Saga Age of Magic - Fred's Forces

[fred]

We played a first game of Saga Age of Magic the other week, and since then I have been rummaging through the lead pile (well more plastic and resin pile...) to see what Forces I can assemble.

AoM has 6 Factions, which cover the standard fantasy tropes. These are broad themes, rather than tightly restricted army lists. This is good, as you can use what you want, but this also makes it quite hard to judge what Faction fits your troops the best. Each faction has its own battle board, unique heroes and access to two spell families, for troops there is a lot of similarity between the Factions, but there are key differences on the number of certain types you can have, along with weapon choices.

The Lords of the Wild
I've had a 10mm Forces of Nature army for some years, and have been slowly accumulating 28mm Nature figures, therefor ethe Lords of the Wild seem a good fit. This lists allows for lots of Creatures (roughly Ogre sized troops) and fits the nature theme. One downside is that the LotW battle board has quite a few shooty abilities, and I currently don't have of these type of troops. But I don't know if this will be a problem or not.

Anyway, on to the figures! These are all WIP, and have all been painted over the last week or so.

Warlord, Sorcerer and Ranger (Hero)



For the Warlord I have used is a Dungeon Saga figure, Hrrath the Salamander, he has been rebased. The Warlord is compulsory part of the warband, but is also free!
For a Sorcerer I have used another Dungeon Saga figure, Koapoka a Gladwalker Druid (cost 1pt)
For the Ranger, which is the faction's unique hero I have used a Reaper Bones figure, this was a clear one, that I wasn't sure was going to take paint at first, but a couple of coats of undercoat worked. So far I've only given this figure  a wash and painted her trousers (cost 1pt)

Creatures
The LotW list allows unlimited units of creatures, they can be fielded in strength of 2-6, but the smaller units seem a good mix of attack dice and fatigue limits. 2 creatures can be fielded for 1pt.
I only have figures that can be fielded as bipedal creatures, the other options are quadrupedal, or flying.

Ice Golems


These two have been painted the most, with highlights and wash to the crevices. I'm not sure how to make these look more ice-like?


All 6 of the ice golems, 2 are just block painted, and two are still in raw resin. These figures are from TT Combat's recent Kickstarter.


Treemen


6 treemen - so far with just a basic brown dry brush. These are also TT Combat figures.

Warriors

Warriors can be purchased for 8 figures for 1pt.



The figures are Mantic Salamanders. These are pretty much finished painting wise (bases excluded), they have mainly been painted with dry brushing, apart from the straps on their backs. There are 10 figures here - which isn't too much use for Saga! I need to build and paint at least two more! Which allows me to field 12 as 1.5pts of Warriors, or to use the ones with Two Handed Weapons as Hearthguard, who are fielded in 4s.

[fred]

Monsters



Frost Giant (Reaper Bones) in rules terms a Behemoth. This figure was largely painted by my daughter.

The list allows 2 monsters, I have a second Frost Giant, or could go with a Dragon, which would give me some speed, to an otherwise rather slow and steady list!

Levy - Swarm


A mix of reaper bones and mantic dungeon saga figures - I only need 12 of these for a unit. I don't think I will include the bats, not sure about the rats either, but they would give a bit of variety.

This is a unique unit for the LotW - they move freely through terrain and are hard to shoot at, but like other Saga levy aren't that good in combat, but they do have a lot of wounds.

The Warband

8 points of troops, with just about enough paint on to be playable.

Need to work out what I am doing basing wise.

[monkeylite]

Nice warband.

The Wild has some decent stuff on its board, but without any shooting you will be missing out on a good chunk of, and some of its best, abilities.

Your warband also looks like it would be good for the Otherworlds board, but I have found that one to be difficult to do well with.

[fred]

Thanks. Glad you like the look of them.

As you think no shooting may be an issue - I will have a think about that.

I had looked at the Horde as another option, it allows lots of creatures and is melee focused. But I will have a look at the otherworld too. I have a bunch of dungeon saga abyssals that would fit that faction too.

[fred]

Had a look at the Otherworld list the first problem is that it doesn’t allow as many creatures as I have - and one of the main aims is to use all these large creature figures I have collected. Secondly the battleboard and special rules seem to require a degree of interaction, that needs some more reading (and probably playing) to get a feel for.

[Bloggard]

very smart looking ensemble of figures, that.

[fred]

very smart looking ensemble of figures, that.

Thanks!

Does anyone have any thoughts on making the ice golems look more ice like?

[Hobgoblin]

Impressive horde! Good to see those Mantic salamanders - it inspired me to dig out the few I have left and get painting them.

I'd drybrush them in white a bit more, so that you really pick out all the edges of the icy vertices. If you do it in a sustained way with a large but very dry brush, you should be able to get the effect to emerge gradually. That is, don't just drybrush the whole thing once over, but keep drybrushing each area until you can see the white edges.

[fred]

Thanks. The salamanders paint up nicely, I think due to the plastic they are made from the details hide a bit when you look at them unpainted - they should suit your wash style of painting.

I will go for some more white dry brushing, I had done a bit, but can add some more as you suggest.

[Bloggard]

Thanks!

Does anyone have any thoughts on making the ice golems look more ice like?

perhaps a thin dark-ish blue wash all-over, as well as white dry-brushing?

[fred]

Tried both suggestions, more white on the edges, and some blue wash into the crevices, which I think improves things

[Bloggard]

yes, much greater sense of texture now.

would have gone more 'blue' myself for some reason.

[fred]

I have a couple more to do, so might try more blue on those. Saw a striking paint job on an ice creature mini the other day, and that was quite a strong blue as the base with white frost highlights

[fred]

These chaps got their first outing on Friday night, as a 6pt Warband, and yes the bases still weren’t finished.



It was a 4 player game with each side using the same faction, and each player fielding 6pts of troops. My side used the Wild board, with my ally taking a wood elf based force, which had lots of shooting, to balance  my no shooting.

We faced off against Tyrandids  using the Otherworld board !! Which I suppose is the absolute beauty of Saga Magic is that any figures can be used with half a fit to the faction. And the nids fit the Otherworld theme well.


Mid Game

My Sorcerer cast spear of light, and decided to go for maximum effect, which was hugely successful in killing a whole unit of hearthguard, but rolled double 1 on abuse of power and obliterated himself. 
On the right barely in picture my troops are advancing, but the enemy then decided to run away. So it did turn a bit into wacky races trying to catch them.

Overall a good game. I did miss having shooting, and faster moving stuff. We are all trying to decide if sorcerers are worth taking. They are good thematically, it is fantasy after all, but in a smaller game and extra saga dice might be more useful along with a combat unit?

Worked on the bases yesterday. So hopefully that will look better soon. At some point I probably need to look at my 28mm terrain as it’s a bit basic at the minute. But 28mm is very much a secondary scale to me, so terrain has been a low priority.

[ducat]

Its all coming along nicely. Some great figures.

I would definately look to the Horde as an army option rather than the Lords of the Wild. You will get a lot more milage from their battleboard with your units. And an occassional speed boost for all your units should never be overlooked.

For ice, some (a long long) time ago i painted an ice figure for malifaux. I think i did it dark blue, with a light blue heavy drybrush, then mixed white in the light blue and gave a light drybrush on the very edges. I then coated in gloss varnish, rather than matt. The gloss made it look more glassy rather like ice.