Viking board game

I spotted this on the Saga facebook page. It's a board game based on the viking invasions of England in the ninth century. If you have been watching the vikings series on TV it seems very close to that story. Rather than me waffle on about the game, go take a look for yourself.

As usual with kickstarter projects you have to do your own research. This company have already completed several kickstarters, so there should be minimal risk. I have backed several kickstarters and had very few problems. Most are a bit later than advertised, and one I was a little disappointed with the colour renditions, but on the whole I have been very happy with my buys. I have never dealt with this company but they seem to have a reputable track record. There's an early bird pledge saving $5 that lasts for a few more hours of today. It's not much to save but hey, every florin counts.

Norman Fury

Over the weekend I visited Richmond Castle in North Yorkshire to see a dark ages re-enactment event - Norman fury, featuring, well, Normans (with a few Saxons as fodder). It was a nice day out, I took a few snaps which fellow toy soldier nerds might find useful or inspirational.

The very impressive Keep

Normans approach!

And assemble for battle

Archers - Loose!
Apparently they would only shout Fire! if the arrows
were flaming - makes sense though not sure how they know this?

Saxon response to the hail of arrows

Saxons ready for combat

Normans obligingly charge in

Norman commander  watches from afar

Commander's shield

Norman mounted knights

One for the true nerds this shot, some garment colours

Salmon is the new black

Fatigue marker

A very enjoyable afternoon in an impressive setting. I got to swing a poleaxe, a few ideas for colours and shield designs, and a ricotta and fig flavoured ice cream into the bargain. 

Saxon command group

There's not much to report at the moment, though I have completed the build of the Saxon command figures. I also found an old resin cross that I think I originally had earmarked for a Vampire Counts army, but thought it would make a nice little bit of terrain or objective marker.

As usual I really struggled with the metal claws (hands), it was a real struggle getting the plastic pole in there. For the rest I decided not to bother, clipped off the metal claws and replaced them with plastic bits. Time and time again I see people on forums swearing that metal is better - do not believe them!

Lots of Waffle

verb  BRITISH  speak or write at length in a vague or trivial manner. "he waffled on about his problem"

synonyms: prattle, chatter, babble, ramble, jabber, gibber, gabble, gab, burble, flannel, run on, mutter, mumble, prate, drivel, bleat, cackle

Obviously I have lifted this definition straight from the web, to introduce the concept of waffle to non-British readers. It's the art of speaking (or in our case, writing) at length on a subject, to my mind usually a trivial subject. I have to say I would disagree with some of those synonyms - muttering, mumbling and cackling are nothing like a good old waffle. Personally I prefer the term "musing", it makes it sound more weighty, more considered, more intellectual. And what could be a more weighty issue than deciding what to do in the next month or two?

With the Lion Rampant project coming into the home straight, I have been pondering my next step. There is plenty of undiscovered territory to explore in the vast reaches of the Unpainted Hills, but recently I had mislaid my map and was unsure of the way forward. I even contemplated taking a few weeks off, my commission work is pretty busy at the moment and my brushes (and eyes) are beginning to wear out. But then I noticed that the Lead Adventure Forum Lead Painting League is starting up again at the end of the month. If you don't want to read those lengthy (waffly) rules, the basic idea is that you paint up a team of at least five figures, one per week, for ten weeks. Perfect!

So that's what I will be doing in the next couple of months. Some of the teams I will source from my own collection, some from my commission work. That should give me a good variety of entries to a high standard. With this in mind I have taken a stroll through the foothills and came across these Saxons. The chap on the left was a xmas gift from gaming buddy Matt, it's a Gripping Beast Saxon Warlord. The others are an interesting looking bunch I picked up at Vapnartak, for the princely sum of £1. I don't know which manufacturers they are, but I like the differences in heights, it should add some character to my plastic clones. I thought they would make a very nice set of command figures. 

I will also be entering some of Wars of the Roses retinue for Lion Rampant, the last unit of billmen and the men at arms. These should be finished in the next couple of weeks, but I won't be able to publish photos of them until they have appeared on the Lead Adventure Forum. Sorry Lion Rampant fans. It's not much consoaltion, but here's a photo ripped off the calendar just this morning. It's Eilean Donan castle in Scotland, a lovely landmark, but the main interest for me is the colours of the ground. If I ever get round to building myself a gaming board, these colours will feature in some way. That's enough waffle for now, but more to come throughout the month. 

Anglo Danes

These are not strictly Anglo-Danes, they are Gripping Beast Saxons with a few Wargames Factory bits to convert them to use great weapons. They are basically to remind me to use great weapons on the Anglo-Dane lord and his bodyguard. I made and painted them very quickly, I only rarely play this faction so didn't want to spend too much time on them.

