From PeteF Goblin Riders (100 points)

One of last years's what was I thinking? E-Bay purchases was Mantic's complete Vanguard Kickstarter - with extra elves. With all the add-ons this is a mixed bag of goodies from several of Mantic's armies. During quarantine I've already done some elf cavalry and infantry, which I'm going to use for SAGA Age of Magic.

Next out of the box are these gobboes - they'll do for Age of Magic mounted warriors and, if I ever do a Kings of War goblin army I can use them for that too. They're individually based and magnetized for flexibility.  I'm not sure what the mounts are - not quite as characterful as the Evil Empire's squigs - but plenty of teeth and menace.

I'm looking forward to trying Age of Magic after quarantine. I've been using Table Top Simulator to stay connected to wargaming friends and had an enjoyable game of Blucher today. A Wargaming club that does a lot of Blucher has uploaded some nice assets and Blucher scenarios.

There's plenty more to paint in the box of Vanguard goodies - I'm using a policy of random drawing from the multiple bags of gray plastic bits - so who knows what'll come out next?

From PeteF: Mixed Bag of Elves for SAGA, Old School Figures and Lizards Rebased (50 points)

Photography Helper

This week's hobbying involved a bit of rebasing and finishing one more unit for SAGA Age of Magic.

The rebased 25mm Napoleonics are Foremost casts that my Dad painted back in the day. There were just enough for three bases which will do for a small french battalion for the Quatres Bras project. So here is the 3rd Battalion of the 108th ligne. The Foremost poses are really nice - I think they were taken over by Hinchcliffe and that you can still get them from Hinds Figures.

The next bit of rebasing was these eight lizards that I used to test out contrast paints and a Kings of War colour scheme last year. In the end I went with firey red, orange and yellow lizards - with not stripes of spots - rejecting the greens and blues. They'll do OK as one point of warriors for SAGA Age of Magic.

The elves are also for SAGA Age of Magic and I've based them on magnets so they can also be put on a metal tray for Kings of War - making a troop of elf palace guard. They got colour shift green armour and I had some fun trying out different Celitc-y designs on the cloaks. I'll field eight of these elves as a point of warriors or maybe 2 points of hearthguard, depending on which faction I choose for them. The factions in SAGA Age of Magic are generic fantasty types: Great Kingdoms, Lords of the Wild, Undead Legions, The Horde, The Otherworld and Masters of the Underneath. So you can play the same miniatures as a few different factions while you figure out which one you like best.

I'm definitely getting the urge to add more Minifigs to the Quatres Bras army (13 battalions, 3 1/2 batteries and a bunch of cavalry to go) - so I'll work on that in the coming weeks... although one of my wargaming friends is talking about Dracula's America and those figures look great.

From PeteF: Elven Heavy Cavalry for SAGA (50 points)

Next out of my big box of randomness was this troop of Elven (Elfish?) Stormwind Cavalry from Mantic Games. The big box of randomness was the result of buying a kickstarter on EBay with all the add-ons and freebies. There are ogres, goblins, orcs, war engines, gargoyles and who knows what. I decided to build a SAGA Age of Magic army by blindly selecting one plastic bag at a time from the box.

A couple of weeks ago this packet of cavalry came out. They are made of a plastic/resin/vinyl material that allows for a decent level of detail. There are some downsides. At least for this kickstarter the manufacturer did not do a great job with mold lines. The material has to be superglued (I much prefer hard plastic and hard plastic glue for both the bond and filling in gaps). The fit of the various bits was far from perfect - they recommend bending the figures after bathing them in very hot water.

I am experimenting with Turbo Dork's colour shift paints and used "Forrest Flux" for the green metallics. The initial layer of green looked a bit heavy and even with the colourshifting was monotonous, so they got gold trim on everything. I tried painting the horse cloth green but it (and the cloaks) were better a more neutral white.

There are five stormwind cavalry on individual magnetized bases. They'll do for SAGA mounted hearthguard as well as a troop of heavy cavalry for Kings of War when stuck to a metal tray. The plan is to have a complete SAGA Age of Magic army done by the time the local games stores are open again. I hope all my fellow quarantiners are staying sane.

 

PeteF: Hearthguard for SAGA Age of Magic (20 points)

There are two local groups that play SAGA - most of our games are Age of Vikings, a few are Age of Crusades and a number of people are interested in Age of Magic. Most of my fantasy stuff is based on big multibases for Kings of War so I'm starting from scratch to build my SAGA AoM armies - although some of the monsters will work for both systems on their existing bases.

These are Mantic figures for Kings of War/Vanguard from the Northern Alliance faction - not sure where they got the brilliant idea for a bunch of fur clad northern beserk beardy types wearing heavy furs and wielding even heavier weapons.  The tiny head/big shoulders aesthetic is typical Mantic.

Three of the figures are made from that Restik stuff and I'm not really a fan - there always seem to be a lot of mold lines and I inevitably miss a couple and can't face cleaning it up once there's paint on the model. Restik does support a lot of detail - perhaps too much.

Not having an Osprey to turn to I consulted with a colour expert to try and fix some of the initial problems I had trying to find something to work with the blue - I really like the colour shift paints for fantasy metallics.  This one is "Blue Raspberry" from Turbodork.

In the SAGA system a unit of hearthguard is one point and the recommended army size for Age of Magic is 8 points so I'm hoping to get a whole army finished over the course of the quarantine, even allowing for other distractions. I played my first game of quarantine SAGA on Table Top Simulator last week and it was a lot of fun - it's quite easy to accidentally drop your figures and have them go rolling all over the place - at least you don't have to reglue and repaint them.