When Saga was published in 2011 it caught my attention as a game I wanted to play. At the time I knew I wouldn’t find an opponent and with a little disappointment passed on the rules system.

At the end of March 2017 one of the Dice Devils decided to adopt the game system and I jumped at the chance to join them. Since then more and more members have come on board and the game has reached, as Russ Waiklin would say, “new hotness” status.

An active group of gamers playing a game I want to play and I’m in during the initial wave of enthusiam. This is my ideal situation.

This Is My Army

The first step of the process was to choose which army I wanted to collect. I don’t like to spend too much money at the beginning of a project so I restricted myself to the factions available in the base rulebook. Of the four Vikings seemed like the obvious choice. If you could pick between the people who roamed the seas winning fights and the people who they preyed upon wouldn’t you pick the Vikings? Plus the show Vikings is a strong incentive to pick Vikings.

So of course I took the Anglo-Danes. If Vikings were popular, I reasoned, then Anglo-Danes will be scarce. I always try to avoid the popular factions. It’s a terrible way to make such a large commitment but that’s my nature. Hearing that they can be difficult to use properly is just icing on the masochistic cake for me.

Anglo-Danes have the normal selection of Hearthguard, Warriors and Levy. The only weapon options is that Levies can have bows or slings and the Hearthguard can have Dane Axes.

It is the Battle Board that makes the Anglo-Danes so formidable. Their strategy is to fight defensively until their enemy starts to tire and then make a decisive attack.

Raise the Fyrd

In every other project I have planned to recruit a smaller than regular force to start with. I don’t like buying more than I can easily paint in a month so normally this makes sense. I’ve noticed that I struggle to then bring by army up to the normal size as doing so usually means leaving some of the units out from my smaller force.

Saga doesn’t have this problem, everything costs 1 point, I still want to plan my large army and then paint a section of it at a time.

What I Have

I’ve already purchased some miniatures for this project so they will form the basis of my army. Each entry, except for the Warlord, is worth a single point.

1 Warlord.

4 Huscarls (Hearthguard) with Axes.

4 Huscarls with Spears.

8 Ceorls (Warriors).

8 Ceorls.

What I’m Planning

This leaves me with 2 points to spend. My first thought is to add some Geburs (Levies) as it is the only way to get some missile troops and will add some useful flexibility to my army. The Saga alpha of our group is a big fan of Footsore Miniatures and I’m looking to them to round out my army.

This leaves me with 1 last point to spend. I’m not sure the most efficient way to spend it. I am debating between adding more Huscarls or Ceorls. Either way I want to combine them into a large unit to allow me to field a warbanner. Being able to shed fatigue is great but I mostly like the idea of having a banner in my force.

The 4 points plastic starter comes with some extra figures. I have 4 extra Ceorls and 2 extra Huscarls with spears. I also have a model carrying a banner wearing chainmail which would work for Huscarls. This means I’d need only to paint a single Huscarl to bring me to 6 points.

Then again, I’d only need to paint four Ceorls to add another point of Ceorls to my army. Choices, choices. I think the best choice would be to pick up a metal Huscarl and four Ceorls, one with a banner, and paint them all up. This way I can try both and decide which works best.

Conclusion

So there we have my plan. I’m going to paint 4 points at first and then add another three by adding a unit of levies and a few other miniatures to bring my left-over Ceorls and Huscarls to a full point each.

I have to agree with Henry Hyde about the joys of project planning. With my last few projects I’ve discovered a real joy into organizing my hobby activities into defined projects. Finishing a project doesn’t mean that I am done with a game but it gives me a reasonable framework to plan my purchases and painting to keep me on track.

I have far too many games where poor planning has left me with a “starter sized” army and an awkward expansion to the standard size that requires me to drop a bunch of already painted figures from my order of battle. Thankfully Saga’s point system means that I’ll never have to worry about being underpointed because I didn’t fit my army together efficiently.