Gathering Your Dark Age & Crusading Warbands For SAGA
August 22, 2014 by brennon
SAGA is one of those historical games from both Gripping Beast and Studio Tomahawk that seems to have gripped people (no pun intended) from a variety of different spheres. Historical gamers enjoy it, fantasy gamers enjoy and fans of anything skirmish based and cinematic love it too. Not to say these spheres don't intertwine of course! With a simple mechanic, the added bonus of the battle boards and a rich tapestry of Dark Age legend and tales to draw on you have the makings of a good game. But, how do you get started?
Mustering the Warband
You could start off getting into SAGA by picking up some of the existing 4pt or 6pt warbands from Gripping Beast. These all metal collections that come with a full compliment of warriors, hearthguard and a warlord for your force and are a great way of kicking things off. They are however somewhat pricey and while we don't like to mention price as everything is relative here on Beasts of War we do have a couple of interesting choices for you to consider when you make up your next band of Vikings or Anglo-Saxons. I've even got a few helpful hints for Crescent & Cross too which just launched not long ago.
The first thing you're going to have to check is the make-up of your force at 4pts and this is entirely dependent on the force you're looking to collect. Vikings and Anglo-Danes for example from the core rulebook are on foot and don't feature any ranged weaponry. The Welsh by contrast have a good number of bows to bring to bear and the Normans have a mounted contingent of knights. Mark down what the recommended starting force is from the book and then you've got a good starting point. Then you can go hunting.
The example I'm going to use as a starting point is my Vikings and Anglo-Danes that I've picked up for SAGA. I had a look at the boxed sets from Gripping Beast, in all metal, and realised that they were a little bit too expensive for me just getting started. My eye then turned to their plastic range and here I think we've got the one stop shop for starting up either of these warbands.
The two plastic sets they do are chock full of miniatures, just over forty in fact, and come with all manner of weapons and options for you to make up a warband. With a typical starting warband only being twenty five models or so, with one of them being your warlord, you will have only used over half of the box and will be left with a whole load of miniatures to build units in the future when you need them.
You can almost do the same for the Welsh by picking up the Dark Age Warriors boxed set however you are missing bows in the set but you do get slings and javelins. If you really want bows you can scrounge them from your bitz box or indeed buy some of the metal models Gripping Beast have in their range. The example 4pt force is armed with javelins however so you won't be too put out. You can also mount your Welsh so this may indeed be one of those warbands where you look at the metal force to get you started.
Normans are also a bit of a harder placement compared to the Vikings and Anglo-Danes/Saxons. They come with crossbows and a lot of mounted knights as well. This is where the 4pt Warband from Gripping Beast is a good choice but you can also find some miniatures elsewhere to get you going and this leads me onto other companies that do some great Dark Age figures.
Looking Further Afield
Scouring the internet for news means that you find a lot of hidden gems on the internet that can help bolster an existing collection of miniatures or indeed get a new one started. As I mentioned in the previous section one of the problems with collecting Normans is that you might seemingly only have one choice. Thankfully a couple of companies can help in that regard!
Drabant Miniatures do a series of metal miniatures for the Dark Ages and at their core are some very nice looking Norman miniatures. If you want some very cool looking figures then you can check them out for not only Normans but also some Anglo-Saxons and Vikings too.
Conquest Games also do some superb looking Normans and they make their kits in plastic! They have a Norman Knights plastic boxed set for your mounted miniatures alongside a plastic set of on Foot Infantry too. Twin that with a range of metal Crossbowmen and Archers and you have the makings of a Norman warband for relatively cheaper than you would have done through Gripping Beast. You get fifteen Knights per box and forty four on foot infantry so you'll once again be left with a lot of spares for when you want to expand your army.
If you're looking for other companies that make Dark Age period miniatures then I suggest checking out Eureka Miniatures for their range of characters as well as Wargames Foundry as they do some neat characters that could easily be used as Warlords for your various forces. Musketeer Miniatures also do a range of Dark Age warriors and even post Saxon with some very cool Romano-British troops too. If you're looking to theme your force a bit more 'old world' then this is the place to look.
Another company that makes Dark Age plastic sets is Wargames Factory. I picked up their range when I was first interested in SAGA and at the beginning I thought they were very good indeed but I soon ran into some problems. The miniatures have very stilted and awkward stances, the hands look like Lego men, and the necks of their heads are strangely elongated. I am not a fan but I know a lot of people who really like them.
