Saga Saracens - review and first battle

Faction Overview

Saladin - the knight of Islam

The Saracen faction offers an interesting mixture of units with a choice of being melee or shooting oriented. The core units are easy consisting of cavalry armed with melee weapons or with composite bows. These are available in either Hearth Guard or Warrior variants, and as usual the bow armed version have a lower defence value than the melee. Infantry is easy - your only choice are Levy bowmen!

So depending on the opponents / scenario you can flex your Warband to be shoot'y or harder hitting. It will however always be mostly mounted, and so may struggle in rough terrain or against massed archery.

The Abilities

These choices are also reflected in the Battle Board in the clustering of the abilities.

• Some give upgrades in melee with additional attack/defence dice available, hit additions, or enhance melee survivability.
• Some give shooting upgrades with free shots or hit additions. Most interesting here is Brotherhood, which gives melee bonus if the enemy took shooting casualties this turn.
• Finally we have a couple of utility actions that help recover fatigue or remove enemy Saga dice under certain circumstances.
• The top ability (Rare + Rare) is Appeal to the Prophet, which gives all units Resilience (2) that turn, so enhancing survivability considerably.
• There are no hero only abilities and nothing that really disrupts the enemy, with Ruse removing a Saga dice but only if you have two units within S of the enemy.       

So nothing complex on the Battle Board and very few abilities playing off against each other. Brotherhood is the only one with any interactions and as it can be activated with any dice looks like something you should be using often. Coordination (+4 melee dice and +2 every time a Saga ability is used against you) looked powerful and would be something to use as often as possible needing Common + Common.  

Saracen Army

My Warband

Knowing I would be facing Militias Christi I was expecting large numbers of elite Hearth Guard heavy knights with a few crossbowmen and foot sergeants in support. The scenario has not been determined in advance so I chose a balanced force offering both combat and shooting:

• 1 x Warlord
• 8 x Hearth guard cavalry, melee weapons (2 points)
• 8 x Warriors cavalry, melee weapons
• 8 x Warriors cavalry, composite bow
• 8 x Warriors  cavalry, composite bow
• 12 x Levy archers

Composite bows give activation-free shooting, so guaranteeing plenty of archery and playing well with Brotherhood.

The first game

The scenario chosen involved both sides attempting to capture a holy relic being escorted across the table by neutral troops. So it would be a bit of a race. I lined up with most of my cavalry on my right, ready to cut-off the relic and a small blocking force on the left.

The Militias Christi (Order of Lazarus) did largely the opposite, with most of their troops heading straight for the relic and a unit of brother knights on their left.

The game opened with both sides advancing towards the middle of the table. I pushed my bow-armed warriors quickly into the knights, hoping for a devastating volley.  I was however disappointed due to some poor dice and an annoying ability called Orison, which enables the knights to cancelled up to 3 hits a turn. With the archery failing the knights then barrelled down from their hill and mashed one unit of Saracen's.    

More in hope than expectation I unleashed a shot from the Levy archers. The knights gambled and chose not to use Orison, but this was a fatal error as 75% of the unit fell from their saddles. Just to rub salt into the wound I then captured the relic with my Ghulam's.

The Levy's unleash hell on the knights

The Militias Christi then played their final card and charged the Ghulam's head-on with the last unit of knights. Despite loading up my defences I lost 75% casualties and was pushed back.    

This gave me the breathing space needed though. I formed my own version of the England love-train  and placed a string of units between the knights and the relic. It was now clear that there was simply no way that the knights could fight their way through before the relic escaped, and so a Saracen victory was declared.

Saracen love train

So a successful first outing but its hard to draw too many conclusions. The outstanding turn of shooting by the Levy blunted the knights attack and changed the game in the Saracen's favour very heavily. They seem a flexible faction with some solid melee abilities. The shooting abilities need you to get close, and they can nt really interfere too-much with the enemies plans. Coordination and Brotherhood were my go-to abilities in this game.  

Medieval Arabs completed - Abbasid / Seljuk / Arabian Nights

After just over 2 years painting I've finally completed my long-held dream of producing a medieval Arab army. It started life as a small force for use in Lion Rampant but has been expanded over the last year to a larger army for use in Armati and Kings of War.

