North Eastern Pagan Muster

 

SAGA: Revenge of the Old Gods

Hello Everyone! My Blogging seems to occur when I play one of my quarterly gaming sessions. My painting and terrain building output has been in overdrive but I have no blog posts to show for it. Only the gods know if I'll get around to it.

At any rate, here is some pics of a Saga battle: Revenants vs. Vikings. It was the first outing with both factions for their respective players.

We played the Scenario from the Revenant Rule Supplement Get to the Ships. The Warbands Deploy on opposite short edges of a 3x4 table and the non-revenant faction has the mission of bringing four loot tokens to the opposite short board edge. Instead of Loot tokens we used people. Ansgar, his wife, his son, and his priest.

Jarl Ansgar was sent as an honored guest to Hamburg at an early age. There, he was taught the Christian way, and was arranged to marry a Christian Noblewoman from Denmark. In his absence, his family's lands became openly hostile to a Christian lord. A pagan usurper took claim to lordship.  When Ansgar came of age he took a company of German and Danish warriors to take back his rightful lands in the name of Christ.  The usurper was easily removed, and Ansgar set upon his new mission of Baptizing and converting his subjects.  

The Old Gods' looked on with horror as one of their most devout lands gained a Christian ruler. The Gods' sent their earthly messengers to commune with a nearby shaman. They told the Shaman that he would bring the Gods' Justice to the Land by removing Ansgar from the Earth. The Shaman made haste raising an army of the dead to defeat the traitorous Ansgar.

Thormund Stout Heart, a famous viking warlord, was on his way to Greet Ansgar and honor Ansgar's victory over the Usurper. Thormund did not approve of Christianity but he did not concern himself too much with what the High Lords believed. As long as he and his warriors were free to raid in the Glory of Odin, Thormund was content.

A thick fog fell over the land and the stench of death filled the air. Thormund and his warriors exited the Great Hall and realized the God's were bringing their wrath upon Ansgar. But Thormund felt honor bound to protect Ansgar's bloodline. So Thormund took Ansgar, Ansgar's priest and his family, and arrayyed his warriors for battle. 

Vikings:

2 HG 

1 Beserkers

3 Warriors

Revenant:

5 Revenant Units

1 Grave Pit

Deployment

Pre battle Layout

The Dead Have Risen

Viking Deployment: 2 units of 12 warriors 2 units of 4 hearthguard and 1 beserker unit. 1 hearthguard unit took Ansgar and one 12 man warrior unit took the remaining 3 Civilians.

View forward for the Vikings

Revenants get the first turn, followed by the viking advance

Viking Beserkers and Warriors come charging forward toward the dead like madmen. The Necromancer takes the opportunity to shoot his spells at the unarmoured beserkers but the viking's have protective magic of their own.

The Warriors and zombies are soon to Collide

2 warriors charge forward to gain Valhalla while the rest of the unit does their best to fight honorably and marginally win the combat. Elsewhere the beserkers charge a unit of Dead men and are themselves wiped out felling many of the walkers....Sadly the dead will rise again. However, the vikings call upon the gods for intervention and the gods answer by removing the 3 remaining undead that clashed with the warriors. 1 Revenant unit destroyed.

As the Revenant Units swarmed the remaining warriors the rest of Thormund's forces began to merge and attempt to punch a hole through the center of the field.

Thormund and his guard charge forward in a brave attempt to fell the dead.

Here they come

Ansgar and his Guard

Here's where the pictures stop. Thormund charges some revenants with hearthguard they fail to remove an entire unit and some hearthguard are slain. Fresh revenant units than return charge Thormund and remove all the warriors around him.  

Thormund is all alone, swarmed by zombies and killed.

The vikings had 1 12 man warrior unit left and 1 hearthguard unit left against the 5 full strength Revenant Units. So we called the game.

My opponents initial strategy and confrontations were uncoordinated and left him seriously vulnerable for the remainder of the battle.  The revenant units have to be completely removed or the models can be replaced and the units can get back to full strength. So the living must really concentrate on one or two revenant units per turn with multiple/melees a turn. Otherwise the revenants will absorb wounds too easily if they are not quickly wiped out. We both wished my opponent took Jomsvikings instead of vikings, because he was too unfamiliar with the board. 

I received the revenant ruleset for free from Gripping Beast because I asked after years of the limited Revenant Box Set not selling out if they were ready to sell the PDF rules. They told me I could have the rules and I was free to Disperse the PDF. So to my few followers that see this, comment below and lets figure out a way I can email you all the Revenant PDF!

Finished Rune Stones, Burial Mound, and Rocky hills

Just thought I would post some pictures of the based Runestones as well as a better shot of the pink foam hills, using the DM Scotty Rock face technique. 

The Last pic of these hills had no models for scale and was quite boring

See my previous post for any instructions I gave.

GB Pagan Rus, Norse Gael axemen, Viking Ship Crew, and Terrain

These Gripping Beast Figures were gifted to me from a Friend that came to visit New York from San Francisco. The models are awesome, really love the newer GB ranges. I was so excited about the models I went straight into building and painting them.

