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Monday, March 11, 2013

Ongoing Saga

It was a Saga filled weekend. Painted Saturday until I had to leave for Gamescape demo game, Saturday evening for a couple hours, and again Sunday morning and evening. Was in the completion phase of a lot of figures so now I have 26 more done and table ready. Also made some movement sticks from dowels and roofed one house.

Saturday's demo at Gamescape was four points. I trotted out a mix of the Celts and Vikings as the Norse Gaels who I hadn't played before. Went normal hearthguard, dane axe hearthguard, and two warrior units with javelins. Squeaked out a victory in Clash of Warlords against the Vikings being played by Aaron and the new guy he was teaching.

Sunday's game at Endgame I fielded 6 points of straight up Vikings against Wynn's Normans, mostly being Rohirrim pressed in for the trial, in the Escort scenario. I got one baggage element of cows off and killed his Warlord. He destroyed my other two baggage elements of sheep. Thus a draw. Could have claimed a victory by racing another element of baggage off if I hadn't gone for the Warlord kill in my last move.  I have a few pictures of this game. Will need to upload them and add them to this post if they aren't too bad.

We had two questions on the scenario. Found the answer to one in the errata in The Raven's Shadow. Baggage elements do generate Saga dice. Fortunately this was also the interpretation we had arrived at before finding the rule. I would still like to know how baggage are supposed to handle fatigue and exhaustion, since the one element I got off came about by using four activation dice to move the cows four times and sprint them to the edge between his right wing of cavalry that had deeply flanked me and his archers covering his center left. Since the scenario rule said baggage activates like hearthguard we took that to also include exhausting like hearthguard, given no additional guidance in the scenario. But it seems to me like that is probably too generous to peasant ox carts, flocks and herds. They should probably exhaust like levies.

Endgame is hosting a Saga campaign, probably starting April 7, run by Mike Montesa.  I started to sign up to play Vikings but changed to Welsh, to spur myself on in completing enough javelinmen and cavalry to field them. Having just cleared a lot of room on the painting table I started off most of the figures I'll need Sunday night. blocking in some base colors over the brown stained white primer already prepared.

I have a nice idea for fatigue markers. Will try to get some made up for the first campaign day and post some pictures here.






Friday, March 8, 2013

Saga Weekend

Saturday March 9
Gamescape North in San Rafael has Saga and Bolt Action on their calendar from 2PM, Saga 3-6PM. I'll be there with my Vikings.

Sunday March 10
Endgame in Oakland hosts Saga starting at 11 AM. I'm planning to make this one too.

I have nice new berserks fresh off the painting table & ready to break some heads.


Old SciFi Games

All the painting for Saga has got me thinking more about miniatures gaming in general. This morning I'm back on the idea of pulling out some old sci fi stuff and running some games using the old rules. The candidates in reverse chronological order are:

 Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader, 1st Ed.  1987
I can field Space Marines, Orks, and Squats for it. Never got any Eldar finished. Back then 40K was much more free form than it later became with all the formalization of lists and intentional obsolescence of armies for previous versions. It was a fun game. When 2nd Ed came out and demonstrated where they were going with marketing the game I broke with 40K except to drag out my old stuff once in awhile and very rarely buy some bit of additional kit in a sale or at a flea market. Still have those Eldar & additional bits of the other armies to paint after all...

Laserburn, 1980
Bryan Ansell's pre-40K sci fi skirmish game, published by Tabletop Games. The figures are Citadel's first foray into sci fi lead. I remember it being a pretty fun set of rules. Re-reading it after the release of 40K you can see the germs of some of the style and ideas that became 40K. I really like the guys with the pseudo-Egyptian headdress. These are true 25mm, before the 40K scale creep.

Space Marines, 1977
 FanTac games, later FGU. Stan Johansen figures. Its setting later morphed into the Space Opera RPG. I have the rules and a few of the figures done (more bare lead picked up in a bargain box at Gamescape some years ago) and it can easily take other figures. Have had these rules since they were new but don't think I've ever actually played it. The figures are true 25mm. Notice the name and date in relation to GW's recent Amazon claims.

Starguard 1969
The grandaddy of them all.  McEwan Miniatures space skirmish game that I got into in its second edition with a starter pack from Lou Zocchi's wonderful newsprint catalog back in my early teens. This and Chainmail were my first staple miniatures games. I have my old stuff, Lee Forester's old stuff from when he got out of the game and expanded my collection maybe ten years back when John McEwan turned up at a convention I was at and some of that new stuff is painted. McEwan was on the small side of 25mm even in the 70s, more like 22mm. I don't think I ever fielded the Terrellians in their Hawaiian shirts in a game, its time to DO IT.

Might be fun to do a few Saturday night or game store games and work up a scenario series to run at conventions, sort of a sci fi gaming retrospective.