Recently, Wife (whom I’ve been trying to get into wargaming with me) and I decided to give the historical war game Saga a try.
I’m a huge sucker for historical war games, and even more of a sucker for 28mm or 15mm war games. However, locally, 32mm science fiction and fantasy rule the game tables, so I’ve never taken the plunge and just bought in. My flirtation with historical wargaming has always fallen flat, or opponent-less. Well thanks to marriage, and the fact my wife is forced to do my hobbies with me, this is a problem no longer!
So we took a bit of a gamble on Saga (but with the added benefit and insurance that even if we don’t play it, I can use the minis as Saxons and other enemies for Pendragon RPG nights). I’m going to be pseudo-documenting our journey into this game as we go!
We each got an army:
- Alan chose the Anglo-Danes as his starter.
- Wife chose the Vikings as her starter.
Saga covers a wide variety of armies and times (Roman/Arthurian Briton, Crusades, Viking Age), but we wanted to stick into one set game at the start. As the Saga: Dark Ages rulebook was all our local shop had in stock and this was an impulse purchase, Viking Age it is!
Two armies, two sets of custom dice, one rulebook later, and here I am assembling the minis.
Part of the deal of getting Wife into a wargame is I have to do some of the annoying parts (assembly), so I assembled our two boxes!
Let’s talk about that.
First, I assembled mine to get a feel for it. It wasn’t too bad. Most models need an arm or two, a head, and a shield attached, and then bases and done!
When doing my wife’s I took some photos of the process. Without further ado, here is a stream of terrible photos!
The box (in case that wasn’t clear). The box contains a full starter war-band (you need about two more units to fill up to a “full” army (as their rules indicate).
Sprues and bases!
The Viking Warlord in full assembly.
Started by separating out all the bases and begun with working on the Hirdmen, the elite guard unit for the Warlord. 
In order to make things a little easier on first time wargamer Wife, I kept the weapons consistent for each unit of 4 Hirdmen. The game requires some unit cohesion, so to make things simpler and less complicated up front, each unit has the same weapons. Mechanically, they’ll function the same, but it makes spotting the units faster and just…better. I didn’t think to do this for mine, but I’m wishing I had.
So one unit of hand weapon Hirdmen, and one unit of Spear Hirdmen
While the Hirdmen were drying and setting, I started working on her Bondi (Warriors). These are sort of the rank and file of the game.
Hirdmen with heads and shields!
Spear Hirdmen with heads and shields!
Headless Bonid, armed with hand weapons. I did the same thing for the Bondi that I did for the Hirdmen and kept the weapons similar inside each unit to make quick spotting easier.
Not a bad day of assembly. 16 Bondi, 8 Hirdmen, and a Warlord took about 90 minutes.
The smaller scale took a bit to get used to and it’ll be interesting to paint. Luckily, I’m really excited about these ones, so I’m looking forward to getting to work with them. Post painting up my warband (Wife will paint hers), I plan to work up terrain. Yay for terraining (which is my favorite part of wargaming).
My goal is to get a starter game in this week and write up a battle report about how it went.
This looks like a fun road to journey down.
Alan Bahr 