Saga - My Vikings
6 points is the aim
The Vikings have no access to mounted troops in the game.
Apart from a few advantages that mounted troops obviously give you, the Viking battle board would give you nothing in the way of abilities for mounted troops.
So if I can’t clash against cavalry with cavalry of my own, I guess I can prey on one of their few disadvantages, in that they are a minus 1 to their armour value when under ranged attack.
To help complete my 6 points list of Vikings I went for 12 levy archers.
To make my archers look as individual as i could I turned to a box of Conquest Games Medieval Archers and kit bashed them with Gripping Beast Vikings and Wargames Factory pieces. This was enormous fun.
I had already made a couple of archers for Frostgrave and was happy with how they had turned out.
I did wonder whether the Medieval archers would look out of their era in Dark Age battles, but have been reassured that they look fine and match history fairly well. I have spoken to Dark Age reenactors and they have said their main gripe with Viking miniatures is padded armour (an addition from much later in history) and the number of pouches on display. A sack was a far more likely carrying device, because it takes skill with leather work and costly in time to make a clasped good quality pouch. The clash comes when most war gamers want to paint their armies and often want to paint something more intricate and interesting than just a smock with a belt. Pouches and purses offer variety too, even if they weren’t as typical during the era as they are on our gaming tables.
I used the sand and grass basing to try to continue the theme throughout my force. Even with the Viking helmets I would probably get away with using these as levy archers for another faction if I needed to and I doubt anyone would object.
“The Vikings have no access to mounted troops in the game.” – yep, tough to get a horse on a longboat, I would assume. 😀 😀 😀
Apparently the Vikings did like to raid with horses, Bernard Cornwell wouldn’t fudge the history on me (The Burning Land is my source – Utred is an awesome character) but usually bought or stole them once here. ? You know what travel can be like. “No there is no room for the horse Sven, we’ll pick one up at duty free when we get there”
One of the reasons that the Vikings raided monastery’s in France apart from the obvious is that they were also the keepers of the Royal Stables. Like a lot of other armies of the period they seemed to like to ride to battle and then dismount to fight