Dark Age: Unboxing the Forces of Mary
Let’s follow up the Saint Mary unboxing with a look at her loyal followers, and a bit of background about them.
Now’s as good a time as any to briefly cover the concept of sub-factions in Dark Age. The Saints are all part of the Forsaken faction. The Forsaken have a wide variety of “Generic Forsaken” troops that can be taken by any Saint.
When you pick which Saint your army follows, you also unlock some additional troops that can’t be taken with any other Saint. Each Saint has a few. Today I’m showing Mary’s.
These are all pre-releases from GenCon that you can’t buy yet. I’m not sure when they’ll be available, but we’ll let you know when we do.
St. Mary’s followers are a somewhat more Motley bunch than those of some of the other Saints. Judah is a pretty good example of this. He’s a blind preacher who follows Mary around with his father’s shotgun. He’s pretty good with it too considering the whole lack of eyesight thing.
This is the old version of the model. Out of all these new resculpts I think Judah’s was needed the least. This old model was pretty well sculpted, but the oversized head and hands make him look like a kid. Of course if you prefer this or any of the other old sculpts, they are still up for sale in the Dark Age store, most at a pretty significant discount.
You can easily see this guy’s price from the tag on his blister. Most single blister human sized models will run you the same price, which is about what you can expect these days.
Not too much to Judah here. He’s got his book, his trusty shotgun and an extra flap to give his cloak a little depth.
In this day and age of over-sized shoulderpads, humongous stylized weapons, and layers upon layers of spike and skull accessories, a nice simple human with a simple cloak and shotgun is kind of refreshing. Or am I just being old fashioned?
Here’s his card with the original Brom art on it. Although they flipped the image so it fits better on the card.
There’s one Saint who comes up a lot in the Dark Age story that you can’t actually play on the tabletop. Saint Matthew was a violent and Brutal man and no one intervened or cared when the Salt Nomads set him and his army up to be ambushed by the Skarrd. Most of the few troops spared from that slaughter died rather than surrender to Saint Mary. The Flenses make up the remainder. They’re every bit as violent and brutal as before, still wearing skin and bone trophies they take from their victims. Somehow, Mary makes sure they only kill the enemies of the Forsaken. Their ranks are bolstered by murderers too violent and horrible to fit in with the rest of the Forsaken army.
I think the Flenses win the most improved award, but the old versions still weren’t that bad to look at.
Twenty bucks for three metal models ain’t bad at all.
Pretty cool sculpts. There’s a bit of flash around the head spikes that it looks like it will take some filing to get through but overall these are some good pieces.
If the post-apocalyptic vibe is your favorite thing about Dark Age, these guys are probably the best models you’ll find with that feel outside of the Outcast faction.
Unlike todays other two kits, the Flenses were not based on Brom Art. These guys are a Dark Age original, although this isn’t their original art. All the model entries in the Forsaken book that weren’t done by Brom have been re-done so all their styles match the current style a little better.
And now we’re back to those Clergy Ann again. Clergy Ann is the name of a tiny order within St. Mary’s forces. Unsurprisingly they take their name from an original Ann who died protecting Mary. Of course the real reason these models carry this peculiar name is because that’s the name of the original Brom painting they’re based on.
The old Clergy Ann were pretty good sculpts too, but they have the same problems with proportions that you see on all the older models. The detail on them is great, but I’m not a fan of giant heads.
No price tag on this blister but the pair was fifteen bucks. Not bad at all.
Here are all the pieces.
And the card once again so you can see the Brom original.
If you like Saint Mary there’s one more model you can take along with her, although I’m not going to bother with an unboxing since she’s been out for a year or so now. Joan was sort of rescued by Mary. She has precognitive visions and that’s the sort of thing that will usually get you tried as a witch in Forsaken society. Her visions have since saved St. Mary’s life more than once.
If you want to see all the rules for St. Mary’s forces you can go check the Dark Age Facebook Album where images of all the new Forsaken cards have been uploaded. Eventually these cards will also be available for download free from the Dark Age website, but as of this writing, only the ones on the Facebook Page are current.
~Hope you enjoyed the article. What do you guys think of the new forces of St. Mary?
