Some games of Saga and stuff.

 My good friend Chris and I have been planning some games for when we can get together which will hopefully be soon? One of those games could be the 'Horror' version of the skirmish game 'a Fistful of Lead'. We talked about some adventures searching for vampire graves as a possible scenario so I made some gravestones, a few with a spooky, ghostly theme. These are Renedra plastic graves with ghosts from some free GW figures I had in the spares box. 

Next off the painting table were some 15mm Horse Archers for my 15mm Saracens. These were a bit of a chore, not sure why, but they took some effort to get completed. I am actually quite pleased with the finished unit which is good as I need a few more of these. 

 Finally thanks to Pete who drove up for a game today. He has been encouraging me to play second edition Saga for a while so today we gave it a go. We played two 6 point games with me playing Anglo Danes against Pete's Vikings. Happily in the first game I was able to disrupt the Viking advance and pick them off almost unit by unit including, eventually his leader for very little loss myself. However in game 2 Pete advanced his Vikings much more rapidly not allowing me time to slow his advance down. It was a close scrap but the Vikings won that game. 

These were some of my most enjoyable games of Saga, I may even be a convert? I still find the battleboards a little strange in the weighting of the powers they grant. The game seems balanced/geared towards favouring Vikings with all their attack benefits. Still I sense more games being played in the future. Thankyou Pete for a fun day of gaming. 

Moving House and first post Lockdown game.

 Moving house is a hectic and time absorbing job. Over the last 4 weeks I have had very little time to paint anything but doors and walls but I did manage to complete a couple of 15mm resin houses from 'Hovels' for my 'Soldiers of God' Crusades project. These are super buildings and great value. I have a tower to do at some point too. 

Before we moved I had completed a unit of dismounted knights which I have just managed to get based. Painting the heraldry was fun, but I got a bit fed up with blue and white stripes. 

 I also realised that the way my Crusades figures are based I would be able to use them for games of both 'Lion Rampant' and 'Dragon Rampant' if I use counters to keep score of hits. This led to me painting up some desert themed 15mm fantasy for Crusader themed games with a fantasy twist. 

So the Draconians will be a 'reduced model unit' and the goblins will be 'light foot' and I have started to write a series of 3 linked scenarios to use these figures in. 

This week I finally got my first 'post lockdown' game in, travelling back up across the Dales to Steve's house where he had set up a gaming table in his garage. We were both keen to try the 'Soldiers of God' rules so with me leading the Crusaders and Steve the Saracens we set up two small 150 point armies.

 The first couple of moves were quite slow as we got a handle on the rules. The game then advanced quite quickly. By the end of turn 5 we were both down to about half our morale total. Turn 6 saw units and leaders tumbling on both sides leaving my Crusaders with just 1 point of Morale left but the Saracens were down to 0 points so routed. 

 So a very, very narrow victory for the Crusaders. We both really enjoyed the rules and loved how the special pack of cards added random but very period specific flavour to the game. We are both keen to try another, bigger game soon. We got a few things wrong probably, but another read through of the book should see us get it right next game. Now, what would I be best to paint next, the bathroom door or more Crusaders?