A Crusading Clash - First Game of SAGA

A Syrian Emir prepares to lead his host to glorious victory over the Frankish invaders

Last week the Conscripts tried "SAGA: Crescent and The Cross" on the table for the first time.  I had completed a four-point warband of Crusaders back in the late winter of this year, and finished a four-point warband of Saracens to oppose them this fall.  It was time to get them on to the table for a showdown in the Holy Land, and last Thursday was the day!

Among our gaming group Byron is the only one who had any significant experience playing the unique "SAGA" rules, although he had not yet tried the "Crescent and The Cross". I was the next most-senior SAGA player - and I had tried it once, four or five years ago, with a game of Vikings vs. Saxons that my good friend Curt had hosted for me in Regina.  So safe to say that overall our group was still very new to the SAGA experience.

A view of the board at the beginning of the game - nobody wanted to touch the uneven ground in the wadi...the Saracens are on the left, and the Crusaders on the right.

And it is a unique gaming experience. SAGA fuses a basic and easy skirmishing system with an at-times-complex system of abilities and activations derived from a faction's "battle board".  Dice are rolled and allocated by players who must balance the use of the dice to activate the different elements of their warband with the use of special abilities that will help their warband succeed.  The "battle board" serves as a sort of dash board to command the warband.

Christian Knights move out...

Crossbows on the flank in cover, while stout spearmen hold the centre of the Crusader lines...

We lined up a very basic starting scenario, imagining a clash somewhere east of Jerusalem in the early 12th century. The victors would be the warband who gained more "slaughtering victory points" than the other. Sounds about right to me! Bill, Byron and Frederick played the Saracen warband, while Dallas, Mike and Dave V took up the Crusaders' cause.

Mounted archers ride forward on the Saracen flank.

While new to our group, I know SAGA is enormously popular in the gaming world, so folks reading this might chuckle that a pair of four-point warbands managed to occupy six gamers and one guy with charts. But given how new we were to the SAGA system, it worked out pretty well.  I certainly enjoyed watching the group planning discussions as the SAGA dice were rolled and decisions were made about which groups to activate, or which abilities needed to be used. Those decisions are the core of the game, and are where a lot of the fun lies.

Ghulams prepare to charge the Crusaders...

The Crusaders prepare to respond...

Bang! Lances are splintered, shields shattered etc...

The opponents opted for some careful missile fire early on, while maneuvering their Knights and Ghulams for charges to come later.  And charge they did! The Christian Knights crashed into the Ghulams on a couple of consecutive turns.  Blood spilled to the sand of the Holy Land as Knights and Ghulams fell in battle.  The Saracen horse archers, meanwhile, got the better of the Crusader crossbowmen, and the Crusader spearmen were not able to make much of an impression on the Saracen horse archers.

The forces clash! More fatigue tokens and fewer Knights are the result...

Ghulams holding the line...

The Warlord steadies his lines of Ghulams...

The Saracen players made the best of their battle board abilities, which seemed to me to be, in many cases, gambles of fate, which didn't always work out for them.  The Crusaders, for their part, tried to leverage their own powerful battle board, but found themselves restricted at times by the need to roll for "virtues" before getting access to some of the stronger capabilities.

Crossbows emerge to shower the Saracens with bolts...

But it doesn't seem to have an effect...

The Saracen spearmen stand ready, but were not required at the end of the matter...

In the end it was a narrow victory for the Saracen warband, and God was left to sort out the souls of the departed warriors...

I'm pretty sure we still screwed up some rules, but overall SAGA is a lot of fun. It is not (and does not try to be) an exacting or careful historical simulation.  It is more of a dramatic, story-driven clash. As I told the group last week, I have been wanting to play a miniatures game set in the Crusades for a long, long time, as the period is so fascinating for me. So it was a real thrill to finally see one happen! 

My terrier Spencer is exhausted from all of the gaming action, so he takes a nap on the floor :)

Hopefully we can try SAGA again in the future. In the interim, I'll try and bulk out the warbands a little bit, as six-point warbands would fill the table up a little more, and give the players some different options in terms of structuring their warband units differently (like a 12-model unit of warriors, for example).

Thanks again to everyone for coming out to play and try the new (to us) rules!

Saracen Flag Bearer for SAGA

"Saracen" war banner bearer for my SAGA warband

This is a bit of an extra for my Saracen warband in "SAGA: Crescent and the Cross".  This is a flag bearer, which I believe can be swapped in among the hearthguard to help lower fatigue levels of the warriors in the game.  My Crusader warband has a battleflag bearer, so I thought it would be good to do one up as well for the Saracen warriors.

