SAGA: Age of Magic - 6 armies

This is where my return to gaming started - The Horde

It's November 2023, I've decided to return to the world of miniature gaming but I have no clue where to start.  I randomly look around and stumble across SAGA - studio tomahawk - and I see that Victrix - www.victrixlimited.com - do a great looking box set of plastic Vikings, and so I embark on a Viking army.  Then I discover that the Age of Vikings rule book is currently out of print, but Age of Magic isn't, so I buy a copy and discover the joy of miniature agnostic rules and my Viking Army becomes my first Faction - The Horde.

So the Victrix set provided the Warlord (soon to be known as Baldr the Unfortunate), four groups of four Hearthguards (Hirdman veteran troops in chainmail), and two sets of eight Warriors (Bondi with light armour).  

Another Victrix set of Dark Age Archers and Slingers then provided two units of twelve Levy with said missile weapons.

I then found Gripping Beast - www.grippingbeast.co.uk - and supplemented the basic troops with a Priest (although not used in AoM, I still thought I might play AoV as well - I still haven't though), a Sorcerer (Stigandr the Wanderer with his familiar crow from Otherworld Miniatures). a Lieutenant (Champion), and a Legendary band of Berserkers (Magnhild’s band of Shieldmaiden Berserkers).

Rounding this out with a some more Otherworld purchases - otherworldminiatures.co.uk - a Titan (the Frost Giant Eindride) and two Quadruped Creatures (Dire Wolves), and later also adding a Behemoth (a Jormungandr 3D print).

Next up - The Lords of the Wild

Even while I was working on the Vikings I was already thinking about who they would face off against, and browsing around various suppliers (of which there were a huge array compared to back in the day), when I stumbled upon Splintered Light - www.splinteredlightminis.com - and their animal armies, and further a nice set of heroes that look just like the kids from the Narnia films!  So, my take on a Narnian army was born.

This proved to be quite an interesting idea as finding Minotaurs, Centaurs, and Fauns that matched how they look in the films wasn’t as simple as you might think, but I was happy in the end.

First though, those lovely animal warriors, which I got a bit carried away with and ended up with so many lovely looking minis that I had to base them in pairs so I could use them all.  It was also a bit of a challenge painting what was basically 15mm instead of 28mm hahahahaha

Here are our heroes then, Peter is done as the Warlord and Susan as the Ranger

Lucy doubles as the Sorcerer

While Edmund leads some dwarves as a unit of Hearthguard

Couldn’t be a Narnia army without Aslan of course!  Had a bit of a struggle finding the right kind of lion, until I found this Bad Squiddo sculpt

Was very happy to find this appropriately primitive looking metal Giant (Conquerer), hard plastic kit of Fauns that looked quite close to those in the films (RGD), and these soft plastic Minotaurs (Dark Alliance) that at 1/72 scale mean they are human sized at 28mm scale instead of being the huge things that most manufacturers seem to sell

These Centaurs are also from an RGD plastic kit. 

For the creatures I wanted a couple of big cats (Wargames Foundry) but I also went with the film rather than the books so a by adding a Rhino (Alternative Armies)

Faction 3 - Lords of the Underneath - Fleshharrower’s Army

Flush with the success of the Narnian army, I went next to one of my favourite fantasy series, Stephen Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and specifically the troops the giant Raver Fleshharrower had available in the army described in the Illearth War.  

Oh boy, an even greater challenge, it turns out nobody makes miniatures for this! 

Kresh were easy enough "He learned later that the pack numbered fifteen of the great yellow wolves. Their fore-shoulders were waist-high on a man; they had massive jaws lined with curved, ripping fangs, and yellow omnivorous eyes.”  So a bunch of Dire Wolves did the job.

Cavewights not too bad. "The Cavewights are around 7 feet tall, with a generally humanoid shape. Their skin is a pallid green” (diluted Maggot Skin)”. So a bit of hunting around found nice Highland 3D prints which at 32mm scale work well against my 28mm standard.

