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.

Scheltrum Miniatures

Last year at Salute I got to play SAGA. It just confirmed that my Dark Age project was what I wanted to do, so in addition to my Gripping Beast figures, I trawled the hall, looking for some terrain pieces to buy, as I had little in the way of appropriate table decoration. In addition to the Architects of War pig sty and some more stuff from GB, a stall run by Scheltrum Miniatures caught my eye. Well, I'd never heard of them before (they do have a website at http://www.scheltrum.co.uk, but it doesn't really do them any favours), but I liked what I saw, and decided to add some stuff to my pile of purchases.

I picked up these terrain pieces, along with a couple of the houses in the range (which I have yet to paint up). Both are painted mainly with craft paints and a few oils. These are a little different from the run-of the-mill A Frame houses provided by most manufacturers and I think add a bit of character to the table. See what you think.

First up is the cookhouse. I'm not sure the "kiln" is the right colour, and I don't like the thatch - it's not grey enough - but I'm pretty happy with it otherwise. I added some Vallejo pigments for soot and ash which I think worked out ok.

Next the latrine. This is my favourite piece of terrain ever! It's just so ... I don't know, cheeky. This really was an age when men were men - there's no way I'd be happy using these "facilities" in the dead of winter (I type this as it's -21 outside with wind chill, so I know what I'm talking about). No weathering here as I think you can take things a bit too far...

So there you go. I hope these are of interest - I like them and I don't think they have the exposure they deserve.

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.