New Loot

Hello again.

I had pondered for some time whether I was going to get the second edition of SAGA, having enjoyed the first one so much. I read reviews in magazines of what changes had occurred within the rules, but nothing really stood out. I saw the promises of various world books to come, with particular interest in the Age of Samurai option, as I felt that was a way to get some oriental stuff under my belt, but left it at that.

But then came "Age of Magic".

What was this? Did I want to spend £30 on another book, knowing I would also need the new rulebook to go with it? Did I want yet more faction dice, not to mention the magic dice to go with it?

Well, it turns out, yes I did!

The rules, the "Age of Magic" supplement and some Magic dice. I certainly hope they are "magic" when I come to roll them!

A set of each of the two faction dice, the magic dice again and some spell cards for those like me whose memory is not what it once was...

So, why did I succumb? Well, I blame Wargames Illustrated magazine. They ran a piece on this game a couple of months back and I was hooked.

• Being the owner of many fantasy figures, many of which are ready to go on the table any time soon, being painted and all, I quickly realised the outlay on this game would be limited to the rule books and dice if I wanted it to be.
• It was SAGA, right, so I was very likely to enjoy my games, just like I used to when thrashing Vikings and the like.
• It was easily and quickly expandable.
• It certainly looked the part from what I had read and seen in the aforementioned article.
• Within the six archetypal fantasy forces outlined in the book, there was massive flexibility to be able to create what you wanted to create, but sensibly bound by certain faction rules and constraints.

All good reasons, I think.

But, me being me, my thoughts turned to not just what I had, but what else I wanted.

I have a load of stuff I do not use, painted and unpainted. Hmm.

Those Ancient Indians would make a great "Great Kingdoms" force, especially with a multi-armed statue for some monstrous clout and perhaps a shape-shifting Rakhshasa or two. For "Great Kingdoms", think High Elves/ Empire/ Gondor.

Those Ancient Chinese would also make a suitable "Great Kingdoms" choice, especially with the addition of a Chinese dragon in the Monster category. The book's specialist option of "The Theocracy of Qwan T'ang" also fits well, but from the "Otherworld" faction, equipped with demon weapons and armour. Or perhaps I can have a terracotta warriors vibe with my monsters and creatures.

The "Undead Legions" specialist option of "The Royal Dynasty of Nephren-Ka" is a dead ringer (pardon the pun) for my once beloved Tomb Kings.

My Orcs fit neatly into "The Horde".

My Chaos forces can be split quite simply, with daemons going "Otherworld" and Chaos-worshipping humans going either Great Kingdoms, Horde if I make them hairy barbarian types or Otherworld too.

And that is before I drag the dwarves out of storage, the Skaven likewise, or think about anything else...

Highly recommended if you want some quick and easy fantasy games. The variety provided by the usual SAGA battle board system, together with the addition of a magic system allowing for the complexity of different spells cast at different power levels and you have a wealth of options. And who would not want to make some weird terrain to go with your imaginative use of old and tired forces?

Go for it!

G

I saw a mouse...

Hello again.

"Where?" I hear you cry, in response to the title of this missive.

Well, it was not "there on the stair" at any rate.

The Oathsworn Miniatures painting fest continues apace with a couple of smaller offerings. I only have about 10 figures left to do, but there are more I want to get, so the project is far from over yet.

First up, we have an albino mouse for the Dickens Street Runners whom you may have spotted in my previous post. I have called him "Tiny Tim" (the burglar) in keeping with the Dickensian theme of the warband.

A slightly blurred offering, but still clearly an albino mouse with a short sword and a sack over his back.

Really must take better photos...

The second mousey offering is slightly different in that it is a dormouse. I am unclear as yet exactly which of my warbands the young lady will join and, unusually for me with this project, she is indeed interchangeable. I painted her with a check pattern, Rupert Bear's trousers style, on her dress, so she could pass muster with the Dun Ringill Doombringers, my Highland-style Strath Clotan raiders. She could also join the ranks of the fledgling Nutkin Wood Neighbourhood Watch, that band of small guys who have come together (slowly) to protect themselves from all the nefarious big guys in their locale. She could even join the Dickens Street Runners on occasion, providing a modicum of shooting power to an otherwise up close and personal attack option.I will have to research a suitable Dickensian name for her in that scenario - someone small-fry, perhaps a maid or washer woman, ideally with a sideline in something nefarious.

The universal dormouse

For I think the first time with these figures, I went for naturalistic eyes, though I am not sure if I pulled them off. An albino had to have red eyes, but I think they should be more pinkish in hue. Dormice also have dark red eyes and I am happier with these than those on "Tiny Tim".

At any rate, it is off to do some more Crimean War Russians now, whilst chipping away at the remaining pimple of Oathsworn stuff in between.

G

The Silent Assassin

Hello again.

The Dickens Street Runners were introduced top the world a few months back, one of my many ideas for a theme for a warband in "Burrows & Badgers", based, as you might have guessed ort might know, on the characters of a certain Mr. Charles Dickens. The Runners are supposed to represent the sort of nefarious inhabitants of the back streets of East London, so far centred on those in "Oliver Twist" as, not being a Dickens officionado, never having read any of his works, I can at least identify with the 1968 film "Oliver", having seen it several times. However, research can take you anywhere you like and Dickens had a number of unsavoury characters in his repertoire.

So, what do you call the sometime spy, sometime assassin, all the time performer of dirty deeds done dirt cheap, if you will pardon the ACDC reference?

Squeers.

Or "Ssqueersss" if you are the particular adder of that name pronouncing your own name.

