Skraeling Warlord and who were the Skraelings anyway?

My postings have almost now caught up with my painting. Next up is my warlord for the Skraeling Warband. I decided to go with a scenic base here, so increased the size to 60 mm and added some decorative elements. I also thought that I would give him a name to commemorate the last chieftain of the Beothuk nation who died in the early nineteenth century. So here we have Nonosbawsut. I will get more into this below. I realized early on that I wanted to add some figures to the base. I initially thought maybe a black or polar bear, but these animals are still plentiful in Newfoundland and did not really fit the dark age/lost nation theme. I then remembered the Newfoundland Wolf, extinct since the early 20th century. It sort of fit.

Viking Beserkers

I enjoyed painting these Vikings. I believe, the last Berserker figures I had seen were some Saruman Orcs from Lord of the Rings that my son had painted some years ago. Really not that much different. Crazed animal type creatures.

In SAGA, these are a Hearthguard unit. You can use only 1 unit of Beserkers in a Viking warband, because they are so crazy I suppose. Generally Viking Hearthguard generate 2 attack dice in melee per figure, but these guys have 4 each. Very crazed indeed, but it comes with a cost as their armour is reduced from 5 to 3. The bear skins apparently do not provide much protection. This is point 2 in my 4 point starter Warband.

Skraeling Warriors (second point)

Here is my second point of Skraelings, a unit of warriors, these are the hand to hand guys. You can see that unlike the levy, they have Mohawk hair styles, a little unlikely for these guys in 1000 AD, but I will get into that bit more in my next Skraeling post. Other then that they are probably right for the period. Their clothing is all made of caribou skin and their weapons are stone.

There will be 3 units of these guys in total in my Skraeling 4 pt warband, there are no hearthguard equivalent in the Skraeling SAGA world.

SAGA Viking Bondi First Pt

My SAGA plan is to build two 4 point war bands to start, so I can test the rules. To make it simple for myself, I just went ahead with two Gripping Beast 4pt starter sets. My post from a couple of days was the Levy from the Skraelings starter set.

Simply put SAGA is a points based game, with most games being 6 points aside. To get new gamers off the ground though, it is recommended that they start with 4 point war bands. Gripping Beast sell these nice starting sets with a Warlord, and any combination of a 4 figure Hearthguard, 8 figure Warrior and 12 figure Levy. The Warlords are free. These are all metal figures and are quite nice and usually quite varied (the Skraeling Levy being a bit of an exception as you have seen in my last post). Generally the Levy are armed with bows, spears or slings, i.e. throwing weapons. The Hearthguard and Warriors are, in most cases, armed for hand to hand combat.

La Bataille pour les Deux Villages

Just a quick link to Iannick's AAR of our recent game in Montreal.

Back to Terre Neuve

I have been looking at SAGA for about 6 months now, it looks like a very innovative game, simple to play, and requires a limited number of figures. I was very attracted.

When I look at the other historical periods that I have tried over the last year (WWII, Japanese Sengoku Period), and my subsequent failure to be enthused, I believe the reason is two fold. First the Napoleonic period will always be number 1 for me, but essentially it requires an enormous amount of time to paint armies at the divisional level, and I like painting Napoleonic armies. I have had a real good go at the French, Prussian and Anglo-Portuguese, but also want to paint the Hanoverians and the Brunswickers to start. Because of this I really have little will left to paint large armies in other periods. Another period really needs to be at the skirmish level. Thirty-60 figures aside and ready to go, is what I need. I also need an interesting and well put together set of rules. I have found nothing for the Sengoku period (there is a SAGA mod, but I am really not good with mods, I need a full colour rulebook with all the extras to get me started). For WWII, I based for non skirmish gaming, it was a mistake. The IABSM rules from TooFatLardies look great, but I have to do some rebasing and I am now unsure if I should have gone with 28mm rather then 15mm.

Calpe Landwehr: New and Old

In my recent push to get figures painted for Vorwärts Montreal, the last unit painted was a Landwehr battalion.....2nd battalion/1st Regiment of the Elbe. I have yet to present them.

What is interesting about this unit though is that they are mostly comprised of what I believe are first generation sculpting by Peter Fitzgerald of Prussian Landwehr. I bought these units about 6 months ago, and initially I was a little disturbed that they were significantly different than the Calpe landwehr figures I had on hand. They looked like Calpe, but were clearly different. I confirmed on TMP that they were indeed Calpe. The more I looked at the figures though the more I liked them, so it was with pleasure that I started to paint them. Unfortunately time was at a premium so they were a little rushed, but I am good with how they eventually came out. I thought it would be interesting to look at the differences and the evolution of Peter's sculpting style.

Vorwärts Montreal

Well it is a beautiful day in Salem and the forecast looks great for Montreal for the next several days, so forward we go. I have just worked the last 7 in 9 days so I am really looking forward to the break. I am driving up with my son Simon, who I believe although happy to be home, is suffering acute withdrawal from the delights of the Montreal nightlife.


We are having our game at Chez Iannick tomorrow, and although I am sure that he will post a report on his blog Clash of Empires, I thought he would not mind me posting the initial details here.

Casualty Markers and Sub-Commander Stands

Well I have almost got everything done for the big game in Montreal this Sunday. It really has been a pretty busy time while at the same time I have worked almost every day. Essentially do a shift, come home eat something and start painting.

I had hoped to have a few more new style casualty stands done, but I find the little dice holders time consuming to make, I will have to come up with a different plan if I hope to have one for every infantry battalion and cavalry regiment. I had also hoped to have some Prussian Landwehr mounted regimental officers done, but the ones from Warlord Games only arrived yesterday.

RIR 9

It has been almost a month since I posted to the blog, time goes by! I have been quite busy with painting, but just have not had time to take a lot of photos.

I have been preparing for a trip to Montreal this coming weekend, and all though I am not the Prussian Commander, I had been tasked with bringing a Prussian brigade (division for the unaware). I had 48 infantry to paint and several command figures as well as some casualty markers to do, so I have been busy. Still have 12 infantry to go, but I suspect I will have them done in time.