Beautiful, fluid feeling of movement to these incredible Perry sculpts

As with the other figures, this is a 28mm sculpt from the Perry twins' First Crusade range. I will again rave about just how gorgeous these sculpts are.  They are just lovely and a lot of fun to paint. I even enjoyed hand-painting the shield this time - perhaps a sign that I am getting into a bit of a groove when it comes to painting historical warriors.

Charge!

The flag itself is a banner from Maverick Models.  I believe, strictly speaking, it is actually a Mahdist banner from the uprising in Sudan, 800 years or so after the First Crusade, which is a fairly significant historical whiff on my part, but I needed an arabic-looking, basic banner and this seemed to work, so I'm going with it for now...I can always cut it off and replace it later.

As with the other "Saracen" figurs, I tried to work some bold and brighter colours into the mix

In addition to some bonuses for his fellow Saracen warriors in SAGA, this figure will also be able to join a command group in a game such as "Hail Caesar", which I still harbour dreams/notions/delusions of playing in 28mm some day.  With nine arab heavy cavalry models already painted for the SAGA warband, it would not be a stretch to add a musician and a few more warriors to make a heavy cavalry unit for "Hail Caesar" (or a couple of more "points" for SAGA, for that matter).

So the two rival warbands are ready for SAGA action. Considering I ordered the figures back in January that isn't a totally terrible turnaround time.  Hope to put them into action on the Fawcett gaming table this fall!

In terms of what's next for painting (because I must always be painting something, or I'll lose my mind), I will be turning next to another historical subject, one that has been absent from my painting table for quite a while...stay tuned!

More Arab Heavy Cavalry - First Saracen Warband Completed!

Arab heavy cavalry in 28mm, sculpts from Perry Miniatures (and they are AMAZING!)

After returning from the lake this summer, and following a good long streak of general focus on 30k and science fiction painting, I resolved to try and finish a basic, four-point Saracen Warband for "SAGA: Crescent and the Cross".  The warlord had already been painted, but he was all alone, so throughout September I concentrated on the fighting elements for the warband.  I am excited to share that, with the completion of these four figures, I have completed the basic warband!

Ready to repel the Frankish invaders!

These four figures are, once again, from the Perry Brothers incredible 28mm First Crusade collection.  They are beautiful sculpts.  These four mounted warriors represent one "point" of hearthguards in the SAGA game.  These warriors are armed with bows in addition to their lances, so will provide some flexibility for the Saracen player on the table.

Colourful AND heavily armed and armoured...a challenge to paint, but lots of fun when they are finished!

I have been griping about painting shields throughout this process, but in this case I was a little smarter with the shields I selected.  I made sure I had some flat ones for this group, and that meant I could use the amazing transfers from LBMS on a couple of them. Yay!

These fellows carry bows as well, a little more flexible in terms of fighting options on the table, I think

So with these fellows completed, that's a four-point warband, ready for action on the gaming table. I'm pretty happy with how all of the different colours look on these different warriors.  The Perry sculpts are just amazing, with incredible detail and an impression of motion that I find so suitable for the period. It's also been fun to overcome a bit of a mental block in terms of tackling a new period for historical gaming that I hope to dive further into going forward.

The completed four-point Saracen warband, ready for a basic SAGA game

The Saracen warlord in the middle, surely thrilled to have some warriors to command in his struggle against the Crusaders....

Even better, they will be able to tangle with the Crusader warband I finished earlier this year. Hopefully we will be able to share some SAGA gaming on the tables of the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts later this fall!

Saracen Heavy Cavalry for SAGA

Saracen heavy cavalry for SAGA

More progress on my 28mm Saracen Warband for "SAGA: Crescent and the Cross".  This is to be a basic four-point warband, and I have manged to finish the first two "points", eight spearmen and eight mounted archers.  That left two "points" worth of figures to go, and these would be the "hearthguards", which in the Saracen warband are represented by heavy cavalry.  These are 28mm metal castings from the Perry brothers' incredible First Crusade range.

Taken as a youth from Russia or perhaps somewhere around the Crimea? Who knows?

As the hearthguards are made of tougher stuff than the warriors, a "point" of them gets you correspondingly fewer models, with four models per "point".  Mounted on fine horses, sporting heavy armour and an assortment of lances and other nasty weapons, these heavy cavalry will fight to the last in defence of their Emir and his lands.

