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dugthefug1644 3 years, 9 months ago.
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Why did I start playing Saga? Why did you start playing Saga? Why was I so daft to think there was no Saga Facebook page until I “discovered” the game and made one embarrassingly myself? Why did I persevere with it and get close to 950 members? Why does Beasts of War OnTableTop love the game and yet not have a Let’s Play? Why did Warren hate the magic in Saga Age of Magic? Why are Pagan Rus Filth? Why would you free hand when transfers exist? Why can I not beat a Norman Army for love nor money? Why am I trying to win a 15mm WW2 game when my love is Saga, Frostgrave and The Walking Dead?For answers to these questions and more please join me in some interesting chatter this week.
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.)
Evil scarred Norman.
Why can’t I beat the Normans? Why are the Pagun Rus Filth?
I can’t beat the Norman’s because I don’t know my battleboards. I rock up to the club with my painted Normans and my painted Vikings and Saxons / Danes and just throw down 6pts of whatever my opponent fancies that day. I am an awful tactician and roll dice and read my abilities at the table and hope I have picked something useful. That is not the way to beat some of the better factions in the game. The Norman list I have built and painted is able to use the majority if not all of the abilities on the battleboard. Whereas I think that I have one levy unit in my Saxons list, where perhaps having a 2nd unit would be better. The ability to suddenly change Levies to a warrior stat line (or at their least attacking stats) for the Saxons is really useful and I am not utilising it fully.
All that said, there is a consensus that some battleboards and factions are easier to play and have a marginally improved chance of winning in most people’s estimations. Hence… “Rus Filth”.
With my typical lazy way… I don’t know the Pagan Rus abilities and why they are considered filthy, but I know that people rate them highly and don’t find beating them easy. The fun has been that Gerry the Giant has been making the “Rus Filth” statement in his fun matter of fact way for so long that I and others love to hear him say it as a running in-joke. So much so that I and others say it whenever the faction comes up or whenever talk about balance and the best factions gets discussed.
On our Facebook page I have often asked what factions people find hard to beat and I think the fact that the answers are fairly diverse, probably means that the game isn’t that unbalanced? For example, one person’s top tier / hard to beat factions for each Saga book looked like this.
AoV (Age of Vikings): Pagan Rus, Welsh, Scots
AoC (Age of Crusades): Crusaders, Pagan People, Ordensstaat
AoI (Age of Invasion): Goths, Picts, Huns
AoM (Age of Magic): Lords of the Wild, Undead, (Horde)The only one I would add would be the Normans for AoV and that view is shared by plenty of people. This person’s list seemed to be supported by various other people in the facebook group, but there isn’t outcry to change the game. The majority of the player base seem to revel the chance to get the best out of their army and beat a faction that in most people’s estimation would normally beat your faction board vs board. Plus the battle board dice rolls can be a great leveller. You can have amazing abilities on the board, but if the wrong dice fall you have to change your tactics on the fly or delay, waiting for the dice to hopefully roll your way next turn.
Being as I don’t play to win at any costs to enjoy the game (luckily), or whether the Pagan Rus are Filth or The Norman’s are evil kaniggets, I will still enjoy this game. Easy to get into and hard to master is usually a winning formula and that is probably part of Saga’s success as a skirmish game.
Why would you freehand when transfers exist?
Well the simple answer is why wouldn’t you. I know that we all start out as miniatures painters with an abject fear of fluffing a straight line, or a perfect curve or ruining an otherwise adequate paint job by trying to be too fancy. I don’t think that transfers stifle a budding painters progress or are lazy in any way. I just speak for myself when I say that not using transfers and painting shields, like the freehand in the pic above, have bought me great pleasure and much needed confidence. If it hadn’t been for Saga and shield design painting I would not have tried OSL, tartan and experimented with other techniques by now. I soon allowed myself to make mistakes on the shields and remind myself that if all else fails I can just paint it in halves or quarters and it will look perfectly historically accurate and adequate.
I love the look of a crisp transfer as much as the next fella. The guys and gals at http://www.littlebigmenstudios.com are creating beautiful work, to sizes that suit specific shields from particular companies and selected ranges, to provide transfers that fits almost every shield in our hobby. The transfers can have wonderful patterns that would be almost unachievable by paint brush.
I have used transfers – pic in the link below – to speed up the completion of a unit, to see the quality of the designs and as an experiment to see if they were worth the expense in my eyes. I sadly thought that a tan colour rather than the advised white undercoat on the shield before placing the transfer would give me a better finish. All this did was wash out some of the detail. I didn’t need to worry that the white would be too bright and there were better ways to weather a shield if that was my concern.
Transfers take some getting used to. They aren’t the easy solution that some people suppose. The Little Big Men transfers are not like the Airfix style waterslide decals of my youth. Some require the shield boss to be punched or cut out before they can be stuck to the shield.
My conclusion would be that just because transfers exist we shouldn’t pass up the freehand opportunity that presents itself on a Dark Age shield. I would never look down on an army with just transfer shields because I understand the appeal and the benefit of speeding up a project and the offer a high standard finish at a reasonable cost. Thing is, as the painting is the majority of my fun in the hobby and there rarely being a harried deadline for my projects, I have the time to waste on mistakes and painting individual designs on an army that I will end up feeling very close to and feel proud of.
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