SAGA Iliad: Progress

We finally got to give my SAGA Iliad mod a run at the Cavs last night. Poochie ran Achilles (using Ivo the Norman from the Official lists) and I ran Odysseus (using an even more unpronounceable Welsh Hero). The outcome of that little clash can be seen here. See, it was all a ruse to get the wayward kid Achilles to do the work of posting up the batrep!

Alright, that was in Jest. Achilles pretty handily took down Odysseus and clearly displayed much better judgement overall, kept his lines together and punished the older man for being too keen to seize key pieces of terrain. It was a good test of the boards and the chosen heroes: mine reduced his starting dice (some ruse of cunning Odysseus) and Poochie's never gets tired but has to fight alone. Never getting fatigued turns out to be incredibly useful as the game goes on and I was watching key units tire as Achilles stalked about looking for his next target. Much fun was had by all anyway.

The game did turn up a couple of issues with the boards: The Achaean Kleos ability box was missing a symbol and the Ithacan Prometheus box lacked the note stating that a Warlord cannot use it. That note was put in the later Achaean board to keep Achilles from getting too out of hand but no reason it shouldn't apply to the Ithacans.

The game was also the first run of what we (the pro-painter and I) have completed of the new army:

This pic is not upside down, my 'discovery' for this army is magnetic basing. 20mm squares by Galeforce 9. I asked Tim about these last year and he actually stocked them, eventually, so I picked these up from his store. Not quite enough for the whole army but I am sold on them and will be doing anything that I want to use for both Skirmish and Impetvs (yes Stephen, not Phalangites) that way. Ranked up, eight Hoplites give a proper 8cm frontage Impetvs FP base.

The Pro-Painter did a good job on these. She may have 'inadvertently' been given the impression that these would be like my Romans (ie lots of armour, and the shield and tunics are a uniform colour) but got into the swing of things and can bang them out in groups of four pretty handily. My contribution to these is the awesome shield curtains (and assembly and bases, I did something). Great work, eh?

I have actually painted one - brave Odysseus. Seen here with arm 2.0 (version 1, with armour, is lost somewhere, be back in 10ish years...).

I am a big fan of these figs. Less chunky than a lot of other historicals and, I think, they paint up well and look very appealing. They are the Immortal Miniatures Hoptlites, that Warlord games now sell under their 'Hail Caesar' label. I am sure they don't mind being pressed into service for awesome games like SAGA and Impetvs though.

Looking forward to my next game of this.