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...

French Artillery, 10th Co, 6th FA Regt.

It has come as somewhat of a surprise to me to realise that for a blog named after Austerlitz there has been little if any Napoleonic posting going on, what with all the SAGA and SYW stuff. So it's time to fix that. I do paint Napoleonics as well ...

This is a battery I painted up not too long ago. Although the guns are finished, I still have to add on the limbers and train, and the hangers-on. Ever since I saw one of Barry Hilton's batteries for R2E I have been wanting to do the same with mine. I have some suitable figures and I've made a start on painting them up, so I hope in the next month or so they might get done, but with so many other "more important" things needing to be done first I'm not sure I'll be able to sneak them in. The figures are Foundry and are in the old pre-1812 regulations uniform.

The whole battery

The battery from behind

You can see the ruts from the guns running back here, which have filled with water. If only these were in the later uniform they'd be perfect for Waterloo! They are in fact going to be used as  10th Co, 6th FA Regt. for my Waterloo project. I will get round to replacing them eventually, but not until I have every unit I want painted up, wrong uniform or not. 

Gun ready

The howitzer

Looking at the pictures, some of them look a bit chalky. I hope it's just dust, they don't look like that to me "in the flesh". Perhaps it's just my less than stellar photography skills...

Anyway, the next battery will be a foot battery by the Perry brothers. I really wish Victrix would do a French artillery set; I'm sure it would  be a great seller - and I have more than a few more batteries to do for the master plan ...

As usual, comments and criticism welcome.

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.

Vaubanner Flags - a review

I recently made a purchase of some flags for my SYW project from Vaubanner in Canada. Since I haven't seen much of them on TMP (it was a sort of sight unseen buy for me) and people on this side of the Atlantic at least may not have had the opportunity to see them, I thought I'd post a quick review for you.

The complete order

When I started my SYW project the first the around, I cast around in the hope of finding a manufacturer who would be able to supply me with everything I need for both sides. My first stop for flags, GMB, has an incomplete SYW range, and I don't think it's likely to be filled out any time soon.  I did make enquiries about whether more flags would be done, but Grahame Black let me know that it wasn't likely in the near future. It was the same problem at Maverick, and while Stuart is exceptionally quick to respond to customer requests, I didn't really know how long it might take him to do everything I needed. I discovered that the Flag Dude, though, has a very comprehensive range, so I bought just a few of his excellent flags to get me started. Shortly thereafter, however, I got seriously sidetracked, and the project got put on the back-burner.

This time around, when starting again, I re-examined all my plans, and decided to take a look at the flags again. I wasn't unsatisfied with what I had, but I stumbled cross a couple of threads on TMP about this company I had never heard of before, Vaubanner, out of Canada. There were a few, indistinct, pictures, but there was a lot of praise, and most importantly a complete range, so I decided to take the plunge and order everything I'd need in one go. Brian Homenic, the owner of Vaubanner, was polite and easy to deal with and even registered the delivery for me for just a few extra C$s. 2 weeks later an envelope arrived, sans duty (hooray!), and I got my mitts on what can only be described as miniature works of art. I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Here are the Prussian flags, with a couple of Foundry figures to give you an idea of the scale of them. The fantastic detail is absolutely clear.

The Prussian flags

Below are the Russian flags I purchased, along with a couple of other flags from other manufacturers for comparison.

The Russian flags

The red French Napoleonic 3rd battalion flag on the left  is by GMB. I have a lot of GMB flags and I love them; they are a sort of gold standard for a lot of people I think. Here you can see the difference between Grahame's and Brian's flags. While the GMB flags tend to have shading worked into the design, you can see that this is not the case with the Vaubanner ones. On the other hand, the colour saturation of the Vaubanner flags is amazing, much higher than the GMB one. I really like the look.

On the right is an instantly recognisable flag from Rick, the Flag Dude.  Rick's flags come prepared already on the flag staff, with finials  and ready to go. They are also a lot larger than the flags from Vaubanner, as can be seen above. All of these things score points for the Flag Dude in my eyes. Some people may not like the animation he gets into his flags, but I love it. I'm also in favour of oversized flags - I want them to be seen not hidden away. And any work done by someone else is work I don't have to do, so it's all good.

Why then have I decided to swap and go with Vaubanner flags for my SYW project? Quite simply, the beauty of these flags is the main reason. The print quality from Vaubanner is just outstanding, and the difference is noticeable.  I also found a few discrepancies between the Flag Dude flags I received a while back and my (admittedly very limited) sources. Finally, while the Flag Dude range is undoubtedly less work, I can put flags on poles and paint finials myself, although I admit that I have yet to get anywhere close to the motion that Rick captures in his flags. That's something to work on. The only regret I have is the smaller size (the Russian cuirassier colours are tiny!), but I know that's in line with what they should be - I just like large flags.

I hope this has been of use to someone. If you're vacillating over which flags to get for your own SYW troops, don't! Order up some of these little beauties. You won't regret it.