Scaling down - Part one

As mentioned, I've recognised that whilst for grand scale ancient and medieval battles I have both armies and opponents for the classical and high medieval, my collection of dark age troops had remained generally redundant, unless facing themselves.  The trend has moved towards dark age gaming at a Skirmish level with the appearance of Saga and other rules at the club.

On the face of it I've no problem with that, after all barring a handful of engagements, few of the battles in the post-Roman and early medieval period weren't especially large anyway, and tactically were simplistic to say the least.  Skirmish sized games suit the heroic personal nature of the period, and the Saga rules especially introduce a tactical fluidity to this situation.  Basically, I am sold on the idea of restricting this period to games of under 50 a side, rather than grand battle of hundreds of models.

Which leaves me with both opportunities and problems.  The opportunity is to pick the very best models from my collection and improve their presentation as Saga armies.  As it happens I could easily pull out 7/8 points of troops (recognising I have some figures still to paint) for my Normans/Franks:

And the same number of points of Vikings:

However, this still leaves me with more than 200 infantry and 40 cavalry, in need of a new home!

Everything in the boxes is scheduled to go now.

Some of them are pretty terrible models, being surviving home-casts from when I was a kid (yes, my parents let me use a home lead casting kit - I have the scars to prove it), but others include numerous Gripping Beast, Foundry and Old Glory models.  There are easily enough for two or more warbands for Saga, and plenty of formed up units.

If I can sell the Saga warbands at the club to generate more game players, then I'm happy to make no money on the deal, but the formed units can go on ebay to fund some other purchases.

Also selling these models off will get me two box's full of space back on the gaming shelves.  I'm sure I'll fill it again, but at least I can replace old metal with new plastic!

The times, they are a changing...