That warhammer doesn't look so big, but I bet it hurts...

As with the mounted archers, I have found that there seemed to be no specific, formal uniform for these warriors, and some could be equipped in very colourful garb beneath the chain mail and lamellar armour, so I tried to put a nice variety of colours on these warriors.  I also tried to paint a hint of a pattern here or there on some of the clothing to show its fine work, but that manner of painting is mostly beyond my skills so the efforts on that score were limited.

Hand-painted shields are so fun...NOT.  Oh well, they kind of blend together from two-feet away, which works for me.

As before, the shields make me mental, but I've got some decent momentum rolling along on this project so I'm able to tune out the frustrations and just power through.  And I was able to get an LBMS transfer on one of the warriors, which is a nice touch!

A different angle showing some of the horse furniture and different clothing and equipment

Some of the warriors may have been slaves, "Ghulams", so I painted one warrior with blonde hair, representing a warrior who may have been taken from somewhere in Europe as a youth and found his way down the retinue of an Emir, having grown into a loyal warrior in service of his Lord.

Ready for the charge!

With these painted, I have only one "point" of hearthguards to go before the basic warband is complete.  I hope to share those final figures shortly!

Painting Challenge Submission 14 - Something New - 28mm Crusaders

28mm Crusading troops from Perry Miniatures

The Crusades have always fascinated me, and the notion of gaming the period has captivated me for a long time. But I have avoided diving into the period for a variety of reasons over the years - the more I studied, it felt like the less I knew, and I wasn't sure where or how to get started figure wise, and the hesitation was enough to keep me avoiding it.  Some cool submissions in this edition of Painting Challenge (like Stephen S's Hospitallers), however, finally inspired me and decided to jump in.  After pondering some different scales and rules, I figured the quickest route to getting a game in would be a skirmish game.  With that in mind I thought I would start with SAGA.  For figures, I opted for the wonderful 28mm sculpts from the Perry twins.


These figures represent the beginnings of a four-point Crusader warband for SAGA. There are eight warriors and one knight (the test model).  These figures arrived on a Friday night two weeks ago and I was pretty keen to get started so I spent that night and the next day preparing and priming the figures, with paint beginning on the Sunday.  For the foot troops I used some flattened steel spears I had lying around, while the Knight retains the cast pewter lance which came with him.  I love the steel spears, and I can see why folks go for them...


While SAGA is a skirmish game, I based the figures on squares/rectangles so they could slot into movement trays to take part in games of "Hail Caesar" that I hope to do sometime well down the road.  That will be a long, long time away, but a guy can daydream, right? :) In the meantime, my focus will be to get enough stuff painted so we can try SAGA with the Thursday night gang at Dallas' place.

Some fun freehand painting on the shields - tried to do some very simple mono-coloured ones to match some more complex ones as well

Painting fellows wearing chain mail is relatively straightforward, but as I had been contemplating this project one major stumbling block in my mind has always been the shields - specifically the patterns on them.  I hoped to work around that using decals from LBMS, but my order of shield transfers had not yet arrived and I was so fired up by the surprising success of the Winnipeg Jets two weeks ago I didn't want to wait to get started, so I just did the best I could by panting freehand.  It turned out OK.  I have still have no idea what the story is with the patterns on the shields, but for now, I'm trying to "fake it till I make it."

How did this happen? The Jets racked up a rare win a couple weeks ago against the struggling Habs...good for painting movtivation, but bad for the Habs...

I find preparing the Perry castings can be a chore, but as Curt has often said to me it's worth it in the end, as these were a real joy to paint and I absolutely love the sculpts.  It's always a great feeling when a new project offers such a nice jolt.

The spears are flattened steel - this is the first time I have used them, and I see why people prefer them...

While these figures are meant to take part in games set in the Crusades, I suspect they might do for a variety of different settings where Normans were involved, from battles in Italy and Sicily to service as mercenaries for a later Byzantine force, among a few options.

The star of any Crusading setting - a Knight! Can't wait to finish more of these fellows.

This submission has eight 28mm foot figures and one mounted 28mm figure. The painting minions kindly chipped in a few extra for the hand painted shields, so I netted 54 points in total for this submission. This assortment represents about one third of the Crusader Warband and I have been working to finish the balance during this Challenge. I hope I can make a start on their Saracen opponents as well.  The Hobby Gods will it!