SAGA objectives

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything. March was a horrible month. Actually I take that back - it was great in many ways, but not for painting. I had a visit from my bro' (over for an extended weekend), which just happened to coincide with a rebuild of my PC - no more circling cursor of doom for me or that lovely phrase not responding, a particular favourite of Outlook. Of course a new CPU and gfx card means I can use more RAM too, all of which means I can run Skyrim without smoke pouring out of the back of the PC. And with all the graphics settings on max too!

I can't blame it all on Skyrim though as I did manage to catch the dreaded man-flu that  was doing the rounds and, having been sent home by my students (fair enough really, I have never understood the "never take a day of work attitude" if all you achieve by staying there is "spreading a bit of happiness" - ie the bug), spent several days in bed, or more accurately on the sofa under mounds of duvets, watching all 3 series of Black Books. Again, fun, but not conducive to getting much done.

It's not all doom and gloom. At the beginning of the month I went over to a friend's as we had just discovered our mutual interest in board games. I played Memoire 44 for the first time, along with Battle of Westeros, both of which were fun. When Chris came over to mine at the end of the month we had a game of C&C Napoleonic, which was fun too, but even better than that, he got quite excited when I showed him my SAGA figures, and definitely wants to give it a go. I might have found an opponent who only lives 10 minutes away! Having talked to him about his preferences in gaming I think he's more into simpler, skirmish type games, so I have reassessed my priorities from the beginning of the year. I'm still going to go ahead with the 4 projects I started with, but the SYW has been put on slow, as has the 15mm Sc-Fi. I have added 28mm AZW, as I think TSaTF might be just down his street, and I have a fair few figures waiting to be painted up.

This doesn't mean I have given up the other stuff though. I have some Normans started and I am just about finished with some more berserkers and some Viking archers (they just need basing properly - roll on Salute and some more tufts!). Last time I painted up a single berserker as part of the group of Bondi - so here are the other 3 and the single "normal" Viking to take the first one's place among the Bondi. No boss on the shield, so I tried a hand painted motif. I think you can see now why I am such a fan of LBMS transfers...

Now I have enough Vikings to do some damage, they need something to steal; after all there's no point in raiding if there is nothing to take. Here are the first of a few of the things I'll be using as objectives for raiding scenarios when playing SAGA.

First up is the pigsty by Architects of War. This is a really nice model. Unfortunately the liquid water I used in the puddles seems to have clouded over, but when the weather is warmer I'll apply another layer and see if that sorts it out.

The pigsty

There's no point in a pigsty if there ain't no pigs. And we all know those Danes like their bacon...

Some more livestock to nick (from Gripping Beast)...

A while back I got a load of stuff from Ainsty, including some barrels, bales and boxes. Cheap and they work perfectly for just about every period you can think of.

And last but not least, the church. Every self-respecting Viking made a beeline for the church to steal the plate, and anything else they could get their hands on. 

This is the GB resin church. Since all my other scenics are based I've decided to base this one too, and to add a few bits and bobs, such as some gravestones from the Renedra set. I'm going to have a go at weathering using oil filters, I'm not too sure how that'll work out so I wanted a record of when it looked ok ...

All I need now are a few Saxon houses, and I'll be looking to get the new fencing and "Saxon tents", whatever they are, from Renedra when I get to Salute this weekend. We're getting there, slowly...