Dark Ages Collection

My complete collection of dark ages figures, all neatly organised in a box file. For the past year they have sat in a variety of places, including a shoe box and a pizza box! Now they have a nice new magnetic home. The box file cost me £4 from a local stationery supplier, while the magnetic sheet costs about £1 from ebay for an A4 sized sheet - this is one and a bit sheets in fact. Based on magnetic pennies, the figures are reasonably secure. If I tip the box up by 30 degrees there is no movement, but I doubt it would survive a complete upending. For storage and trips round to my mate's house for gaming, it's a good  solution.

There's about 100 figures in here, roughly half Viking and half Saxon, with a mix of plastics and metals. Still to be added are my Drabant viking archers, which remain unpainted for the time being. I could also double the number of Wargames Factory levy, but I won't because they are poor figures. I will probably use them as casualty markers, maybe as conversion fodder for zombies. I also have plenty of Gripping Beast plastic Saxons I could build, which might get done one day. But at the moment this gives me enough for two six point Saga forces, or two Dux Britanniarum starter armies, which is all I need. They will probably also be fielded en masse in Hail Caesar games, when we finally get round to it. There's something very satisfying about looking at a set of figures you have worked on, knowing they are ticked off your to do list.

Dark Ages Levy

My Dark Ages collection continues to grow, the newest addition is these plastic levy troops from Gripping Beast. As a long time collector of fantasy figures, most of them the finely detailed examples available from GW, I have to say that I was a little underwhelmed when the promo pictures for the levy were first released. I had waited for them for so long, then eventually gave up and bought metal figures. However, when xmas came around I received a frame of these new plastics from gaming buddy Matt as a gift - my one and only wargaming gift of the season!

Looking at the frames the quality of the casting and mould lines is very good, as you would expect from Renedra. The sculpts are okay, the bodies are stooped a little and the heads are dominated by the older inhabitants of the village, but decent enough for levy. Assembled with spears I think they are passable, certainly better than the Wargames Factory plastics, though I remain unconvinced by the slinger poses.

They are easy to paint up, a few washes and they are done. With shields attached and assembled en-masse they look pretty decent, certainly as good as many of the metals on offer. Their biggest advantage is the cost. Forty figures to a box, that's five points of warrior quality troops in Saga terms, for about twenty pounds. Add in a blister of metals and a warlord and you have a six point warband. They are pretty generic so could be used as Vikings, Saxons, Danes, etc. If you are not too fussed about historical accuracy you could probably count them as just about any of the Saga factions warrior or levy troops. A good way to add numbers to your collection.

Tanatus Saxon Archers

It's been a few weeks since I previewed the Saxon archers by Tanatus Miniatures (original post here). Now that they are painted and based, I will reiterate what I said then, that these are finely detailed historical miniatures. They paint up really nicely with a few washes and glazes. I was sufficiently impressed to go a little further with them and add bow strings, using human hair double twisted for strength. They don't score any more hits on the battlefield, but they look like they mean to!

As usual with my dark age figures I have based them on pennies, which are magnetic. This means I can use them on their round bases in skirmish games like Saga, or I can build a movement tray for more conventional unit based games, most likely Hail Caesar at some point.

I have more dark ages metals on the way, coming to me all the way from Salute. When I have those ready I will take some pictures to compare the different manufacturers in my collection.

Tanatus Saxon Archers Review Part 1

When I first started playing Saga, I did so by buying two boxes of plastic figures for a Saxon warband. It allowed me to quickly assemble six points at relatively low cost. In fact, I could probably double the force with the bits I have left over from the plastics. I really wanted to make up a unit of bow armed levy troops, but they are not that convincing when assembled this way. What to do?

I started to look around at metals. There are some decent figures around, though I do find a lot of historical metal ranges to be far too chunky. I was beginning to think I would never find a suitable range, when I stumbled across Tanatus Miniatures. As you can see from the link, they are distributed by North Star Military figures. I thought they looked very well proportioned from the pictures, but balked a little at the price - a unit of 12 metal levy troops, the worst in the army, would cost the same as a whole box of hearthguard, the best in the force. Put another way, twenty pounds can buy you one point of metal mediocre troops, or ten points of plastic superior troops. It's easy to see why many stick with the plastics. For me, however, the aesthetics are as important as performance on the gaming table. Having spent so much time looking for decent figures, I decided to take the plunge. I have recently sold off some excess vikings on ebay, so the funds had been raised anyway. I ordered on Monday and they arrived on Thursday.