I've painted lots of options so should be able to cover Abassid, Seljuk Turks, Fatamid, or Saladin's Saracens.  Most of the figures are Gripping Beast.

The whole army

Left flank

Centre

Right flank

In Armati terms the total force comprises

• Heavy Cavalry x 5
• Light Cavalry x 7
• Dismounted Cavalry x 1
• Foot x 5
• Skirmishers x 3
• Light Infantry x 5 (3 bow and 2 javelins)

The light cavalry - mixture of Turcoman, Arabs, and Seljuk

Arab javelin armed lights

The heavy cavalry

Close-up of the heavies

Bow-armed skirmishers

Light infantry with bows

Low quality Arab foot 

Javelin-armed light infantry

Some more lights

Black Guards

Dismounted cavlary

Sword armed foot - often berserkers in KOW battles

Saladin the knight of Islam

A better view of the flag

Sub commander

For about the last 6 months I've also been looking at options to make this a Kings of War army themed along the Arabian nights by the addition of flying carpets, heroes, and an air elemental.

The fantasy elements 

The flying carpets

Flying wizard

Genie in a bottle

Air elemental

Assassins

So now the next project is to paint a force of Crusaders to oppose them. I'm going for the first Crusade as this should give an army reusable as Normans or early medieval Europe.

 

Kings of War campaign - game 1

Last weekend I fought the first battle of the a new fantasy campaign over in Bristol - a full account can be found here http://fishpondswargames.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/artefacts-of-kyron-campaign-battle-1.html

I took a few shots of the game below - the light was nt ideal so a few rather dark - lets call it moody and pretend that's what I intended.

The army is themed around fantasy Arabians - its core is an Islamic force I'm building for the Crusades but supplemented by some flying carpets and a Mamakil from Lord of the Rings. Somewhat to my surprise the army was victorious on it first outing, breaking my 100% losing streak for Kings of War.

Mamakil preceded by some disposable infantry and with carpets in support

Mounted sergeants charge elfish lizard riders - against the odds they won this fight

Mamakil attacks! moments later its Mamakil dies horribly ;-(

Genie supports the archers

Arabian heavy foot holds the centre

Sergeants still slogging away

The final move where I clinched victory

Persian flying carpets in 28mm

Ever since deciding to put together a fantasy Persian army for my Kings of War struggles, I've been pondering how to construct some flying carpets to provide some essential colour for what is essentially an early middle ages Islamic force. Below is my attempt at this.

 

The major issue to resolve is how to make the carpets themselves so they are light, strong, but can be sculpted to have some waves in them. In the end I settled on some fairly thick plastic. Total cost was about £2 for unit, although I had some of the components already.

 

The Components     



 

So for this build I used

• 3 plastic bases cut to be 30mm x 40mm
• 3 plastic wine-glasses  - just the slot-on bases are needed
• 1 clear plastic pen
• A printer to make the patterns    

The Build

The flying stands were simplicity themselves - all you need are some lengths cut from the clear plastic pen body and then glued into the wine-glass bases. Lacking a hot-air gun I boiled the plastic bases for about 5 minutes and then bent them at the ends to create a wave effect. As you can see some of the end distorted so a little trimming was needed afterwards.

The moulded bases ready for gluing

I chose to drill holes right through the carpets and then glue them to the top of the stands for additional strength over a simple butt-joint.

Completed carpets ready for painting

For the carpets themselves I opted to glue some pictures obtained from the Internet directly onto the surface of the plastic base, then trim away the excess afterwards. I just modeled the top of the carpets and painted the underside a suitable colour.

Printed tops ready to be glued on

Finished carpets

To complete the unit I painted some plastic Gripping Beast Arab infantry as these are what I had to hand. However the carpets are pretty robust and would easily cope with a metal figure.
  

The crew 

 The Finish Unit

The completed unit is done as a Large Cavalry Horde in Kings of War parlance. I've depicted all the crew with missile weapons as I struggle to see how a carpet would "charge" a body of formed men without coming off worse.  So they likely be used to depict a missile-armed unit.
 

The completed carpet squadron

Close-up of the crew

Zoom!