SAGA objectives

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything. March was a horrible month. Actually I take that back - it was great in many ways, but not for painting. I had a visit from my bro' (over for an extended weekend), which just happened to coincide with a rebuild of my PC - no more circling cursor of doom for me or that lovely phrase not responding, a particular favourite of Outlook. Of course a new CPU and gfx card means I can use more RAM too, all of which means I can run Skyrim without smoke pouring out of the back of the PC. And with all the graphics settings on max too!

I can't blame it all on Skyrim though as I did manage to catch the dreaded man-flu that  was doing the rounds and, having been sent home by my students (fair enough really, I have never understood the "never take a day of work attitude" if all you achieve by staying there is "spreading a bit of happiness" - ie the bug), spent several days in bed, or more accurately on the sofa under mounds of duvets, watching all 3 series of Black Books. Again, fun, but not conducive to getting much done.

It's not all doom and gloom. At the beginning of the month I went over to a friend's as we had just discovered our mutual interest in board games. I played Memoire 44 for the first time, along with Battle of Westeros, both of which were fun. When Chris came over to mine at the end of the month we had a game of C&C Napoleonic, which was fun too, but even better than that, he got quite excited when I showed him my SAGA figures, and definitely wants to give it a go. I might have found an opponent who only lives 10 minutes away! Having talked to him about his preferences in gaming I think he's more into simpler, skirmish type games, so I have reassessed my priorities from the beginning of the year. I'm still going to go ahead with the 4 projects I started with, but the SYW has been put on slow, as has the 15mm Sc-Fi. I have added 28mm AZW, as I think TSaTF might be just down his street, and I have a fair few figures waiting to be painted up.

This doesn't mean I have given up the other stuff though. I have some Normans started and I am just about finished with some more berserkers and some Viking archers (they just need basing properly - roll on Salute and some more tufts!). Last time I painted up a single berserker as part of the group of Bondi - so here are the other 3 and the single "normal" Viking to take the first one's place among the Bondi. No boss on the shield, so I tried a hand painted motif. I think you can see now why I am such a fan of LBMS transfers...

Now I have enough Vikings to do some damage, they need something to steal; after all there's no point in raiding if there is nothing to take. Here are the first of a few of the things I'll be using as objectives for raiding scenarios when playing SAGA.

First up is the pigsty by Architects of War. This is a really nice model. Unfortunately the liquid water I used in the puddles seems to have clouded over, but when the weather is warmer I'll apply another layer and see if that sorts it out.

The pigsty

There's no point in a pigsty if there ain't no pigs. And we all know those Danes like their bacon...

Some more livestock to nick (from Gripping Beast)...

A while back I got a load of stuff from Ainsty, including some barrels, bales and boxes. Cheap and they work perfectly for just about every period you can think of.

And last but not least, the church. Every self-respecting Viking made a beeline for the church to steal the plate, and anything else they could get their hands on. 

This is the GB resin church. Since all my other scenics are based I've decided to base this one too, and to add a few bits and bobs, such as some gravestones from the Renedra set. I'm going to have a go at weathering using oil filters, I'm not too sure how that'll work out so I wanted a record of when it looked ok ...

All I need now are a few Saxon houses, and I'll be looking to get the new fencing and "Saxon tents", whatever they are, from Renedra when I get to Salute this weekend. We're getting there, slowly...

Wikingas cumað!

OK, so my Anglo-Saxon isn't up to much, but I think that's "The Vikings are coming!" I've finally got around to painting up the first of my Vikings for Saga It should be 2 points worth of Bondi and their Jarl for SAGA, but a single berserker cheekily sneaked in there among them. Most of the figures are Gripping Best plastics, but the Jarl and the pointing horn blower are from Foundry, and I have no idea where the banner bearer and berserker are from - they were part of a lot acquired from Simon of BigRedBat fame. Shield decals are the lovely LBMS ones again, with just one hand-painted shield on the last unidentified metal bod, the one swinging his sword over his shoulder. These were really fast to paint up (for me); again, nothing fancy, just basic colours and the dip. It's so much easier than Naps or SYW ...

The whole mob.

Here is a group shot of the whole lot, against a background of a GB Saxon church that still needs a lot doing to it (of which more anon).  I tried to choose a different palette for the Vikings from the Saxons, a lot more bright colours, some blues, which I had generally avoided, and far fewer browns. It seems to have worked ok.

