Dark Ages (1) - Start of SAGA Vikings

 So this was originally going to be the first of many posts about Pillage but we'll circle back to that. 

Below is a photo of the first unit of my new SAGA Viking army. 1 point of Hearthguard. 

And now a brief story. I picked up a copy of Pillage as well as the Anglo Saxon and Viking starter bags. In parallel to this I purchased SAGA 2, Age of Chivalry, Age of Magic, and Book of Battles. I was able to finally find a copy of Age of Vikings, so I figured in for a penny. I figured I could build the pillage sets and then expand into SAGA. On the same visit to my LGS I picked up a bag of the new(ish) Victrix Pagan Rus as well. Now here's where it all gets tricky.

I was originally going to try my hand at LBMS Dry Transfers but as of the time of writing this, the "tariff situation" has made it impossible to source them. Victrix is currently not taking US Orders and from my research no one in the US has enough stock to do a whole bag. 

As I started to build the Vikings I thumbed through the Pillage book and unless I'm mistaken I think I have quite a few figures. The book recommends 100 point learning games, 500 regular, 1000 mega. A chieftain (required) is 50 points with a shield and armor. I think you see my point. This makes the sets an amazing purchase if you're going to just play Pillage. 

It also really solidified my choice to just build a SAGA army and have access to stuff to play Pillage. Rather than build and paint a handful of guys at a time, I figured I'd just paint the 30-40 ish for a SAGA force and then cherry pick to play Pillage. If I can source a unit of Beserkers and combine the Archers in each set to make one unit of 12, I can make the following list:

Warlord
Beserkers
Hearthguard
Warriors
Levy

Which leaves me with enough to either make another Hearthguard or Warrior Unit if were not too fussed about the chain mail being sprinkled in the warrior units. 

So now that the units been built and painted, the question of shields comes roaring back into focus. I wasn't thrilled about the idea of freehanding the shields and was debating trying to make my own decals when, while perusing Koyote's beautiful Pagan Rus, here on Lead Adventure, he mentioned some 3d printable shields from Rodge (who runs the SAGA Thorsday Podcast). I printed about 25 to start. These have very slight relief and basically allow for a more paint by numbers approach. They mostly all curled while drying but seem to have dried and cured flat. 

First, masking taped on to an old filament roll and the backs are given a spray of Vallejo Leather Brown Primer

Flipped and given a light grey primer

And finally painted in place

I picked color palettes based off the shield transfers. They certainly get the job done. I'm just about done with the warlord and his banner bearer, I'm about half way thru the warriors already. I also 3d printed some saga dice to use but will go back and get the official ones if we end up getting in to it. 

I've got some real grand ambitions for terrain for this one but wanted to at least start the project log before I bog down it.