All of this talk of looking further afield makes it sounds like I don't approve of the Gripping Beast range but that could be further from the truth. The selection they have is great, even if the website is insanely hard to navigate, and they have great metal sets that would be perfect for using as alternative Hearthguard units and such. I have a set of their Berserkers that I use with my Vikings. They also make some of the coolest looking heroes out there too and they range from heroes from history to just basic warlords that you can name and write their deeds at your leisure.
God Wills It!
Gripping Beast and Studio Tomahawk have also recently collaborated on Crescent & Cross which is them taking SAGA into the Middle-East and the conflict between the Christian Crusaders and Muslims of the region. Once again a good place to start is with their 4pt warband selection over on the website but there are some alternatives if you want to look a bit further afield.
FireForge Games have their own game, Deus Vult, set during the period of the Crusades and while their game is good if you like the SAGA mechanics you'll want to check out their rather amazing range of plastic miniatures for your European knights. They do some great mounted warriors, on foot infantry and even some Teutonic Knights as well if you fancy glamming it up a bit.
If you want to keep things metal then the Perry Miniatures range is another great resource to draw from as it comes with some Muslim choices alongside the Christian Crusaders. It's a real shame that FireForge haven't actually cracked on with their Muslim forces just yet in plastic but I'm sure they will get around to it.
Gripping Beast also do a plastic boxed set full of Arab Spearmen and Archers that you could easily use to bolster the large contingent of Muslims you're bringing to the table on horseback.
There's also Crusader Miniatures who, aptly, also make some great Crusaders in metal for use as characters and such. They even do some nice Dark Age miniatures as well if you want to peruse their range.
So What Next?
The next thing to do is of course play the game! The rulebooks are great and easy to read and the new Crescent & Cross one looks amazing from what I've seen of it. The Battle Boards come as part of the rules and the only other things you'll need to do is pick up the dice packs and make yourself some fatigue tokens.
On the subject of the dice to begin with they might seem like an extravagance since you can use regular d6 but translating them to the symbols and then working out where to put them on the board adds a hell of a lot of down time to the game. Pick up the appropriate dice, that don't really cost much more than the Order Dice from Bolt Action, and you'll soon see why they are a good purchase.
Fatigue Tokens are supplied by Gripping Beast as laser cut discs but you can easily make your own. Cut out all the shields you're not using from a sprue of your Dark Age warriors, paint them up to look bloody and battered and there you have it. I made twenty great looking fatigue tokens with this method.
The ranges for movement in SAGA are also tied to VS, S, M, and L which is Very Small, Small, Medium and Long, and a lot of SAGA players like to use little range rulers or pieces of wood shaped into particular designs to show this. You can of course just use a tape measure, that's what I do, but it could be another cool project to work on. I had a cool idea to make each range rule in the shape of a different weapon from a small dirk all the way up to a spear at 'Long'.
So that's my little guide to getting into SAGA and Ragnar Lodbrok above approves! If you have any companies you think deserve a mention or indeed want to share your own thoughts on starting this game let me know in the comments below!
Go forth! For Odin! (Or God if you are one of them Crusader types!)
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Liked the look of this and got it a while ago really should show it some daylight
A very useful article!
Been playing Saga on and off for a few years now, first as Vikings and later Scots- and have yet to win a battle, it’s highly embarrassing!
Still it’s a great game, and you’ve just reminded me to pick up the C&C rulebook- I fancy painting up a Muslim army as it will make a nice change of style…
You missed the HaT 28mm El Cid plastic range.
Yeah he didn’t, I have had my eye on those, how are they over all.
I’m finishing off my first batch of Welsh right now. Can’t wait to finish and find an opponent.
Great article, @brennon . I didn’t know that SAGA could go all the way forward to the crusades (I’ve read a lot of Viking-era, Dark Ages posts in the Historical Town Square forum). Then, @jonhay mentioned Scots. So how far forward in history is Saga typically played? The wars of Robert the Bruce v. Edward III, perhaps? If so . . . it might be time to start looking into this system. 🙂
The original series of books are concentrated around the time of the Dark Ages @oriskany so Vikings, Normans, Anglo-Saxons, Pagan Rus, Bretons and the like so it’s more or less throughout that period and the early occupation of the Normans. Crescent & Cross deals with the period of the Crusades and I think right now the focus is on the 1st Crusade but I’m sure they will expand the collection to include all manner of subsequent incursions into the Holy Land. There are a myriad of fan made battle boards out there however that can be used for various time… Read more »
I’ll admit I got a little curious about Scottish history after Braveheart came out in 1995 (yes, I know . . . sigh . . .) Just enough to get me reading and realize how far off that movie actually was, of course, and that the show really got started at Bonnockburn in 1314. (Hey, why don’t we commemorate THAT anniversary? 700 years, hell yeah). Robert the Bruce, Edward II and III, blah blah. We tried a little Scottish borderlands warfare (we tried some recreations of Otterburn in 1388) using TSR’s Battlesystem (please don’t laugh) but I think part of… Read more »
Braveheart, where Stirling Bridge is fought nowhere near resembling Stirling. Or a bridge!
