Reply To: Saga… why?

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Why was I so daft to think there was no Saga Facebook page until I “discovered” the game and embarrassingly made a Saga page myself? Why did I persevere with it and get close to 950 members?

The easy answer is a lack of familiarity with the search function of Facebook at the time and how unsympathetic it was. I either didn’t spell something right, or was too specific in my search and I didn’t find the long standing “saga: the skirmish game”. I think I was looking for ‘Saga – the game by Gripping Beast’ or ‘Saga – the game from Studio Tomahawk…’

So March 11th 2017 I ventured out and created the “Saga – The Dark Ages game from Tomahawk Studios”

Then I advertised the page on a version one Beasts of War forum thread and was very quickly and politely told by someone that there was already a page out there. Then the late great Andy Zeck pointed out that when looking at the Viking era it is technically “The Dark Age” rather than The Dark Ages and it was Studio Tomahawk rather than Tomahawk Studios.

So on March 12th 2017 I re-ventured out and created the “Saga – The Dark Age skirmish game from Studio Tomahawk”

Andy did encourage me to keep it going, if only to have somewhere to share my photos and the ideas that I was picking up as a novice, from the videos I had been watching and buying my first minis.

I still check on the number of members of the page all the time. No idea why. There’s no prize, there’s no money incentive, there’s no life changing reason to keep the page going, but I just enjoy seeing the number slowly rise and the regular contributors still coming back to share their hobby week after week. I sometimes think I should do a weekly pole or paint more Saga minis, but I remind myself that if the running of it becomes a chore it will become an irritant and ruin my relaxed unobtrusive page in the members’ social media lives.

I do feel inadequate as a page owner of a fairly popular game not to be better at playing it, understanding the history, the tactics and battleboards better. I don’t own all the supplements and there have been long periods away from painting anything for the game. That slight lack of ambition and deep knowledge from the page owner is thankfully mitigated by a mini community that has grown around the page; the fact that OnTableTop stalwarts like Gerry have helped with hobby and history questions, that the SAGA tournament organiser Richard Keenan has always been helpful with rules based questions and a handful of more competitive players willing to support with tactics advice… everything has been ticking over without the need for people to resort to going to the saga: the skirmish game page or other sources for any queries people may have.

I will keep the page going. I plan to do some Normans and some character models this year just to give myself more options for when the lockdowns slowly end. It will be fun to play real games again, with real people, across real tables, rolling real dice and inflict real wounds on real metal spears, when we fail to judge real distances when moving very real miniatures, around real terrain features on real gaming mats.

One of the first pics uploaded on my page was one of Beasts of War Ben’s minis from a BoW forum. ***Ben was the first to make me aware of the game I think, even though Gerry and Lloyd now carry the torch forward. 🙂

And Andy Zeck helped me get the group off the ground with some regular posts to begin with and I’ll always remember that and appreciate it. (RIP big man.)

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