Vikings

Random shots of my Vikings that I found on my phone before I deleted them. So far I am up to about 10 points of Dark Age miniatures.

Saga: Double Header

I played a double header of Saga against Tim last week. We thankfully have been getting more games of Saga in. Along with the show Vikings and The Last Kingdom, that is good motivation to build and paint more Vikings.

First up, was a Battle of the Warlords 6 Points. My Vikings vs. Tim's Scots. We chose to use characters from the books. Tim's character allowed him to steal a unit of my men. My character was Gunnar Hamundarson. The battle for the sheep had commenced.

Tim's Army, with my warriors at the bottom.

I combined two Hirdmen units to make a unit of eight.

Berserkers!

Interestingly, even though he stole my warriors, he did not move them. So at least my med wouldn't be shedding their brothers' blood.

The warlords began to clash, drawing a wound a piece. I tried to inflict as much damage as possible as quickly as possible. My Hirdmen moved up as fast as possible, but not fast enough.

Reinforcements for both sides made it to their warlords at the same time.

"They come over here and they chop off our legs; they cut off our hands and put nails in our eyes, O'Grady is dead and O'Hanrahan's gone..."

For some reason, Tim's guy below reminded me of the Traditional Irish Folk Song.

My Berserkers and Warlord, with some 21 attacks, should have chopped Tim's warlord in half, but only inflicted 5 wounds. In this scenario, each warlord has 12!

Tim's men formed a Shield Wall and attacked my secluded warlord and remaining Berserkers.

My other Hirdmen were too far away assist and on the ultimate battle, Tim's force overran mine and took the field.

Sheep! All the SHEEP ARE MINE!

Our second battle was in a secluded forest. This battle was simply aclash of warbands, also 6 points. This time I tried out the Norse Gales board and Tim took the Pagan Rus.

This battle was extremely quick. First turn we both moved up. He killed off a unit of Dane Axes by exhausting them and then killing them. But out Warlords met in the middle of the table, ready for war. On the first fight we managed to kill each other's warriors.

But on the second, I played Slaughter and we ended up killing one another's warlords, thus a draw.

Saga: Vikings and Irish

I finally got around to taking pictures of my Saga Vikings. I am about half way through painting everything I have, but much to my surprise and chagrin, it takes me forever to paint Dark Age figures. I thought they would be quick- Leather, metal and one other color, but they take me a long time, since I don't want them to look like they're wearing uniforms.

 

The below figures are all Gripping Beast, mostly plastic. The only exceptions will be noted in the captions.

 

The first eight are Hirdmen.

The Blonde is Bronze Age Miniatures

 Warlords

One of the Warlords (Also Bronze Age Miniatures)

 I really like Bronze Age Miniatures females. They don't look like Valkyries, or a bikini model, or a 10th Century prostitute.





Gripping Beast metal Ragnar Lothbrok



 

Berserkers! I know there is a field of thought that "Berserker" means bare skin, or perhaps bear skin. I went with a bit of a mix. Though, mine prefer wolf pelts.

All four are Bronze Age Miniatures

 

Irish Curaidh

I nicknamed these blokes Michael and Hugh, my brothers

Bondi/ Bonnacts

One of my favorite pieces of terrain. Architects of War's Well. I use it for all of my European WWII, Saga, and Napoleonic games.

 

The Bronze Age Miniatures are technically 32mm, but I think they fit in just fine. 

Saga: Vikings v. Jomsvikings

I have been in the mood to dust off my Vikings for a game of Saga. Thankfully, Tim was available for a game. He brought his Jomsvikings and we got to throw some dice.

Since we hadn't played in a year, we only played 4 points, so we could get used to the rules again. Below is my 4 point list - Ragnar the Warlord, 2 units of Hirdmen, 1 unit of Berserkers and 1 unit of Bondi. All miniatures are Gripping Beast, except the four Berserkers and two female Shield maidens, which are Bronze Age Miniatures

I set up the table with 4x6 worth of terrain. But we only used 4x3 of it. So the killing grounds ran from the nearside of the pig sty to the crease in the fields toward the top.

Ragnar and 8 meat shields, err I mean brave Bondi set up on my right flank, the two units of Hirdmen in the center and Berserkers on the left.

Tim's Warlord was set up across from mine. They had locked eyes and knew this village was not big enough for the two of them and one would dine in Valhalla.

Tim's warriors foolishly left cover of the palisade and ran across the flax field toward my blood-thirsty Berserkers.

The Warlords moved toward the center of the village. 

My Berserkers made quick work of Tim's men, 16 attacks will do that, and surprisingly two lived. Usually they almost guaranteed to die along with their prey. My Hirdmen in the upper right of the below picture also took out the silvermen on the same turn. Things were looking up for Ragnar's men and women.

Until the Jomsviking's Fury rose to its peak and Tim was able to isolate my Warlord. He used his ability to move my Warriors away after a small clash.

Also with his fury he was able to direct something like 15 attacks toward my Warlord alone. He got 11 hits, and I made all of 2 saves.

Ragnar and his men found themselves in Valhalla, or is it Hel since it's snowy? Either way, it was a fun game. I find the Jomsvikings a very tough nut to crack with Vikings. I just don't ever have the men  to sacrifice to keep his fury at bay. I think next time we play I will need at least 2 units of Warriors, or 1 Levy so I can sacrifice 3 men without that destroying my momentum.