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Infamy sabots from Supreme Littleness – a review

It’s not often I write reviews on the Derek’s Wee Toys blog and I have to declare an interest here, Mike Scott, the man behind Supreme Littleness Designs, is a friend of mine and regularly gives me his stuff at a reduced price, or sometimes free. As I write this I don’t know what I’ll have to pay for these things.

After years of selling his mdf sabots individually or in small packs Mike has moved over to selling larger bundles with fixed contents, a way of doing things that saves him a lot of time and wasted materials. He says this enables him to avoid price rises and gives him more time to work on new designs.

Victrix Republican Romans all nicely lined up in their sabots.

The sabots designed for the TooFatLardies game, Infamy, Infamy! are sold as two different bundles one mainly of use to Roman players, the other designed for Barbarian players. Both come in two variants one that takes infantry based on 20 mm round bases, and one for troops on UK one pence coins (20.3 mm). The 20 mm bases will fit in the penny sabots, but not vice versa. The cavalry sabots found in both bundles fit models based on 25 mm x 50 mm pill bases. As is usual with Supreme Littleness sabots they are cut from 2 mm mdf, have distinctive wavy edges and use card underlays which keep them nice and thin.

What do you get?

The bundles contain a sheet of cut mdf items designed for either Roman or Barbarian Infamy players sabots plus another sheet of miscellaneous sabots, bases and markers that can be used by either side. They come in at £11.80 for the Roman Bundle or £10.90 for the Barbarian Bundle.

These pieces on the Roman sheet are intended to be used as follows.
A) Eight man Warrior or Skirmisher infantry groups. (x 4).
C) Groups of eight that have lost four casualties, or in conjunction with a Cavalry sabot (see below) to hold the infantry element of a Foot-Cavalry group. Or two of them can be used together for an eight man Warrior group. (x 2).
E) Groups of eight that have lost four casualties, or two of them can be used together for eight man Warrior group. (x 4).
F) A slightly irregular looking 8 man sabot. I’d use it for 8 man Auxiliary archer groups or similar. .
X) Markers to indicate that a group is in Close Order (x 6).

D) Groups of Cavalry on 25mm x 50mm pill bases (x 2).
G) Pairs of Skirmishers (x 3)
H) Use for Leader figures, Ambush or Deployment Points (x 2)
J) These can be used to designate figures as Leaders, two foot, two cavalry sabots one of each with room for a name tag.

The Barbarians sheet contains six sabots designed to take ten man Barbarian Warrior Groups. (B)

Putting them together

The sabots are easy enough to put together, though you need to take some care to match the mdf uppers with the appropriate underlays and make sure than both the layers are the right way up. I use PVA wood-glue glue to stick the layers together, paint the base and then texture and flock them the same way I do the bases of my figures. That gives a nice coherent look to a unit.

As is usual with Supreme Littleness sabots they look really good when finished, they’re thin compared to most sabots and the wavy edges make them look a lot less blocky than most of their competition. I like them.

The only Infamy troops I’ve got finished at the moment are Republican Romans (though the rules for them haven’t even been written yet) and you can see what they look like on their eight man sabots at the top of the article. And here are some pictures with unpainted, or partially painted, toys on finished sabots.

Gauls, Gauls, Gauls.
Gallic Skirmishers
Roman Cavalry

Comments

When I first saw these bundles I was not really convinced by some of the design decisions. In particular I was unsure about the four man sabots, I thought that Mike might have been better just using the available space for another two eight man groups. But now I’ve finished making the sabots and tried them out I’m actually quite happy. The four man ones are perfectly usable for eight man units and they look fine. And I will be using the single rank ones for Foot-Cavalry.

Looks fine to me, and gives you some flexibility.

I’ve been told that some strange people say they like to use smaller sabots to make it easy to identify groups that are half strength or under. These sabots should suit them.

Close Order Markers

I have to say I did not like these at all when I first saw them and I’m not a big fan now I’ve painted them and added transfers to make them look a bit like the shields I’m using on my Romans.

Markers painted and with transfers. I am not a fan.

But I do think the idea works rather well, if you stick on shields of the same type you’re actually using for your troops. Done this way the markers work well and make it look like the troops have indeed closed up.

Much better.

Conclusion

I like these sabots and will be buying some more as my forces for Infamy expand. They look good and work well, as with all the sabots designs I’ve seen coming from Supreme Littleness. The price is reasonable and I can live with the compromises that come from them being sold as a bundle. Five stars from me.

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2 Responses

  1. Thanks Derek, that’s really useful. I wasn’t sure how the close order markers were meant to work but that makes it clear.

    Your description of F on the Roman sprue needs editing.

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