Furor Teutonicus for SAGA

I hope you remember Caesars Legion from earlier this month. And like the last paragraph mentioned, you need proper antagonists for those Romans!

(Illustration by Peter Dennis, "Death in the Forest")

As with the Romans, I'm quite fond with the Warlord Games range of the Germans and thus, they are miniatures I want to work with. Beside, so far I only followed the spanish part of my heritage in wargaming with the ancient spaniards for Field of Glory, but I felt, it was time to give the teutonic part a bit of love as well.

So, where to begin? Well, this is my start. I have the Germanic warriors (even did a review on the old box a "few" years back), the cavalry, fanatics, an additional command blister and the lovely Mr. Mustache soon-to-be Warlord. That guy himself is reason enough to muster a germanic tribe warband for Saga!

After the choice of miniatures, the next question is, what faction / battleboard am I going to use? In the Carthago campaign of the Weiß-Blauen Strategen they played the Celts with the Viking list. I suppose, that would work, I have a lot of infantry, could muster a group of levies and even have the Fanatics as Berzerker replacements. But I wouldn't have the chance to field the cavalry. I could use house rules and ditch the Berzerker option for mounted hearth guard / warriors. Otherwise - as mentioned with the roman article, I'm still waiting for Aetius & Arthur - the Goths might be a suitable choice.

The vikings could work quite nice, the raw assortment of hand weapons fits the germans as well and this goes for hearthguard and warriors. The fanatics as berzerkers are just to obvious. About the levies, if I'm even going to field some, bows do not seem like a proper fit, most likely slings but I'd prefer to field them with javelins.

I'll keep the cavalry at side for the moment, but a 6 points warband could look like this. As an alternative to the miniature of Ariovist, I have Dennus Damennus from the Germania supplement around.

0 P Warlord
1 P – 4 Hearthguard
1 P – 4 Fanatics
1 P – 8 Warrior
1 P – 8 Warrior
1 P – 8 Warrior
1 P – 8 Warriors

As with the romans, I'm not going to be historically correct wit this warband. So I looked up, what tribes were inhabiting the area between Cologne (Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium) and Frankfurt (not yet founded back then). That area is the Westerwald (Western Forest) and wasn't occupied by the romans, but was close to the Rhine and the roman border area / limes. This area was called Germania Magna, and was close to Coblenz (Castellum apud Confluentes). As I didn't find proper history of that area and most of the information starts 1.000 yrs after what we're talking about here, I'm going to be creative. But for you to get an impression, here are a few pictures from our last hike.

So let's go with a celto-germanic tribe, that lived west to the Chatti (a tribe in Hesse) and north of the Mattiaci (a sub-tribe of the Chatti around Wiesbaden). As the word for Westerwald (Western Forest) in latin is boscus occidentalis, which is rather long and not very appealing, I'll call the tribe "Bosci" (as the people from the Westerwald are called Wäller, which roughly translates into forest dweller, so the short bosci seems fitting) and their colours will be white and green (as the coat-of-arms of the region). Ariovist isn't a proper name for my Warband of Bosci warlord, as he was the leader of the suebi. My warlord will carry a proper germanic name, Vulfgang. This is not historic correct, as the name was first found in the 8th century AD, but what the heck. Same goes with Dennus Damennus (Dennis the Menace), that will carry his name. To sum up this paragraph of creative history, we have a name for the tribe, colours and two heroes. That should be enough to start from.

Miniaturewise I have a solid base, with the 43 germanic warriors I certainly have enough for 4-5 pts of warriors, the blister of fanatics will fit as berzerkers, and the hearthguard will be fine with the command blister. If you're looking for metal miniatures instead of plastics, Warlord has those as well. Wargames Foundry carries ancient german, as well as Crusader Miniatures.

As sources, there is the Germania supplement to Hail Caesar, the Osprey Men-at-Arms #129 and the Wargames Illustrated Issue 211 of february 2011.

There we have antagonist #1 for the Romans. One more slot is opened and will be filled / introduced later this month. To be ready for the next step with this warband, I'll have to get my hands on the Aetius & Arthur supplement, to see if these armylists will make a better fit than the vikings and make me able to solve the problems with the cavalry and levies. What do you think? Are the vikings a proper battleboard for ancient germans or do you think another faction would be a better fit?