Ur-Viles though! "They have black-flesh that no light could gleam or glisten off." " Its bald skull had no eyes. Above the ragged slit of its mouth, in the centre of its face, were two wide, wet nostrils." So there I had to get a little creative and a lot lucky. I spent some time looking for something to start from, and various ghouls and such went into baskets and out again before I happened across Paragon Star who were excellent at humouring me and provided a range of 3D printed Plague Ghouls I could bash into what I wanted including enough variation to make very nice wedges with the Lore Master at their tip, just as described in the books.

So I admit, the next thing was just for fun as the Lords of the Underneath army list doesn’t allow flying creatures but these Tornado fiends were in the book and I wanted them,  "They were birds as large as kresh. They had clenched satanic faces like bats, wide eagle wings, and massive barbed claws.”  Of course it turns out bat like creatures with eagle wings are not available commercially, but I found the component parts from two different sellers on ETSY.  You’ll see in the main army photo I put these on “flying bases” in the end.

For the rest of the army there are two units:

“humans, wolves, Waynhim, forest animals, creatures of the Flat, all radiating the fathomless blood-hunger which coerced them—many myriad of warped, rabid creatures, the perverted handiwork of Lord Foul and the Illearth Stone.”

This was fun and a whole bunch of random purchases from Paragon Star later gave the unit on the left.  For those that don’t know the Waynhim are like Ur-Viles but grey-green in colour.

“The perverted, manlike creatures that rushed into the ruins—some with claws for fingers, others with cleft faces and limbs covered with suckers, still others with extra eyes or arms, all of them warped in some way by the power of the Stone”

Some ghouls/zombies but also a bit of fun with left over Victrix Viking sprues and some modelling clay. Not exactly miniature sculpting but my ham fingers made excellent looking twisted creatures!

All towered over by Fleshharrower himself, another Conqueror Giant, clutching a fragment of the Illearth Stone.

Faction 4 - Undead Legion

So not a lot of interpretation needed for the next faction, but I still had some fun playing with some of the classical definitions of undead.

These are quite a mix of miniature suppliers.

Wraiths and Leaders from Alternative Armies

Undead from Gripping Beast

Skeletons from Highland

The Catapult is from Mantic with an extra crewman from the Highland stuff

The Giant and Zombie Doggies are 3D prints that were random ETSY purchases

While the 20 strong mindless unit is a mix of Gripping Beast, Otherworld, and Heresy.

Faction 5 - Otherworld - Dragonkin

The Otherworld is an interesting faction.  Aimed towards some sort of Chaos army fact that it has no levy troops but does lean towards flyers got me thinking, and then finding some really nice dragonkin 3D prints  consolidated the idea of this army from an alternative dimension where dragons and dragonkin rule supreme.

These were all 3D prints and all in the colours of the chromatic dragons, the ‘bad guys’ of DnD dragons (apart from the Drakes, which were an experiment in using dilutions of AP Speedpaint.

Finally - Great Kingdom - The Reptile Empire

The Great Kingdom is no doubt expected to be the human centric faction in SAGA AoM, but as I already had the Viking Horde, this was yet another chance to be creative!

The family of Reptilia is comprised of snakes, lizards, crocodilians, and turtles, so I of course wanted to include them all.  Thankfully it was ETSY and 3D prints to the rescue.

Lizards come in many shapes and sizes of course, and indeed their are Saurian fantasy figures that also fit the brief

Crocodiles and Alligators make a convincing Hearthguard unit, 

as do Tortles

I really tried to take the colour schemes from nature, so this Levy of archers was fun to do

The giant snakes were obvious as Monsters, but it was fun to then move on to the Yuan-ti as another Hearthguard unit.

The leadership of a mounted warlord, a captain, two lieutenants, and a shaman (I accidentally ended up with two) were all interesting to do

I also purchased a box of Ghost Archipelago Snake-men from North Star which not only gave me a Warrior unit and another Archer Levy, but also a really fun Ballista conversion

So there we are, renditions of all six factions from SAGA: Age of Magic.  Each at around 15 points, enabling plenty of variation in a game.  Using the Vikings as the main protagonists I have played all these armies, see the Baldr the Unfortunate page for that.