Knights of Lazarus

The good thing about SAGA is that as it is a skirmish game you can build an army pretty quickly, especially if you aren't going for a super detailed paint job. So it hasn't taken very long for my second warband to be completed. The Knights of Lazarus looked after lepers and also had a number of leper knights . The main draw for me was they had a rather nice green & white uniform which makes a change from the normal red or black with white.

The army was built from 1 box of Fireforge Templar mounted knights and one of foot knights and then a Gripping Beast General and mounted Priest.

So as well as being quick to paint the army was cheap to purchase. The two boxes give enough troops for 12 Hearthguard and 24 Warriors in SAGA speak, which nicely equates to 6 points. The mounted priest gives the option to either run a seven point warband or drop a point of warriors.

The transfers have worked really well and I was able to use some with plain paper to knock up some banners to go with the units. I use them just to add colour to the units but SAGA does allow units to have a banner bearer who does not fight but does allow the unit more flexibility in resting.

Like the Byzantines the main strike force of the warband is it's mounted troops and the infantry play a supporting role. It is possible to have the warriors as mounted troops as well but I'm not sure I can face painting more horses for the moment.

The model kits from Fireforge are really good with plenty of options in them. I liked the spears the infantry came with so much that I have ordered some spear sprues for use in the future. They make a good solid plastic spear that stays nice and straight, I find the metal ones always have a  bend to them.

The only real oddity was the length of the cavalry lances which seems very long, I'm sure they are scale accurate they just look a bit over sized.

Now of course the real bonus of being able to complete an army quickly is that you can start planning the next one. With SAGA 2 inbound then many of the existing battle boards will not be updated straight away. As it happens neither the Byzantines or Milites Christi will be in the first army book released so I have decided on a Pagan Rus army. The Rus are an all infantry force ( hurray ! ) who have a heavy norse influence, so I could also play Vikings with them.