SAGA Rampant! or "The miniatures went in 2 by 2"

This is one of those things that has ben floating around in my head for a while, and I figured I would try and make some sense of my jumbled thought process on the matter, and hopefully it is of some use to the people out there in internetland.

So, what exactly is SAGA Rampant?

Well, at a basic level, it is a plan borne from my endeavours to paint up "double-duty" miniatures.  A double-duty miniature being one that can be used for something besides it's intended purpose/system, and by way of example, I'm going to use my Conquest Normans.  Now, these were originally painted up for SAGA, but, having had a look over the books, I figured that I can easily adapt them to Lion or Dragon Rampant, hence the term SAGA Rampant.  Using these as I find Saga to be enjoyable for someone like myself who really isn't in to Historical gaming, it has enough of that Herohammer vibe about it with the Warlords generally being beasts in combat, and the various special abilities on the battle boards, and the Rampant games, as I really like the whole "wargaming lite" vibe of the Osprey books, and see them as a good entry point into various periods/styles of play (hence my plan to paint up a force for every one of them, but that's a different story.  Or blog post)

The basic foundation for this is how the armies are put together, Saga has 4/8/12 model units (at the basic level) and the Rampant series follows a 6/12 model/wound unit.  Looking at it, it is quite easy to plan out a 6pt Saga army that will translate directly to one of the Rampant games, as opposed to the "paint up some random stuff" approach I had originally had.

So, let's see how this works.

Generic Norman Army 6pts

Warlord
4 Mounted Hearthguard
4 Mounted Hearthguard
8 Warriors
8 Warriors
8 Warriors
12 Levy

OK, so it probably isn't the most optimal list, there's none of those lovely crossbows, whatever...  but we'll go with it.  So, breaking it down, we have

Chief dude
8 figures on horses
24 infantry with (most likely) spears and shields
12 infantry with bows.

Grabbing Lion Rampant and flipping to the Mustering your army section, we can immediately see we have enough mounted figures for a 6 model unit of Mounted Men-at-arms or Serjeants, let's put them down as Mounted Serjeants just now, for a 4pt spend.  Moving on to the infantry, our 24 warriors with spear and shield conviniently (amazingly so) split perfectly into 2 12 model units of Foot Yeomen at 3pts each (Total spend so far 10pts) and similarly, that 12 man levy unit becomes a 4pt Archer unit.

So thats

Mounted Serjeants - 4pts
2 x Foot Yeomen - 6pts
Archers - 4pts

So far, we've spent 14/24pts, and have 3 figures left spare right now, it's not enough for another unit, and 10pts is a lot to spend on upgrades.  But you can still play Saga, right?  Looking at it, painting another unit of Mounted Hearthguard for Saga would give you the option of adding a second unit of Mounted Serjeants (2 spare + 4) for another 4pts, taking you to 18/24pts, I guess you could spend 6pts on upgrades, or, being a dastardly Norman playe, you probably want to get those Crossbows on the field, so, add them to your Saga force, and assuming you can get a spare 4, that's another 4pts spent on Cossbowmen taking it to 22/24pts, and giving you 2pts for upgrades.

Lion Rampant Normans

2 x Mounted Serjeants - 8pts
2 x Foot Yeomen - 6pts
Archers - 4pts
Crossbowmen - 4pts
Upgrades - 2pts

Working it back, it translates to 8pts for Saga, so enough for a fully playable force with options.  There is also a sample Norman retinue in the book, classing the mounted models as Mounted Men-at-Arms, which eats up more points, and the Levy as Bidowers (although you are only using 6 of them), you'd still need 12 crossbowmen, but at a push, you could get away with painting the 8 you'd want for Saga and filling out the unit with 4 of the spare Levy.  Just make sure they die first.

Maybe it takes a little bit of fudging, but it's not a huge task to turn that Saga army into a playable Lion Rampant force.


Moving on to Dragon Rampant, it should be, if anything, easier to translate, as the Reduced model unit rules allows you to allocate multiple hits to a model and field less figures.  Let's be honest, you could drop every unit to a single figure with 6 or 12 wounds and play with about 6 models a side...  but it's not gonna look great, but it could be a handy way to get a handle on the rules.