The Viking Jarl. This is a great figure by Foundry that I picked up off eBay - I also have a mounted version of him that came in the same blister. In some ways I wish I'd spent more time over him, but he needs to blend in with the rest of the figures.

I love the shield design even if I did mess it up a bit overcompensating for the white showing last time. It almost looks like a self-portrait with that helmet!

The Raven Banner. I finally found something sold here in the Czech Republic which uses the old fashioned toothpaste tube material, so I tried out one of the LBMS banners I have. The colours are brilliant, and the foil makes the flag easily manipulable. Just great - I will be buying more.

The baerserk. 

I've just ordered 3 more of these lunatics by Crusader from NorthStar, having discovered that you can order individual models from the blisters from them. I also picked up some Normans so I can make a start on my third SAGA faction.

The shieldwall.

I wouldn't spill their pints!

Again, I think it's the LBMS transfers that really make these figures. They look amazing. Now I just have to paint up some Thralls, a few berserkers and a few more Bondi and I can have my first game of SAGA at home. I've even found someone locally who's willing to give it a try. Life is looking up... 

More Saxons

There's been a bit of talk on TMP recently about the Gripping Beast plastic Vikings and Saxons. I bought a box of each way, way back on pre-order, and while I haven't got the Vikings done yet, I finished a bunch of the Saxons off a couple of weeks ago. I am intending to use these as Ceorls for the minute, although when the new unarmoured plastics come out, I'll buy some of them and use these as spear and shield armed Huscarls; all my Huscarls so far have 2 handed axes. I think they are lovely figures, they paint up well and look great with LBMS decals on them. Anyway, here they are:

The whole lot, 16 Ceorls or 2 points' worth.

In smaller groups - I appear to have forgotten one figure as 16 / 3 is not 5!

The great thing about taking these photos is that it shows up all the glaring faults. These were all painted quickly and using the dip for a "fast and dirty" result, but that doesn't mean I don't care at all about how they turned out. The white around the shield rims has since been cleaned up.

Some shots of individual figures, showing just how good the plastics are; if you didn't know you would never be able to tell which of the 4 figures above is metal (and for those who don't know it's number 2 - it came with the pre-order).

Finally a shot of how I store my figures. A long time ago now, Simon of BigRedBat fame posted about Really Useful boxes and how he uses them, so I took a look. He's right, they're great. This box will eventually be my "Huscarl box".

Thanks for looking, as usual, comments and criticism welcome.

SAGA quick dip

In a desperate attempt to clear the painting queue so that I can make a proper start on my SYW project, I finally got around to painting the archers I'm intending to use as 1 point of Levy for my Saxon warband for SAGA. These were what was effectively for me "speed painted" in a couple of hours (not including drying time) and unfortunately it shows; I won't be making that mistake again. I had already made the decision to dip everything for this project anyway, as it's only a side project and the Dark Ages lend themselves to dark and stained clothes, but  I was in a rush with the Army Painter dip on these before shooting off to work and didn't do things properly. I also need to keep my work stations tidier as I am sure that 50% of the problems just come from the mess I manage to generate.

So, I brushed the dip on and brushed it off again - but not so successfully. I'm not overly worried; I have just re-watched The Raven Flies and The Shadow of the Raven and the costume departments must have had a field day working all that grime into things! Even so, it is a little irritating, as you can see blotches of dip where they shouldn't be...

So here are all the fyrd archers together. They are a mix of Gripping Beast and Black Tree Design.

I'm also experimenting with basing - I may have gone a bit overboard with the flowers... Here are the first 4, note the big splodge of dip on the left-hand archer's tunic. I'll have to do something about that later.

The second group came out a bit better, I think.

Just look at the size of the bow hand on this guy though: I put the flowers on the base in an attempt to draw the eye away from what must be the biggest pair of hands in early Christendom! His hand is bigger than his head!

Last group:

I like this lot best - especially the one on the right. He really reminds me of Grim in Shadow of the Raven.

Since I'm posting this I thought I'd add some pictures of my (mad?) axe wielding Huscarls and one of my two Saxon lords. Also dipped, but a little bit more time taken over them (I hope it shows!).

The huscarls. There are 9 of them as two were in the same pose, so I added a plastic one so as to have 8 different poses.

Gorgeous shield transfers by LBMS:

Now I have worked out how to use the camera well enough to take a semi-decent picture, I'll have to get the rest of my SAGA stuff photographed. For example, I have a couple of terrain pieces from Scheltrum that I don't think many people have seen, and which are definitely worth taking a look at. I'll try and get that done over the next couple of days.