Dice trays and bases.

I've been getting bases from Battle Kiwi for sometime now. As a local supplier, Olivier has & is, always great to deal with. My last order was no exception. with some custom bases I requested for my Hail Caesar army. 

These are the new bases for my Light cavalry skirmishers, which have turned out awesome. It will make it easy moving the skirmishers around the table and easy for everyone to tell that they not formed up and skirmishing.

Cavalry skirmish bases

Cavalry formed base

I also got a custom dice tray made up. With my wife being Norwegian and playing Saga at the moment I couldn't go past having a Shield Maiden as the background image.

The tray is really nice to roll dice on, with the faux leather (yeah I had to look at that up, its artificial leather). The dice stop nicely and don't really bounce that much. Of course you could get the dice to bounce right out if your gonna be a He-man about it. For the price I think its well worth it.

One thing to watch out for if you get a custom one made, is the image you use, make sure the lines are thick. The Shield Maiden has some fine detail in and around her face and it gets a bit lost in the dark tones.The details is there, it just blends in when you look at it from further away.  But the pattern in behind her stands out really nicely. Just something to consider when choosing your image.

  You can check out the dice trays at https://www.battlekiwi.com/product/dice-tray/

I'm also making up my own dice holders for wound count, and using the corner position on the movement trays. That way is simple to move the units around and not worry about moving all the wound tokens with the units. really good when you end up in the middle of a messy mass battle. They are just made from some old grey-stuff I had lying around and a 20 mm base and take a 16 mm dice.

and last of all my new generals for the Successor army ready for some undercoat and paint.

Eastern Irregulars Saga session

So today I ventured across town, well 45 mins drive to the other side of the city to meet up at the newly formed Eastern Irregulars club to learn to play Saga. I believe this was the second club meeting. Held in Spell Bound games in Pakuranga. An interesting little place, a huge floor space, with war gaming, board games and card games stuff strewn around the place, along with a role playing group, Magic and other card gamers.

I've had the rules for Saga for a year or so and plenty of Vikings, but never got around to playing, and now of course the 2nd edition rules are out.(Friggin Typical) I could come up with some excuse about not reading the rules this week, but I cant, I was just a slack arse this week. So it was trial by fire in a four point four way game. Will, Jason, Lee and myself. After 7 rounds and adding up the points, I came in last... no surprise, but I got a good look at the mechanics and how things worked.

My Vikings expand out as my Saga dice played nice for me

Lee's Welsh started doing sneaky things.

Jason's Norma's thundered across the table at the Welsh

Will play's conservatively a bit like his paint scheme.

 My hearth guard and Warlord toasted some of Will's warriors before coming to a brutal end

Jason's Norman's got to feel Lee's trickery and pointy sticks.

Second game was a doubles game of Lee's concoction, as he tryied to play ref since there was 5 of us left for the afternoon. This was where I got to feel the wraith of the Jomsvikings, which by a bit of luck didn't end to badly, as I lost all my guys except for 4 levies and my Warlord, at the same time wiping out most of the Joms' . My viking partner (Brent I think.. fist time I meet him) took the win for us by getting to Will's Warlord in a one on one.

So for my first two real games of Saga I had alot of fun, and thus ordered the new rules books.

Looking forward to more games out east with the Irregulars.

Saga -WIP

The Saga begins... yep, the saga of me trying to pull the clear top layer off the shield transfer sheet ..ahhhrrrr...   My first 16 Vikings almost done.

The Wild West

Having played alot of Bolt Action over the past few months we decided to bust out the old Legends of the Wild West. Phil turned on his paint face this past week and turned up with all his entire gang nicely painted. He did a really nice job in a very short time.

I was pretty tired after a busy week so Mark and Phil put there Outlaw gangs up against each other. I then pulled out all my civilians and popped them all over the place and Mark added in his civilians as well to make a real town scene. I ended up pushing around the civilians and making them run away and attach the nearest bad guys etc, which was anyone and everyone.

The stupid thing was that my dice rolling was a little crazy good and the civilians got out the beat stick and smacked around the Mexicans and then turned on the Outlaws.

The next game we will need to make the civilians a bit weaker. It was a good fun relaxed games.

After that I played Phil in a couple of beginner games of Saga. Being my first intro to the game so I didn't take any photos at all since I was trying to learn the rules. (Plus I was using Mark’s Lord of the Rings models as Proxys). Mark helped us with rules and gave me pointers where needed. I used the Vikings and Phil used the Crusaders. It was a 4 point game,which I took 4 unit of Hearth guard and a Warlord and Phil changed his units about between games to try things out.

I used my new toy, a Surface Pro 3 as the battle board since I had a PDF on it, and no one had a board I could borrow. It actually worked out really well. Another unforeseen bonus of my purchase this week.

The first game Phil changed up with his Cavalry and got smashed by my dice rolling.To add salt to the wounds, I was using his dice …LOL. Then he charged in with his Warrior Priest dude and dealt to one of my units, after which is was left hanging in the wind and I unloaded all my dice on my board into him winning the game.

Second game I started to see the different options on the Viking board and tried a few different options out as I tried to work out the mechanics of the game. This time round Phil was a bit more mindful of his Warlord and got stuck into me with his cross bolts and a couple of our units both self destructed as the killed each other outright in melee. I then had Phil’s Warlord charge into my Warlord and unleash vengeance with his full battle board behind him I got smashed and Phil won the game.

Its an interesting game with battle boards, think I'll need a few more games to be convinced to get into it. But since alot of the guys are already fully submerged I'll probably join them.