Borders would be a great setting, as would Wales for that matter, whether it’s English garrisons in Conwy in North Wales or Dunbar, Saga be great for the little skirmishes and smaller, vicious scraps that few ever wrote all that much about but were instrumental none the less…
Halidon Hill anyone?
Yeah, and William Wallace actually winds up as father to Edward the III, even though Isabella doesn’t even show up in Britain until four years after Wallace’s death (spoiler alert), and even if William and Isabella do hook up and William winds up siring the next King of England, what a botch that turned out to be considering that Edward III does more damage to Scotland than Edward I (Longshanks) and Edward II combined. This is the thing with historical movies. Yes, they get all the details wrong. In Braveheart, they don’t even get the basic story within ten city… Read more »
Never heard of the game of throne boards. Did a search on the net but couldn’t find any. Any pointers to where I can find these?
I great articles by the way!
http://studiotomahawk.freeforums.org/a-saga-of-ice-and-fire-t4471.html @matthias Try this.
I think I may have mentioned that I like this game a couple of times on here 🙂
Anyway I’m still enjoying it.
My favoured warband are Anglo Danes. I also have Vikings, Joms, Norse gaels, Anglo Saxons, and some Steppe nomads.
@oriskany The new book Crescent and Cross covers the Crusades it has only just been released. I’ve not had much time to absorb it yet but l am now taking a few days off work so I’ll soon remedy that.
Thanks, @huscarle . I saw “Crescent and Cross release” in the Historical Forums, but didn’t put two and two together and link it with Saga, probably because I thought Saga was strictly a Dark Ages game (that’ll teach me to read the forums more carefully 🙂 ).
the crusades are often considered the late “dark ages.
“
Surprised you didn’t mention Warlord Games. A few of their plastic kits could work well for SAGA, especially if you like a more cinematic look. When I was debating getting into this game I was eyeing their Celts as possible Scots and/or Vikings. With a little bit of kit-bashing you could make a rather unique looking force IMHO. And I was very disappointed with the Wargames Factory plastics as well. It seems so strange…Wargames Factory is responsible for some great kits such as WWX, Malifaux, and Dreamforge. But when they do their own stuff it is always, well, crap.
The ones on the Warlord store @deadjesterx are the Gripping Beast plastics and Conquest Games plastics I mentioned above. I was trying to keep it as close to the Dark Ages as I could without straying too much into Ancient. However they do make a very cool looking longship that nearly always sells out when it comes in.
Their Celtic/Germanic collections may indeed work well as Welsh/Scots as you pointed out 🙂
BoW Ben
Thanks for the article, I have Jomsvikings and love the,, but I admit to being super interested in those fire forge models. Keep in mind that you can cross play with regular Saga.
Got home from holiday yesterday to find my copy of C&C waiting for me. It covers 1st to 3rd crusades at the moment
Great article Brennon!
Love this game, but its certainly something that takes time to master. 4-5 games in now and still searching for my first win!
SAGA is a game I have been tentatively keeping an eye on. I find personally the older I get the more interested in the Historical gaming I become.
The only thing really holding me back is my struggle to find an opponent. SAGA for one wouldn’t be much fun 🙂
I loved this article on how to get started though. Going to check out the sites now.
@stingray075 Try the forums on studio tomahawk http://studiotomahawk.freeforums.org/index.php go to the greeting hall and introduce yourself and where your from and see if there are players near you. There is also player world map.
I have had a bit of spare time over last few days to read the faction rules in the new book Crescent & Cross in order to choose a new warband. Thought I’d start off with a Muslim band. For me it came down to two. The Mutatawwia who have some pretty unique rules and the Saracens. I have opted for Saracens not for any tactical advantage in the game it’s just that Ghulams look so damn cool.