Saga – My Anglo-Danes

As part of my project to back fill the metal minis removed from my levies unit, I built and painted this guy. He is a kit bash from a Wargames Factory body, Warlord Games Japanese Bolt Action arms and pole (from a anti-tank mine on a banzai bamboo pole, as ridiculous and horrendous a concept that may be) and a shield and spear from the bits box.

The narrative i tried to convey was that this poor levy is fighting for his life, having lost his shield from a throwing spear puncturing it and the weight of it making it unusable, and has also copped a wound in the shoulder and temple.

I first created some Viking Berserkers, but realised after reading the rules that the Anglo-Danes could take a unit of 4 Dane Axe wielding Hearthguard that have better attack dice than your average Hearthguard.

I took two of my Berserkers and changed the heads to ones from the Gripping Beast Saxon Thegns plastic boxset (my loving brother bought for me) and am really happy with the results.

Even though I have already begun changing my levy unit after clashes of metal and plastic models in it, just to contradict myself I added a Black Tree designs metal miniature to this unit. This was mainly because I didn’t like that fact that he was wielding a two-handed axe in a standard sword and axe armed warrior unit (before his sudden promotion to the Hearthguard.) It also sped up the project because he was already painted and was easily replaced by another model in the warriors unit he came from. He is a little under armoured, but he looks adequately brutal and committed to the task of shield and head smashing to make the grade.

The last model was a kitbash from Wargames Factory (body and arms) Gripping Beast parts (Viking set Dane Axe and Saxon set Head).

You don’t need a lot of terrain on a 4×4 gaming mat to play a 4 point game of Saga. I am aware that officially the game should be played on a 4×3 gaming area, but I don’t have a gaming mat of that size.

I followed the Beasts of War Hobby Lab guide on how to make effective looking stone outcrops made from a pound shop sponge.

I also followed the Hobby Lab trees making video

There is also a TT Combat church that has a simple Norman look to it that I have used for Bolt Action as well as Saga.

To play the game I just just put together my own rulers using excel and some google images and a photo copy of the aids as given to you in the back of the rule book.

There were also fatigue tokens supplied in the back of the book, but I didn’t like the fact that they were square for some reason, so just adapted them laminated them and they came out great.

I also made my own dice. The dice faces were downloadable from the Studio Tomahawk website and blank dice were picked up cheaply from The Dice Shop online.

Even though Levies are potentially poor in-game, I decided I wanted to add some flavour to my games and utilise some Saxon battle board abilities unused thus far.

There are abilities on the Saxon board that give bonuses to larger units (10 or more) so a 12 man spear and shield levy unit was born.

I bought a Dark Ages Warriors plastic box from Gripping Beast and had some sprues from Wargames Factory from Warlord Games (during one of their fabulous sprue sales).

I also wanted to take advantage of a deal that was on at Entoyment as they launched the fact they now stocked Footsore miniatures. (gaming store based in Poole, Dorest, well worth a visit, also online)

Though I loved painting their shields I chose to use transfers for the majority of the plastic levies. I picked the transfers up at Salute (again, a great source of postage free purchases and a fantastic social day out).

I also found that the metal miniatures were causing a minor gaming issue. Not really an issue, but just a personal preference thing, where when you move the miniatures in-game you expect all the minis in a unit to be a similar weight but 4 are a totally different weight to the rest. It occasionally results in minis being knocked over etc.

I decided that the 4 “early saxon youths” levies would join some my Black Tree design metal warriors to form a new 8 man warrior unit. I still have tons of plastic unbuilt warrior minis to back fill and complete the levies unit again.

Once I got some feedback on my Warlords I decided that gore was good. I wanted to liven up the bases and had just purchased my first pot of citadel “blood for the blood god” technical blood effect paint and I was amazed with how good it looked.

Tissue paper limbs and bits box weapons and hands made up the battle field clutter I wanted on the bases.

The Dane axe wielding warlord was a fun one to paint. Though both the Anglo-Dane and Anglo-Saxon cultures were both largely early christian cultures, I wanted the more Dane-like Pagan symbolism on his shield, as opposed to the cross design on my Saxon warlord. The design was based on a Dark Age coin I found on google images.

