SAGA Night-Age of Chivalry

Ten days ago I had my first game of the new SAGA Universe; Age of Chivalry. Korrigan kindly lent me his French army and I took on Luis's Free Companies. We played a scenario derived from the Book of Battles, Chaos.

Free Companies with a cannon.

The French with Jean D'arc

More French beautifully painted by Korrigan

A lot of back and forth.

Warlord on Warlord, nothing like having bodyguards. A French Victory!

I had a lot of fun with this game and the battle boards are quite interesting. All I have to decide now which Army I will pick, there are quite a few......but more about that later.

Midgard-First Game

We had our first game of Midgard a couple of weeks at PY's. PY played the Romans while I played the Britons (actually Saxons). We used the first scenario from the book and decided to play on a fairly open table thus not having to utilise the terrain rules.

My troops are in the foreground, I had more warriors but no cavalry and fewer missile troops. 

The battle was quickly engaged.

A melee

Looks like my slingers are done for

Dastardly Romans

Well my reputation dropped to zero after the massive all sides melee in shown in the 2nd photo above, a nice victory for PY's Romans.

This is quite a nice ruleset and we finished our first game in a couple of hours with clear conclusion. The mechanisms were quite simple and both the rulebook and the QRS are well written. I am sure we missed things, I noticed after that I really did not use any of my army traits. We are hoping to have another game next week.

 

Kato Kiyomasa

 

1562-1611

My primary hero for my Midgard warband will be Kato Kiyomasa. If interested click on the link which will bring you to his Wikipedia entry. 

I googled his name looking for painted images of him and for an unclear reasons in at least 2 of the images he has an orange cloak. Even though a little bright, I decided to go with this colour. The rest of the colours picked are conjectural.

He is carrying a Katakana Yari.

The standard mon for Kiyomasa was an open circle, I have seen them in both blue and black. The parallel bars as seen above is a mon used by unit in Kiyomasa's army. I got bored of the open circle.

Uma-Jirushi of Kiyomasa

I will generate his specific stats when I have a better sense of the ruleset. He certainly had some interesting attributes from what history tells us.

Vietnam

I am slowly building up my Vietnam forces. From looking at the rulesets I am considering going forward with, I need to start to fill in some gaps. Chain of Command Vietnam requires a platoon aside as well as supports. I still not have received Nam68 "Tour of Duty" from Battlegroup so a little unclear in respect to figure requirement. I have a sense you need more VC/PAVN than USMC but I will have to see.

Most of my forces are from Rubicon, with some resin prints from the Gunslinger Kickstarter. I am not really enamoured of the Gunslinger figures, they are a little too heroic for me. The PAVN figures are not as  bad as  the US figures. If needed, I may buy another box of Rubicon USMC. I did need some specialised PAVN figures as well as some civilians so I recently purchased some Empress metal figures. They are nice, but maybe a little smaller than the Rubicon. 

The M48 from Rubicon was a little pricey so I bought a STL (Cults 3D) for $6.95 and the model printed well. I did have a lot of problems with the supported version which printed well in 5 parts except for the fact that no holes were placed which turned into a nightmare with the unfixed resin. I drilled holes in the model but it kept on weeping resin like a large carbuncle......lesson learned! I might print another turret because I still  having some problems with it.

DHsK HMG

M48 Patton 

Next up, I will do some civilians and I also have a PAVN Mortar team from Empress. I was hoping to put on my first Vietnam game at our club's games day at the end of January but unfortunately I will not have enough figures for a CoC Vietnam ruleset. I still do not have the POD Nam 68 game from Battlegroup, and I will not have time to familiarise myself with a new set of rules. 

Norwegian Platoon and 2025 Gaming Plans

My last partially completed figures, that I wanted to complete by the end of 2024, were my Norwegian platoon for WWII Chain of Command ruleset. These figures are almost all 3D Printed in resin. You can read about their manufacturer, organisation as well as painting scheme in 2 previous posts. I had painted almost 2 squads but I had all the Leaders, Supports and two more squads to paint to complete the platoon. I finished these on December 31st but by then the New Year festivities were starting to catch up with me, thus the delay in putting them on the blog.

Complete Platoon, the newly painted figures have yet to have snow on their bases.

Colt M29 MMG Team

Medic, Forward Observer, Sniper, 2 Senior Leaders and King Haakon!

Well it has been a pretty successful painting month, I have been isolated in the United Sates for the last month with another 2 weeks to go before I can get back to my native country. I am working on various playing aids/terrain pieces now, including for CoC, WaC, Midgard as well GdA.

2025 Aspirations

I usually do not do this, as really I play too many different rulesets now, have too many armies and warbands and have too much terrain. I have been really starting to thin things out so I basically have been subtracting rather than adding but there are some forces I would like to paint and rulesets I would like to add.

Vietnam

Still have not decided on a ruleset here, I already have several but I am looking at 2 that are still in development or I have yet to receive. A Vietnam version of CoC is being developed by John Savage, the author of What a Cowboy. He really does first class work, I am not sure if this version will be ultimately official but it looks like a lot of fun. I am waiting to receive Battle Group's latest ruleset Nam 1968. It sounds interesting and I have a sense that it is aimed at squad actions rather than platoon sized games. I am more attracted to the smaller actions but I will have to see. I still have to paint maybe 15-20 figures for a Platoon sized force for Vietnam but it is a nice project.

Midgard

This is an exciting new game which covers both historical and fantasy battles from the Classical Period to the late Middle Ages. I have a lot of figures that I can use for this including the Dark Ages in Europe as well as the Crusades. My LoTR figures which will be good for fantasy. I am also putting together a Sengoku era force for the game. Semi-official force list are presently being developed for Warring States gaming with the ruleset. This will be a long term project, as I have quite few figures to paint but I am attracted by the uniformology and well as the tactics of the period. I have printed off quite a few movement trays which the ruleset requires and am just terraining them now. 

SAGA Age of Chivalry

We should be receiving the rulebook within the month. I still have not decided on a warband or painted any figures but I see many of the players in our club already have several armies, so I am hoping to borrow some in the short term for gaming.

Gaming

I am going to try restart some games with rulesets I have not played for a while, almost exclusively from the TFL stable of games. These include Picketts Charge, Kiss me Hardy as well as Algernon Pulls it Off. 

I will of course continue CoC, GdA, WaC , M&T, Congo and SAGA as well as the Alternate History games I play including Pulp Alley, Draculas America and Carnevale. 

That should keep me busy for 2025!