When you tip the figures out of their plastic bag, they look like this. The excess metal bits are easily clipped away and, after a couple of hours of tedious filing, I had removed the mould lines. The casting I would class as very good, with no obvious flaws to be seen. There are no bases included, but this is no problem as most historical gamers have their own preferred way of basing. For me, this means glueing them to pennies, then adding a sand/pva paste mix.

After a white primer and a thin guiding wash, they are ready to paint. You can see that they are quite finely detailed, with good proportions, not too clunky or chunky, which has been the main stumbling block with most historical metals I have experienced to date. I have a ten point Saga game planned for next week, hopefully they will be ready by then. I am playing my vikings, but I think a few Saxon slaves with bows being pressed into service is not an unreasonable thing to do. When the figures are fully painted, I will take a few comparison shots to show them alongside my other Saga troops.

Saxon Warband painted

It became a chore towards to the end, but the Saxon warband is finally painted and ready for gaming action. In fact, they were in action last night against Viking invaders in the first game of a mini campaign. Needless to say, the freshly painted boys lost their first game, partly due to an incredibly lucky dice roll by the Viking warlord, who saved 4 hits (rolling 5's and 6's) at a crucial stage of the game. In that moment, victory was cruelly denied the noble Saxons and they were pushed back, defeat just a few turns away.

The warlord and his retainer are made from Gripping Beast plastics, as are the armoured warriors in the main picture. These are fine plastics, with a reasonable amount of detail, and very easy to assemble and paint. When ranked up, sheilds held high, they make a very imposing sheildwall unit. I will happily make and paint more of these when the army is expanded.

The unarmoured warriors I am less happy with. These are Wargames Factory figures. The plastic is fine and no different to any of the bigger companies, it's the quality of the sculpting and odd poses that make them poorer quality. As wargames figures they are reasonable, but as painting/modelling projects they are less than inspiring. I have quite a few left, a dozen of which will be drafted in as missile troops. I have heard rumours that Gripping Beast will, at some stage, release unarmoured troops. Given the success of Saga and the lack of decent alternatives, I wonder why they are taking so long.

While we wait for better things to come, the (slightly wooden) Wargames Factory figures will continue to sell by the boat load.

Saxon Warband Part 2

Here's the next phase of my Saxon warband for Saga completed. These are the elite troops in my warband, made from Gripping Beast plastic saxon thegns.

As with the unarmoured warriors, the main feature of the model is the shield. I have mostly stuck with crosses and simple variations, with a few squiggles to suggest more elaborate markings. I am quite pleased with the way they turned out, as freehand is not my strong suit, but it's getting better as I work through more and more shields. My next job for the warband is the warlord and I will be testing my shield-painting efforts to the limit.

Here is the warband as it will appear in game. Two units of six hearthguard and a unit of twelve warriors. That's four and a half points to date. Another unit of twelve warriors will make it up to the full six points. I would like to add some levie troops for flexibility in army choice, but I am trying to play without at the moment as I want to maximise the larger units and shield wall aspects of the Saxons in battle.

Saxon Warband Part 1

This is the first unit of my Saxon Warband, twelve stout hearted conscripts. These troops are recruited from the villages and settlements of the warlord's territory. They are not highly trained soldiers with good equipment, but farmers and herdsmen, hunters and woodsmen, armed with a spear and a shield and maybe a helmet or axe.

The bulk of the unit is made from the Wargames Factory Saxon Fyrd boxset, with a few bits courtesy of Gripping Beast. I wanted to arm them with mostly spears, as this denotes their lesser status. Swords would be restricted to the warlord's elite troops, but axes I reckon would be fairly accessible to villagers and commoners.

For the palette I had a good look around on the web and in my history books. There's no definitive answer to how the clothes would have looked, so I went with a pragmatic approach of fairly neutral and muted colours. The shields I decided on a fairly uniform palette, to tie the unit together. There's no real world evidence that I can find to describe how the shields would have looked, what colours or symbols would have been used, only that they would have probably been made from wood with leather stretched over the rims. So I scraped off the nails and treated the shield rims as leather rather than metal.

The bases are pennies, they are the ideal size for these figures. There's a bit of work building up the ground to level with the raised plastic tab, but it's nothing too complex - I just glued on two layers of sand. Modern pennies are magnetic, so I can re-use these figures at a future date in a magnetic movement tray, if I want to progress to element or unit based games, such as Dux Bellorum, Clash of Empires or Hail Caesar. But for now, this is the first unit of my Saga Saxon warband, weighing in at a whopping one and a half points. Next up, a dozen armoured saxons.

Saxons Invade!

