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.

My Saga: Age of Magic Otherworld warband is complete.

As mentioned in an earlier post, here I decided that most of my Warriors would be made from the North Star plastic Frostgrave Cultists box set. Well, I finally finished them off over the weekend just gone, and here they are;

As you can see, there are two groups of eight, all wearing a red/purple/lavender theme, with hooded faces. They are not all equipped the same, some have spears, others swords, axes and clubs. Some are carrying shields. Most of the shields are from the Cultist box, but there are also a couple of oblong shields from the Ghost Archipelago Snake Men set and also one or two small targets from the Perry plastic late mediaeval European Mercenaries box. I wanted these guys to have an almost uniform appearance but also have a degree of individuality, and I think that I have succeeded in this aim.

So, now they will have to make an appearance on the tabletop, and their first outing will be this coming Sunday at the club.

Another Sword and Spear Fantasy rules AAR

Well, there will be pictures and a few comments about the battle, but really I want to muse on the subject of using the rules to create killer armies and whether this is a Good Thing or not.

The battle was between my Hyborian Barbarian horde and Nick's Orcs, augmented by some Meerkats who clearly didn't fancy a career in selling insurance products. Both sides were pretty equally matched in numerical terms.

I decided to put all my heavy foot units on my centre-left and place my cavalry out on my right.

Nick had a lot of medium foot, some heavy foot and a lot of shooty types, including Orc cannon.

Unhappily, his cannon were directly opposite my shieldwall of heavy foot, supported by longbows. My elite foot were soon getting shot at. The problem with Heavy Foot in S&SF is that they are slow moving and pretty much useless until they get into combat, assuming that they don't get killed off by ranged attacks.

I had skirmishers out on my left. I had no great expectations from them, they were just there to slow things down a bit.

My cavalry on the right were there with one aim, sweeping through all the defenders and then trying to roll up Nick's line. After all, they aren't much use for anything else.

My skirmishing bows were typically hopeless at turning Orcs into pin cushions. I sent a pack of wolves into combat and some light horse with javelins. Neither lasted very long.

My heavy foot plodded across the gap to try and assault the Orc cannon battery.

Elsewhere, I got my Giant and a Hero into action. The Giant huffed and puffed, and was then swiftly vanquished. The Hero held on for a bit longer, but soon joined the tribal ancestors, feasting with the Gods of Battle .

Progress was slow. My activation dice rolls weren't helping. Most of my barbarians are Discipline 4, so I have to consistently roll high numbers to do anything.

My cavalry had some success, seeing off some annoying bow-armed Orcs, but my line was disrupted by some stupid manoeuvres on my part.

The long, slow march of the Hyborian heavy foot was nearly over and they would soon be wielding their axes and war hammers against the Orcish artillery.

Because of my hopeless handling of my cavalry, I ended up with my right flank exposed to attack. I hastily reorganised things.

A unit of Trolls assaulted my heavy foot Luckily, I had been able to get them to face their attack and not get hit in the flank.

Finally, my heavy foot were fighting, and making short work of those guns. Hurrah, a success at last. My second shieldwall unit was ready to charge the archers. Surely, this would be a mere formality?

My lonely cavalry unit was unable to do anything, being marooned in a forest, which negated all their advantages.

The titanic struggle for the hill would decide the battle. Unfortunately, my barbarians were obviously a bit puffed out from all the walking they had had to do to get there and were making hard work of actually fighting.

Before long, the Trolls and Orc cavalry were around behind my shieldwall. Not a good thing.

My cave-dweller foot were fighting for their lives against the Meerkat cavalry. I have no idea what those longbowmen were going to do.

This was where we called time. I had lost a lot of troops and simply couldn't win. 

So, this is where I start musing. Nick made the sensible observation that my army is too difficult to control, because the units have mostly poor discipline or are undrilled, so that their heavy-hitting impact abilities are wasted because they are tricky to get into combat positions where they have the advantage. I agree with this, but it seems to me that apart from the well-drilled Shieldwall veteran foot, barbarians should be hard to control. That is why they hang around in hordes, pillaging stuff and feasting to the sound of the lamentations of the women of their enemies, instead of building cities and holding symposiums on subjects like "Is pillaging a dying art and would reviving it be a backwards step?".

