Who slew the mounted ravagers with the keenest blade *

Its been a busy month but I finally got an actual game in, the first since the last Saga group gathering last month.  I ran the same Lombard warband with a unit Bulgars mercenaries.  Nellie, who I have not seen since we played Oathmark last summer, fielded Normans.  I was kind of in a hurry because I had errands to run so probably chose my terrain poorly (I should have thrown more LOS blocking stuff out there to limit the 2x long range of the Norman archers).  We also agreed to a four turn game instead of six. Nellie went first and punished me for that oversight - killing an impressive four out of six Lombard mounted hearthguard on one shooting attack in the first turn. Ouch!

This spurred me to move rather than stand around and get horses shot full of arrows.  I sent 10 warriors against the Norman mounted hearthguard and both lost about half their figs. this started a pretty devastating series of charges on one side of the field.  By turn four all 20 Lombard mounted warriors were out as were all ten Norman mounted hearthguard.  Nellie sent his warlord in to try and knock out my last two hearthguard (getting one), and then on the last turn my warlord slew his.  Final score on points was Nellie by 3 (24 to 21). 

My main takeaway is that the Bulgar mercenaries are not working super great. A unit of levy with spears might be of more use as they could be stacked with the Lombard melee board bonuses and could clear out groups of archers.  Anyway, good to see people, lots of painted figures, and roll some dice.

Game start. Normans at bottom and Lombards at top. 

Ineffectual Bulgars.

Lombard mounted warriors.

These Lombard warriors just lost five to knock out three Norman hearthguard.

Vagrant Warrior mercs in Norman service. Like the rest of the infantry in the game, they did not move at all.

Norman archers that I foolish gave sweet board position to.

Norman hearthguard.

Bulgars after riding across the board. 

Lombard warlord and his last two hearthguard companions.

*Y Gododin. LVII 

Bulgar mercenaries for Saga

Although I'm getting comfortable with (and enjoying) the Lombard faction for Saga, the strength and challenge of that faction is that all Hearthguard and Warriors are mounted but without javelins.  This leaves all ranged attacks to levy archers, which is mainly problematic because levies need the uncommon die to activate, but that die is also used for almost all the advanced board abilities. Lombards may take Breton mercenaries (mounted warriors with javelins) but these are noted in the text as being "Bulgars, really."  Old Glory has a pack of Bulgars (set AHP-5) that looked like fun so I picked that up.

 As you can see, the Old Glory Bulgars (and pretty much all of their "horse people" / horse archer figures - Huns, Alans, Magyars, Pechenegs, etc.) are two piece figures, allowing you to angle the upper half of the body to be facing forward, to the side, or even aiming a "Parthian Shot" over the back.  They went together pretty easy especially as I recently picked up the tip that sharpie ink acts as a bit of an accelerant for superglue, and the nature of a sharpie pen (its a pen!) allows you to pinpoint areas for the glue to set faster.

If you compare the later pics to the initial one of the unassembled figures, you can see that four of the figures originally had swords, but I trimmed these off and drilled out the hands to give them javelins instead. The set also had shields but chose to ignore these and shaved off the pegs on some hands meant to mount the shield.

My bad habit is to undertake painting 60 infantry or 20-30 cavalry at a time, so when I work on a single set like this the process is an absolute breeze.  I used my standard block-painting method, then a "magic wash" of matte medium / water / black paint, with excessive wash lightly sponged or rolled off with cotton swabs.

After a clear top coat of matte varnish and mounting on MDF bases, I flocked with kitty litter, painted the kitty litter with a cheap acrylic light brown/tan, then added some flock and tufts.

This was just in time to meet Chris and Tom for a three-player game of Saga using the "Battle Royale" scenario.  Chris brought Anglo-Saxons with the mounted hearthguard option.  Tom brought his Normans.  In this scenario, players take turns placing units where ever they want on the table. What ended up happening was the Lombards were on one end, the Normans on the other, and the Anglo-Saxons in the middle area. Chris had a hard-stop time and because his Anglo-Saxons kept focusing attacks on the Normans and therefore moving away from the Lombards, the Lombards had not charged a single time (and the Bulgars had not thrown a single javelin).  Just to try things out, I did manage a charge of 10 warriors against 6 Norman hearthguard with a favorable result.

Start of the Battle Royale.

Lombards.

Bulgars make their debut.

  

Anglo-Saxon cavalry.

Lombards lined up.

Around Turn 2, maybe.

Saxon archers at extremely close range to Norman crossbows. Saxon cavalry charges Norman counterparts in background.

Turn 3 or therabouts. The Saxons keep focusing on the Normans and therefore moving away from my Lombards so I didn't do much most of the game.

Same point as above, but from other end of table.

Next up on the painting bench I have started in on 20 Alan horse archers by Old Glory, for Late Roman games. These have been languishing around for awhile, and they use the same separate torso-and-legs set-up as the Bulgars.