Squeers was a nasty headmaster in "Nicholas Nickleby", apparently, but, for my purposes, he is an even nastier character from the dockside area downtown Scarsburgh.

He joins the ranks (so far) of the Dickens Street Runners, who are ready, willing and able to take on the worst the anthropomorphic world has to offer. What they lack in armour I hope they will make up for with cunning, luck and numbers!

The Dickens Street Runners so far: (l-r) Fagin the fox, Tiny Tim the mouse burglar, Sykes the murderous wildcat, Dodger the weasel and the sorceress, Nan-Si.

Squeers, the adder assassin and spy, who lives in the pipes and sewers beneath the streets of downtown Scarsburgh.

The figure is sculpted with segmented armour, which I have chosen to paint as a non-metallic green to add to his camouflage capabilities and because I think some sort of cloth or leather armour better suits his background.

 

The last thing many a poor Town Guardsman or drunken citizen sees before the death bite is an range orb gleaming in the darkness...

I see Squeers not only as a useful addition to the warband, but also the subject of a scenario or two. Perhaps he is hidden on the table, concealed ready to strike, with the Town Watch scouring the area looking for him and he looking to evade them. Perhaps the Runners arrive to contact him as he has some important information, just as a raid from the town authorities is launched into the area. Perhaps he must assassinate a particular figure on the other team's side. Perhaps the Town Watch send an unfortunate patrol into the sewers looking for him and it is them vs him alone, with him able to sneak through pipes and grills whilst they have to stay on the path. Cat and mouse anyone? Or perhaps I should say "Predator and prey"? As with almost all my "Burrows & Badgers" figures to date, he is an Oathsworn Miniatures figure.

G

"Kill the SD scum!"

Hello again.

What naughty, aggressive language the bad guys in Strontium Dog use! The Strontium Dogs only want to take them, dead or alive, to face the justice they deserve for their various crimes. Why get so heated about it?

Max Bubba and his gang come in the starter set "The Good, The Bad and The Mutie", so are the subject of my first set of recognisable criminals for the game. Having painted up Johnny Alpha and his two associates from the set, it was only right and proper that his opposition got the next nod. In short, with the terrain from the same set I have built and mostly completed, with photos to follow soon, I am almost ready for some SD action!!! The hardest part of the whole thing will be to get a couple of like-minded people in the same room at the same time to actually get a game in!

From the left of the photo, we have Skull, Impetigo Jones, Low-down O'Phee, Max Bubba and Brute Mosley.

Max Bubba, his indistinct features marking him out as a mutant.

The unfortunate Impetigo Jones. Unfortunate? Well, the clue is in the name...

Skull

Brute Mosley

Low-down O'Phee

 

 

And that is Max Bubba and his gang. I fully intend to get some more figures from the range, courtesy of Warlord Games, especially Middenface McNulty, who must be my favourite-named comic strip character ever! He is also someone I remember from all those years ago when I first encountered Johnny Alpha and the Strontium Dog concept in "Star Lords" comic.

 

Now to paint the remaining parts of the boxed set, build some terrain boards and crack on with something more/ different.

 

G

Strontium Dogs

Hello again.

I bought "The Good, The Bad & The Mutie" boxed set from Asgard Games on Walsall last year, fan as I was all those years ago in the late 1970's when a certain Johnny Alpha first appeared in a comic and introduced the world to the Strontium Dogs, mutant bounty hunters risking life and limb to take down the nefarious scum of the universe. Now, this was quite a lucky find, as I was never really one for comics, but I loved this strip the moment I saw it and picked it up again several years later when I happened upon an collected anthology or three in a well-known book store.

The aforementioned boxed set, available from the prolific Warlord Games, has a number of sets associated with it, so you can build up your cast of characters from various figures from within the strip over its long lifetime to date, both goodies and baddies. One of the attractions of the strip is that it is not always certain who is who in a universe of dark people and darker deeds...

The boxed set comes with three goodies (featured here), five baddies (to be featured soon, as I have painted them all), a series of cards and tokens used within the "Strontium Dog" game and some MDF terrain, most of which I built today. I hope my forthcoming week off work will see at least some of it painted, along with some other bits I bought off Ainsty years ago but never got around to. Cue Scumm's World, an arid, desolate, lawless place inhabited by hard men, harder women and whatever else the universe throws up, clawing an existence from an unforgiving rock that is home to the odd environmentalists nightmare (Ainsty's Toxicana range, bits of which I also purchased years ago!), some secret, corporation or government stuff long since forgotten (cue those old mutant apes I picked up cheaply, together with the odd sci-fi release from long ago), some disgruntled alien natives (I have to get those K'Hiff out some time!) and a storyline or two.

I need more games!

The Goodies.

Johnny Alpha, whose skills are the best in the game. Great shot, mutant eyes that enable him to see through rock and other matter and a range of kit tailor-made to give some bad guys an issue or two.

Wulf Sternhammer, close combat monster and as strong as an ox.

The Gronk. A brilliant medic. Even better at fainting when the going gets a tad stressful, like all his kind!

 

 

All I need now is to finish that terrain off, build myself some desert game boards, get some reinforcements to add to my SD numbers and get a few games in.

 

 

This is also one of my various boxed games nearly done in its starter format. Just the other 7/ 8/ 9/ ? to do and I will have called it all money well spent!!! I cannot decide which one should be next. I want to do "Blood Red Skies", but I also want to do "Cruel Seas". Then there is "Carnevale", but I also have all the "Necromunda" gangs to crack on with. And my 10mm Crimean War is not going to paint itself, nor is my Arab Conquest stuff. Hm.

 

G