Both of the models were picked up at Salute (annual wargaming event in London, England) from Gripping Beast.

The miniatures I purchased were not the best quality sculpt wise, but for the price I paid I am still happy, especially with the amount of play I have since gotten out of them.

I finally had enough Vikings and Saxons painted to get playing and the game proved popular amongst my gaming group. I didn’t want to start playing until i had painted models because I was trying to ‘sell’ the game to new players and didn’t want grey plastic armies to put people off with their first experience of the game.

I came to realise that the more heavily armoured troops should be considered Hearthguard elite troops, that the less well armoured troops should be considered Warriors and those with little or no armour and the worst weapons should be levies. I also found that the units should be broken into their weapon types, with all spears and shields miniatures being separate from those with swords and axes and shields.

Because Levies should be fielded in groups of 12 and because i wanted to get the game played ASAP i decided that i wouldn’t have any levies in my first play-throughs. Also, especially in first edition, Levies seemed like a particularly bad choice as they were awful in melee (rolling 1 attack dice per 3 models?), their only advantage being that they were often the only ones allowed to have ranged weapons (bows / slings etc.)

I got some very kind comments from Calador, Suetoniuspaulinus (Andy) and others on the WAYPN “What Are You Painting Now” videos broadcast on YouTube and on BoW.

I started reading the book and realized that the original rule set only comes with a battle board for Anglo-Danes and I had originally had my heart set on Anglo-Saxons, as history wise, this was what I knew marginally more about.

Saxons? Dane? Anglo confusion?

I started some google based research because sadly apart from my love for Bernard Conwell’s character Uhtred of Bebbanburg from his Saxon Tales novel series I have no books on the Dark Age period.

So much so that when I made a Saga page to show off my efforts on Facebook that I titled it as a “Dark AGES skirmish game from Gripping Beast”. My friend Andy Zack graciously pointed out that there was a Dark Age, not a multiple of Dark Ages (at this point any way). And also that the game was actually made by Studio Tomahawk and that Gripping Beast were the model makers actively supporting the rule set miniatures wise.

My understanding is that the term Anglo-Saxons represents the Saxon era kings like Alfred The Great and Harold Godwinson. But there is some overlap with the likes of King Cnut. The reign of King Cnut (1016–1035) saw the links between the Viking Danes culture and that of Saxon “England” forced together into a new amalgam. The claim that Cnut was “King of all England and Denmark and the Norwegians and of some of the Swedes” was a bloodily forged one. As far as gaming goes, the Anglo-Dane impact was to see a rise in use of the two handed Dane axe in battle, introduced primarily in body guard units or in small groups to bolster weaker fyrd militia units in the battle line.

The Dane-axe could smash shields, cleave men from shoulder to waist and hopefully break the enemy’s faith in the impregnability and safety of being in a shield-wall.

The  prevalence of kite shields also grew as the Anglo-Danes were less adverse to the use of cavalry than the Anglo-Saxons. The kite shield was designed mostly to protect riders, with the boarder top half protecting the left torso and arm, leading down to a point down across the thigh and ending close to the stirruped foot. On horse back a round shield or smaller buckler didn’t project the left flank and leg of a rider as well as a kite shield could, especially if you were busy with your focus heavily on your right hand with a spear, lance or javelin.

I did buy the Northern Fury expansion book which included the Anglo-Saxons, Bretons, Jomsvikings & Scots battle boards. My initial force was meant to be a Saxon one, with a Saxon warlord, but soon found that in-game the Anglo-Danes felt easier to win with.

I received my delivery of Saxons in the post and stuck them to 25mm round bases and primed them white.

I then painted them to the best of my ability at the time, batch by batch and came to basing them all. As a piece of advice (probably very obvious to everyone, apart from me at the time), do not expect basing materiel to hide your white primed base. Paint it a darker colour, brown probably best, until you continue with whatever flock or static grass you had in mind.

This really hampered my love of the minis for some time.