So taking that original Saga force, it breaks down to

Heavy Riders - 4pts (6 wounds)
2 x Light Foot - 6pts (24 wounds)
Light Missiles - 4pts (12 wounds)

Again, coming in at 14/24pts and leaving the same 3 figures spare.  So, how do we make up those 10pts (other than upgrades).  The easiest thing is to class Mounted models as 2hits apiece, meaning your 6 mounted figures can actually be used as 2 units of Heavy Riders, immediately adding another 4pts, taking you to 18/24, from there, the quickest addition would be to paint up a mounted Warlord for Saga, and add him to the 2 remaining Hearthguard to form a 3rd unit of Heavy Riders taking you to 22/24pts, or class his unit as Elite Riders for 6pts and that takes you up to 24pts exactly.  Probably good news for those that don't want to sully their armies with fantastical rules and dirty great monsters.

Warlord and 2x Hearthguad or Elite Riders and 2x Heavy Riders?  Why not both?

Working it back, you've got exactly the same army as you started with for Saga, but now you have a mounted Warlord option too.  Bonus.


And that, is basically the gist of it, paint an army for a game, and with a few additions, you get options for the original game, or enough figures to play something else.  If you don't like playing something else, you haven't really lost anything other than a couple of hours, and you still have options for your original army.


So this is the plan I am following when it comes to painting up new stuff, aiming for a Saga style build to begin with, that can be expanded towards the Rampant games.  4-8 models is a pretty good number for batch painting, 12 can be a slog, but you can always break it down to 2x6.  It doesn't have to be strictly historical stuff either, I made a start on the Oathmark Dwarfs a couple of months back, with the idea that they would be a good "Counts as" Saxon or Viking force for Saga until the Fantasy sourcebook is released.

Dwarf Hearthguard.

Dwarf Warlord

Dwarf Priest

On a similar note, skirmish games gives you a start into building up units for more massed battles, the Dacian Warband I am painting up for Broken Legion's, using the Frostgrave Barbarians can be expanded into Fierce/Bellicose Foot for the Rampant games (mixed weaponry won't really matter) or a more Hollywood style Viking force for Saga.  They'll also be great for playing Blood Eagle, which just adds to the options I have for games.

3 Men short of a Saga Warrior unit.

It's not just limited to 28-30mm scale stuff either.  I recently threw out a challenge to the 15mm Fantasy Gaming group to do a slo-gro "fantasy" Saga army over 6 months, and make it a playable Dragon Rampant army by painting up enough spare models to bulk out the units.  It was more a personal project, but I opened it up to the group to get others on board.  I had originally planned on doing a mostly mounted force using the Copplestone 15mm Barbarians and Northlanders, but settled instead for Dwarfs, using the awesome 4a Miniatures ones (which Andy still doesn't have up on the webstore, but has at shows, so bug him about it to get them up there if you want some) 

Blame these guys for the change of plan.

 Seeing as there isn't a book to go by for Fantasy Saga, it's basically paint 4/8/12 models a month to count as something for Saga until we have a book.  I'm going with the Dwarfs being Vikings, because it is the most generic list in my opinion, but I also get to go a bit wild with some Berserker types.  Painted up my Counts as Warlord last month, one of the Blighthaven Dwarven Warmachine models (without the crew) and I have 3 packs of the 4a Dwarfs to get started.  Hopefully there will be some new releases by the time I get them done.

I'm just a warmachine, painted for fantasy, give me a kiss or 3, and I'm fine...

Of course there are plenty of other games out there beyond Saga and the Rampants, I know I'll revisit God of Battles once the Dwarfs start piling up, and that will probably prompt painting up a second army...


So yeah, that's basically the whole thought process laid out, paint 4/8/12 models at a time for Saga, either a real force or proxy/count as models, and see about expanding them into usable units for other games.  It's never an excessive amount of painting breaking it down into chunks like that, and you can slowly build up your forces and options to play multiple games.  It's not going to be for everybody, but, if you are stuck in a rut, or don't know where to aim for next in your hobbying, it might be worth a try.

Productive painting and happy gaming until next time,

Cheers,

John.