I can’t stop thinking about ancient Rome – SAGA edition

I put in an order with Victrix thinking it would take a while to get here and to my surprise it only took a week. I think I’m still used to pandemic overseas shipping times. Oh well, time to look at what came in!

I blame Carthage for my toe dip into Saga, I should probably explain. It started with finding my old De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) Roman army. I had pledge that this was the perfect project for the upcoming spring cleaning challenge. I was at my FLGS picking up some hobby supplies and saw that they had the Saga rules in as well as some of the supporting books. I’ve seen it played once at my store and it looks like a lot of fun. A mix of crunch with the battle boards, but streamlined base gameplay. I like the amount of models needed and that they aren’t manufacturer specific.

Great, I thought I’ll pick up the rulebook but I also need a historical period to play in. Looking over the options in stock I settled on Age of Hannibal because I love the Punic Wars period and with DBA I already had Caesar vs Gaul covered.

Carthago Delenda Est!

Having a look at the ancients section of the shop I saw the Gripping Beasts boxed sets in as well as some Victrix. I liked the look of the Victrix sculpts more but they only had the Warriors of Carthage set. I picked it up since well I’m likely going to be introducing this game to my friends so will need a warband for each side. Saga uses a point system that is stupid simple to understand. You get your Warlord for free then you have three types of troop, Hearthguard, Warriors, and Levies. They descend in order of strength but the cost is the same you just get more of the troop type. Four Hearthguard, Eight Warriors, or Twelve Levies for one point each. The max a unit can have is twelve and you can have multiple units up to half of your points for certain types like your Hearthguard. Also there are Mercenary units you can get.

You get around 60 miniatures per bag, yeah they come in bags but don’t let that turn you off they are packaged well. That was plenty of figures to make a warband of 4-6 points depending how I split up the models

I took my purchase home and did more reading on the game. Sigh, that is when I realized I love the structure of the game and I needed to get some Romans. I went to Victrix’s site and picked up a bag of Roman legions another 60 figures, Roman Calvary that can also make Carthaginian Cavalry, and some Elephants because they sounded fun to run on the table. I figured this order would take a month to get to me and give me time to paint my DBA figures. Nope! Got here in a week so now they sit and taunt me waiting to get built, but if I build them I know I won’t get to my painting pledge, that comes first. Now I have further incentive to finish up my painting to get to building these. I’ve painted a company of American Airborne for Flames of War, how bad can 46 15mm models be to paint? Right? Right?