Iron Man 7: Scots

Here’s the great Scots. First faction I got to really play after learning the game. Watch those pointy sticks!

Scruffy and cunning, but mostly resilient and hard to kill, you better watch out for the Scot counter-attack, when all this defense dices turn into attacks. Double of it nonetheless.

The whole faction are Footsore miniatures. I plan a restrained pallet of earthy tones. Using dark browns, red (again), beige and grey. Greener bases would contrast with it. The shields were a little tinier than I got use to, so the drawings had to be lighter, and I went for pictish symbols and animals representation, inspired from the very dices of the faction. Then, accuracy or not, I can’t refrain to paint various tartans here and there. Which is a pain… but also a lot of fun to do.

A strong defence line. A point and a half of regular warriors is a solid base for holding the line. I regularly play with four points of them, allowing big units that’ll scare the s*** out of your opponent.

So the other units can be either formed of ten soldiers, or even two times eight and one time four, in case you need a extra dice more than raw force. But be sure to hide this tiny unit, or it’s free point for the other side.

Last part of the warriors. You can see a variety of pattern on the fabric, and we also choose to integrate a few pictish naked men. The war painting are nearly black, as pure blue would make them stand a bit to appart from the others.

A bow levy, always worth it. I read here and there (and for many factions), that units not using your full board capacities aren’t valuable, but I beg to differ. Shooting is free from counter attack, it’s always good to soften the opponent or to diminish an embarrassing unit (that one still generating Saga dice), and it’s not that expensive. Plus your basic units would gladly use advanced capacities.

Same arguments here. Mounted hearthguards don’t even need this much of capacities. If you played them well, this second line is only here to finish the job, hiding in the back to eliminate every survivor that wouldn’t be crushed by the defense line.

So as we are planning eight points per faction, a second unit of mounted elite came up. The horses are plastic ones from Grippingbeast kits, the Footsore are a bit tiny and fragile. The robes are not so bright in order to feet the general tones.

Mercenaries are zealous monks this time. They’ll be upfront, sacrificing themselves to bring more Saga dices. Be careful not to have them eradicated in one run, or the benefit from their fate will be in vain.

The great banner. I was looking for inspiration and find this stag depiction. Surely it’s not historically right, but rule of cool made me do it!

And as usual, a dreaded warlord haranguing his troops, wearing intricate tartan. Painting it like the real patterns would make it uneasy to the eye at this scale, so I often got to simplify the designs. This could look odd from close up, but gave a good visual from a gaming distance.

So there it is folks. Five more to go, what would it be next… ?

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