that they are sheltering behind the Elemental Barrier spell.

I'd given up worrying about the Dragon marooned out on my left, but I really needed to charge those bow Levies with my Creatures.

With clever use of the board, the Levies moved out of the way, and the Elven Lion Creatures charged my Creatures, utterly obliterating them.

Things went from bad to worse and eventually, I threw everything into a reckless attack, which was spectacularly unsuccessful. Another loss for the Otherworldly Daemons.

However, it wasn't all bad. My Sorcerer was really effective, using Drain Life with a fair amount of success, but, more importantly to use the spell to remove fatigue. I think, also, that I am beginning to learn how to play with this faction. More games are required.

More Daemons .....................

............... for my Otherworld Saga AoM band.

These are going to be my Creatures, clearly bipedal ones. I've had these figures hanging around for absolutely ages. They are from Alternative Armies, I think, and I bought them because I had an idea for a possible Alien Squad Leader army in which I thought they would work. In the end, I changed my mind about the army and they've sat around waiting to be useful. Now, their moment has arrived.

I decided to keep to my red colour scheme for my daemonic entities with these guys, but vary it slightly by adding orange to the palette.

As you can see in this shot, they are basically just giant mouths on legs, which seems pretty daemonic to me and are the kind of thing that are best left in a different dimension, not being summoned by accidentally reading a spell in a hoary old tome found in a dusty and forgotten corner of a library in an old house with a bad reputation.

Here you can see them from above, showing how I brought out the scaly plates on their backs in orange.

I am going to use this gravelly base concept for the whole army and I decided to use this yellow. orange and red foam stuff to suggest some weird alien fungus thing.

The next part of this army project depends on me glueing North Star Snakemen and Cultists together, so I'll have to get on with that next week, as I have some other odds and ends to finish off first.