First up the Norse Gael Axemen, one of them sadly is missing from the shot...oops

Some Pagan Rus warriors with various Baltic symbols on the shields

The Viking Captain and Crew

These Runestone were exceedingly easy to make. I just lopped off some pink foam pieces and carved in the details with a pen.  The runes on the border were carved with the pen, but in hindsight was an unnecessary step, painting them on would've been sufficient.

Heres the WIP shot

These hills were made from pink foam and suite my modular demands on the tabletop.  They were cut out with a hot foam cutter; textured on the sides and top by taking a broken cinder block and bashing in the textures; followed by a standard drybrushing of greys and a little tan and brown before the lightest grey. Really easy and a technique from DM Scotty.

Finally, the burial mound with sword. This idea was nicked off the user Jericho from the lead adventure forum, he made his for his late Roman/Arthurians for a Sarmatian type burial. The base is cardboard/ the mound was made by crumpling a piece of paper towel and covering it in PVA, then placing a piece of paper towel over the mound to create the gradual slope into the ground, also covered with pva.  Then the standard basing technique was used (just sand).  

The Messenger, Part 2

Welcome to Part two of the two part Messenger Battle report.

It seems the pagans hadn't travelled far in part 1. Krivas still had a long road to safety.

As the Order's army repositioned itself in a defensive posture between the marshes, a unit of brother knights was charged by ferocious pagans.

3 Knights were cut down by pagan axes, while the ferocious pagan warband lost 2.

 The Knights fled the battlefield. The Pagans were gaining momentum.

The Ferocious warband continued their advance, and wildly charged the Brother Serjeants. The Brother Serjeants were in schiltron formation, creating an impenetrable defensive position. 

 The ferocious warband fell back, and eventually took some crossbow fire...

...Which caused the remaining men to flee from the battlefield.

In the south a group of Brother Knights charged the baltic spearmen.

After the combat the remaining spearmen headed for the hills. The knights also came out of the melee battered.

At this point we called the game. The Order had successfully destroyed The pagans ability of getting Krivas to safety. 

The Pagans were now surrounded. 

There was but only one choice.... 

Lion Rampant game 4, the Messenger, Part 1

For our fourth game of Lion rampant (3rd northern crusades battle), we played the scenario H, The messenger. The scenario entails taking a non combatant figure from one table corner across the battlefield to the far diagonal corner of the table. This scenario seemed fitting because the last battle the pagans rescued the pagan priest Krivas. Now they have to make their way back to pagan territory with the priest.  

The pagan deployment in the northwest corner of the battlefield.

A long trek awaits the pagans, as well as some....violence.

In the southwest deployment zone the crusaders placed a unit of archers, to immediately harass the pagan movement.

The archers unleashed several volleys upon my nobles (mounted serjeants with bows). Eventually I brought the archers into melee causing only 5 wounds. Not enough to make the archers half strength, while my mounted noble units were diminished and battered.

The archers rallied on a remarkable role and it seemed that God favored the devout. My nobles were continuing to flee, losing even more men.

The archers now had to make some headway north to continue their active role in the field

Meanwhile, in the north, the pagans steadily advanced as the Brother Knights (for some reason mounted serjeants this game) closed distance. Back in the south the pesky crusader archers were finally reduced to 5 men by bow fire from my mounted nobles. This brought them below half strength, and caused them to break. The southern pagan flank was now secure. The archers had no chance of regrouping.

The pagan archers are getting into a position where they can unleash hell upon the Brother Knights. The Pagan foot-yeomen form a shield wall (schiltron) in preparation for the knights' charge. 

In the south, the knights charged the remaining pagan nobles. The knights' charge was less effective due to the rough terrain, the knights lost one of their brothers and killed one of the pagans, causing the knights to retreat.  The sole surviving noble pagan, lost his courage and fed the battlefield.

 The knights after their retreat. The Fierce pagans loom in the background, as well as the horde of yeomen around the farmhouse. Plenty of rough terrain to trap the knights!

The crusading commander has taken a pagan helmet as a trophy. Is this some form of trickery? The evil christians know no bounds.

The Knights of the Sword are about to charge the pagan lines, but before they do, the pagan archers unleash a volley of arrows killing 2 knights.

The knights charge the archers and kill 3 pagans, but the foolish knights lose a man in the melee as well.

This rule Im not sure about, it may only apply to wild charges and I didn't feel like checking. but I believe a unit in lion rampant has to charge the closest unit? Either way I Made the crusaders role a d6 with a 50% chance of charging the archers again and a 50% chance of charging the foot-yeomen in schiltron. As You Can see the Knights charged the foot-yeomen.

The combat goes well for the yeomen

The knights are cut down to a man.

This is as far as chris and i got this game. It took us three hours (including deployment) to get to this point. Well see who prevails next time. With the mounted nobles diminished in the south, the pagan advance will be slow. I am not looking forward to facing the crusader crossbows........

And, Chris picked up this figure from Reaper. its not reaper bones. He asked me to paint it for him. Took me about 45 mins, definitely a nice looking ranger.

Here is a new addition to the above Lion rampant game. The Pagans are racing to get Krivas to the river, where a boat offers a swift escape