If it's not nailed down it belongs to me - Pillage!

Gerrorf my pig!

Not 100% sure why this happened but I got into Pillage . Actually I think it was we were discussing doing some Dark Age games and Saga (Age of Vikings) was out of stock. Bullet (arrow?) dodged imho as I don't really get Saga. Our local Plastic Crack provider Jay said "we have Pillage in stock", so I thought " why not?"

OK so Pillage is yet another Dark Age small footprint "warband" scale game. There's quite a lot of that about. Reading the rules however the game comes across as quite "clean" - not too complicated but with some interesting bits and quite a refreshing approach, including WYSIWYG (no I refuse to explain, we've has this since the 1980s, keep up man!). 

My initial plan was to sort of cheat and use my Dux Brit Welsh clan. I assumed (wrongly) that they could be interchangeable. Turns out this isn't the case as they cant get armour at all in Pillage, so my Lord and bodyguards who are in mail armour are a bit of an issue. They did stand in on my first game, and I thought the rules worked enough to pick up a Victrix Anglo Saxon warband set.

The Victrix models were really detailed and went together well - my only gripe was they were a bit animated - I like my rank and file types to be stood stoically waiting for the worst to happen. Also the spears are a little on the thin side and snap a bit too easily in play. I prefer the more chunky if unrealistic option you get with Gripping Beast plastics. On the other hand the shield transfers (available separately) really makes them "pop".

The actual warband is manageable in size, you could probably get away quite happily with sixteen to twenty models. However, I also wanted to make enough troops to play Saga if that comes up, so I pushed the total number up to forty figures. 

Pillage uses quite a small table size - you can start at two foot square, though it does require a fair amount of terrain and accessories, mainly to give you something to loot and burn down :-)

I found building the terrain was quite fun too. Both Victrix and Renedra produce suitable buildings in plastic and they're very easy to build. The Renedra Viking House also comes with a lot of scatter bits - pots, pans, urns etc that make great loot. All good. 

Sleepy little hamlet waiting for "visitors"

Well worth a look - If I get time I will try and expand on the game, rules etc moving forward, but to keep it succinct, fun and well worth picking up.

Cheers