It seems to me that making more of the units Discipline 3 and removing the Undrilled attribute wherever possible is inherently antithetical to the whole Barbarian Horde way of doing things. I could try and create a killer army, smaller and more expensive, but with biddable units of well-drilled and obedient soldiers, but that would mean that they were no longer barbarians., so, on balance, I much prefer them to charge off impetuously and hope that the War Gods are with them rather than employing those sneaky civilised ideas of strategy, tactics and obeying orders. Yes, the worse the discipline, the harder it is to remove the effects of broken morale, but that is surely part and parcel of being a barbarian? Winning and smiting is great, but when the going gets tough, the horde melts away. That is, after all, why smart barbarian warlords fairly soon tend to look for alternate employment as generals and mercenary commanders in civilised armies (where, of course there is always the possibility of mounting a successful coup d'etat and replacing the incumbent ruler).

I do think, though, that my army needs more than three commanders, so next time, there will be an additional captain on the field of glory.

Bad Squiddo Dwarves and Amazons

Annie Norman at Bad Squiddo has a new Kickstarter running at the moment. There are two separate sets of figures, Dwarves and Amazons.

People who follow this blog will probably remember that sample Dwarf figure that I painted up recently, and the rest of the Dwarves are similarly excellent figures. There are a number of really useful models available; A Captain, a Thief, two Champions, two Berserkers, a Wizard, a Bard, a Rogue, a Monk and a Ranger, which pretty much covers all the bases for a band of Dwarvish adventurers for a wide variety of fantasy rule sets.

The Amazons set is similarly varied, featuring a Captain with two Bodyguards, two Elite Guards, an Assassin, a Musician, an Archer, a Spearguard, a Champion (accompanied by a guinea pig sprite) and two "little wolves", who are two Amazon girls.

As with all Kickstarters, there is a range of pledges, up to a huge one which gives you two sets of both ranges, plus all the stretch goals.

You can also buy into bundles of existing figures from the Bad Squiddo collection, including some excellent resin scenic items, many of which were formerly part of the Ristul range.

A standard bearer for my Papal Condotta

A while ago, a wargaming friend of mine, Joe McGinn got in touch to say that a friend of his at the Hailsham wargaming club, who makes flags was offering to make me a flag to use with my Italian Renaissance condottieri forces. Well, what could I say, apart from a very firm "Yes please!"?

As it turned out, Mike (for that is his name) actually made me not one but two flags, and linen ones at that! One is a cavalry standard and the other one for foot troops.

I've had the flags for a while now but I've finally got around to getting a small vignette made and painted for the foot standard, and here it is;

First, from the right, showing the detail. The arms are those of Pope Alexander VI, otherwise known as Rodrigo de Borja (Rodrigo Borgia in Italian);

Now, from the left;

And finally, a frontal view;

The Borgia Papacy lasted from August 1495 until August 1503. Rodrigo was born in Valencia, in what is now Spain and his birth name was Roderic Llançol i de Borja in the Valencian language, which is related to Catalan and is one of the Romance languages descended from spoken Vulgar Latin.

Rodrigo Borgia studied in Bologna as a young man and, after the appointment of his uncle as Pope Callixtus III in 1456, Rogdrigo entered the Church. Aged 25, he was was ordained as a Deacon and created a Cardinal-Deacon. From then on he rose steadily through the ranks, eventually becoming Pope. His Papacy is notorious for nepotism, scandals, vice and debauchery, but we need to remember that this was Renaissance Italy, and Papal excesses were hardly a new thing. The Borgia were just more open about it, as well as being hugely successful. 

Cesare was Rodrigo Borgia's second son with his mistress Vannozza dei Cattanei and was originally destined for a life in the Church, being ordained as a cardinal but became a soldier and politician on the death of his elder brother. He was granted the title Duke of Valentinois by the French King Louis XII in 1498 and spent much of his life fighting to create a Borgia "state" in central Italy. He fought as a condottiero for Louis XII.

The vignette comprises two Perry plastic 28mm figures, one wearing Papal livery as the standard bearer and the other as a man-at-arms on foot in full armour, protecting the standard. I decided to put the standard bearer on a small mound, to give him more prominence on the field of battle