I have finally made a proper start on the Saxon warband. These two boxsets plus a packet of bits from ebay (more bodies and arms) give me over 90 figures to get to work on. My plan is to use the figures to represent several factions, by starting with fairly generic unarmoured troops with spears. Two dozen of these gives me a core set which can be used in several ways.

The first option I am working on is a 7 point Saga Saxon warband, comprising 12 armoured warriors, 24 unarmoured warriors and 12 levy (plus warlord). The second option would be to replace the armoured Saxon warriors and warlord with Anglo Danes. It should also be possible to use the unarmoured troops as vikings, if I ever wanted to go that way.

The longer term goal is to be able to use these figures in a variety of games. Saga is a skirmish game, but I would also like to be able to use them in more traditional unit based wargames. Choosing which ruleset to use is a saga in itself, there are several to choose from, but a vague plan is shaping in my head. The main task at this stage is to ensure that the figures are adaptable. With this in mind, I am basing them on pennies. These are magnetic and so it should be possible to add them to magnetised movement trays at some point in the future. Back in the present, I have already built my first unit of 12 unarmoured troops and am painting them up. More on this soon.

The Fog Lifts

It's been almost two months since I have got down to some serious hobby painting. It's not for a lack of material, there are piles of stuff here that are half-painted, or almost finished, or just primed, or even (turn off now if you are easily shocked), assembled but not primed. The summer weather and holiday break is partly responsible, but mostly it's down to me not being sure about where I want to concentrate my efforts. Hence the hotch-potch of figures painted over the past few months.

However, I have finally made my decision. A couple of months ago I started playing Saga and got very excited about the possibility of building a viking warband. I dug out some old metal vikings and pondered the merits of the current crop of plastics available. I played a few games and enjoyed it, but I wanted to try out some other warbands before I committed. Vikings are agressive and quite easy to play, whereas other warbands had me pondering over how best to use them. I enjoy this thinking side of the game, so I decided in the end to plump for Saxons/Danes. At some point I know I will add vikings into the mix, but fist things first, I am happy to be settled on Saxons.

I have ordered some Wargames Factory Saxon fyrd to build up some units of warriors. In Saga, warbands are based on a very simple points system, whereby 1 point equates to 4 elite troops, or 8 standard troops, or 12 poor quality troops. Each warband has unique qualities/strategies dictated by the use of Saga dice and battle boards. The Saxons have a fair few of these which work best with units of 10 or more, so numbers count. Thus, my first task is to paint up 3 points of standard troops, that is, 24 Saxon fyrd. I will most likely play them in two units of 12, but that's a story for another time. For now, it's just an impatient wait to get my hands on the plastic and turn them into something like this.

Scratch built Saxon house

There are some good, reasonably priced dark ages building available on the web, those from Gripping Beast in particular seem excellent value for money. But if you have a little time and some craft materials to hand, it's pretty easy to build your own. Here's one I made earlier.

The first thing I did was browse the web for some ideas. This Saxon grubenhaus seemed nice and simple, it's basically an A-frame with a thatched roof and a door.

I cut out two triangles from foamboard, though thick card would probably be strong enough. Using a viking figure as a size guide, I cut out a door opening. The timber frame door surround is made from a wooden coffee stirrer, easy to cut/trim with a craft knife.

The roof is just a piece of cardboard from a cereal pack, folded in half. The two triangle ends I glued to the roof, using pva glue. There's also a third foamboard triangle glued in the middle to help make the building more rigid.

With the basic structure complete I added some texture. For the daub covering the walls, I mixed some sand and static grass with pva and smeared it onto the walls. For the thatching I was originally going to use bristles from a coco hair brush which I had bought for about a £1 from a local supermarket for just such terrain purposes. However, a quick google showed that other terrain builders used teddy bear fur. I was lucky enough to have an old fake fur cushion cover, so this would be perfect. I cut it up and glued it with pva to the card roof.

The final stage was to make a door. I chopped up some of the coffee stirrer, carved off a few bits to make it look a bit more rough hewn, then glued these planks to a bit of cereal card. I should have left a little bit of card to act as a hinge to secure the door to the frame. Note to self for next time. The very last thing was to paint some dilute pva glue on to the fur thatch and ruffle it up a little. When dry, the stiffened fur is easier to paint.

That's all there is to it. Not bad for an hour's work using a few bits from around the house. I might glue it to a plasticard base and add a few bits, like twigs from the garden, to act as log piles, maybe a spare axe. I would like to build (or buy) a couple more buildings, maybe a field or three, to make a reasonably convincing settlement for my vikings to raid and pillage.