Warfare Convention and Saga Viking Age - Scots!

Over the weekend I took the family up to Reading under the guise of some shopping and looking around.

What Mrs Lee was not aware of was that the shopping was at the Reading Leisure Center in the form of a gaming trade show convention called Warfare! :)

The main reason for the trip was to pick up some paints, and get into a new game for the club called Saga Viking Age from Gripping Beast. But we also then had to pick up a few more things. One for junior and one for Mrs Lee..

Junior is still obsessed with the Lizardmen of GW, so we picked up a Razorspine Rattler from Malifaux. Cause well.. it is a reptile in the end :)

Mrs Lee was not overly impressed with my ruse on her, but said that she liked the Oiran from the same game, and would like me to do a small diorama with it for her in compensation. Simple enough, even though the figures are beyond tiny!! Expect a small review of them soon!

I also picked up some vines in different colors from miniNatur.. which I thought I had, but turns out I didn't good thing for gaming conventions so close right? :D

But the main purchase was the Saga Viking Age starter box of Scots. Their dice ( cause apparently that is important ) and the main rulebook ( which after getting home I see that they don't have the Scots attacks! Doh! And that the Scots book is out of stock on their website! Double Doh! ).

Anyways.. let's see what is inside anyways eh?

So I picked up the Scots 6 pts boxset. Mostly because it came with a cooler looking Warlord model, and the fatigue markers. Plus I also have some levies in there for ranged support! That and I like options when playing a new game and figure this is a good way to get them! I also picked up the main rulesbook ( though the guy at the stall when I asked about it didn't say anything concerning no sheets for Scots there! ) and the Scots dice.

I have mostly everything that I need now to play as the models included are:

• Warlord
• 3x4 Hearthguards
• 2x8 Warriors
• 1x12 Levies

With each section being worth 1 point giving me 6 pts worth of troops. Which I have to admit is pretty cool to see, and very easy to make up lists then when you know this. 

And with that, I immediately took to the FB page for our club and asked if anyone was around this week for a demo.. to which one said yes! Huzzah!

With the spur of momentum to get in a game I put the Viking Bust aside for the weekend ( as I was still waiting for the Oils to dry in some parts anyways ) and began to assemble the Scots!

I really have to say that the flash, mold lines, and hands to hold the weapons on these models are horrible. I spent far longer than I would have appreciated to get these prepped and there are still issues on numerous locations on them. But as they are gaming pieces, I am not going to spend an overly huge amount of time on them. 

Biggest part I spent time on though was drilling out, or carving out spaces on the hands to hold weapons.  Once that was all sorted, then I glued them to the bases. For the warlord, since he is the warlord afterall, I placed some Cork down to make him a bit higher up and more important. He is already on a larger base ( set out from the game ) and I don't know if being taller gives pluses or negatives to gaming, but from a modelling point of view he looks more imposing! And that is all that I wanted to have here. 

For simple bases I applyed Vallejo stone Texture to the bases.. and then dipped them into some sand at points to give it a bit more variety as well. 

Along with weapons the force was looking pretty deadly! And by deadly I mean pointy and going to hurt me if I don't watch where I am placing my hands. 

The only issue I saw with the assembling of the weapons though is also the fact that the boxset did not come with enough spears for all models. And that I have to put some with swords and axes instead. Not the same as what is shown on the back of the box where almost everyone has a spear, so I am unsure if this means anything in game terms but we will see in time. 

For now I made 8 of the Hearthguards, the elite of the army, with hand weapons like swords and axes instead. And the warriors plus 4 hearthguards get spears. With the levies getting their bows as they should. 

To kick things off though I figured I should start painting up the warlord, and his elites, the hearthguards. 

I know some will say, but Mr Lee.. hey are all the same colors here? How can that be when they are all individuals! Well.. my thinking if pretty simple here. I want this clan of Scots to be from Aberdeen, and belong to the Clan Cruickshank! Which would be my real family name outside of this blog for those of you wondering :D

And with that, our clan tartan is from Clan Stewart and is red. Though I would do a bit of variations with it in places, and will modify it a bit more also on each one but with the core color being the same. To give them the look like they all come from the same family clan, but with small variations or differences in the family between them. 

Overall they are OK.. I was struggling to find the appropriate second color for their cloaks and went with greens and browns for the most parts there. Brown basing colors with some drybrushing made the bases easy to work with. And I will add some tufts of grass to them later on also to give them some more variety as well. 

I had painted up the first tartan pattern for the first Scot here, but looking at it outside of the bright desk lamp it was far too dark. Which is normal for the regular clan tartan which is quite dark but doesn't translate well to such small figures. 

So I then replaced the black with a strip of off White instead. 

And ( aside from the filter placed from my camera ) there is an immediate impact. And makes the tartan pattern less dark overall which is nice. Will see how it looks once I put the grass on it, and then begin to add the shields. 

In the meantime, I just need to finish off the tartans to the rest of the Elites and Warlord and then I can begin work on the first batch of Warriors! Should probably have a majority of this army finished before week's end if I focused on it. Let's see how it goes... and expect a quick review of the game itself this week as well!