Dark Age Village

I alluded to the fact a few weeks ago that I was scratch building a Dark Age village. There are lots of nice commercial products available for this period, but when I realized how many I wanted, I decided I'd better try to build some of my own. Besides I enjoy scratch building from time to time and decided to give it a try. These models have actually been finished for a while, but I only got the chance to take pictures last night.

They are made completely from foamcore, balsa wood, and teddy bear fur. I'm afraid I didn't take any WiP photos. I was working without templates and kind of doing everything by eye. I got so caught up in the construction process, I forgot to document any of it (hopefully when I go to add more I can remember what I did)! If you have questions, post them below and I'll try to answer them...

The fences were interesting. My first thought was to make tight waddle fences from wire (like the wattle door on the first building above), but when I turned to Google for inspiration, I found images of some very 'rough' looking fences that seemed to have much more character.

These fences are made from toothpicks and fake bamboo shoots purchased from a craft store. I stumbled on the material by accident while looking for floral wire. The wispy ends had enough flexibility to weave between the posts and I secured them with a bit of liquid superglue. I have six sections, but I easily have enough material from the fake bamboo to make 60...

I am very pleased with the results. I want to build another large house, a main hall, and a church, plus a handful of outbuildings. Besides being great for any Dark Ages era, these would be great for the Medieval period, rural areas of the Renaissance period, and the Rohirrim of Middle Earth!

More Dark Age troops on the way...

Summoning the Fyrd

The warband is growing steadily and I have now finished the first half of the fyrd.

I wanted the fyrd to appear a little less grim than the huscarls. I chose marginally brighter colors and varied the shields for a more unruly appearance. I'm very pleased with how they turned out.

Eight more to go and my initial goal is finished. I'm splitting time between painting soldiers and scratch building a Dark Age village. Pics of the settlement coming up soon...

More Saxons!

Last week I managed to paint more Saxons for my Donnybrook project!

The first model is the leader for my Huscarls. In Donnybrook the model will provide a combat bonus for the unit if he is attached. I haven't gotten around to naming my models still, but it will be a must when I go to make unit and character cards.

The next is a reeve who will lead the fyrd, again giving a bonus to a unit if attached.

More Saxons in a few days...

Saxon Huscarls

I had a productive week and managed to finish eight huscarls for my Saxon warband (models are all Footsore Miniatures).

As I mentioned in my first post on this project, these are for Donnybrook. I think it is probably unrealistic for the warriors to have the same color shields without all bearing the same device as well, but I wanted to tie the unit together visually. I also wanted the shields to be dark and brooding to emphasize the grim nature of these household troops. I decided to avoid black and opted for a dark blue (French Blue 65A-C) and a warm brown (Bay Brown 42A-C). Slashes and pock marks were carefully painted with French Blue Shade 65A and the undersides of these highlighted with Slate Grey 32B (on the blue) and Spearshaft Brown 13B (on the brown). These are all Wargames Foundry colors. By the way, the Foundry French Blue triad has worked it's way into my list of 'Paints I Can't Do Without'. It is a great alternative to black, providing contrast to your models with a richer finish.

As I also mentioned before, I'm using the 1-2-3 basing system of Dalauppror for this collection. I HATE the look of movement trays once units start accumulating casualties. This method of basing allows for easy casualty removal while allowing for quicker movement and the ability to create vignettes. The models won't be ranked as neatly as units on square bases, but I think that's inappropriate for this period anyway. Even close order troops would likely not be able to maintain precision formations advancing across uneven ground.

I'm starting on the Fyrd next week. Their shields will have much more variety in color, though I'm still going to choose muted tones - blue grey, terracotta, bone, etc.

We are going to produce an 'official' Dark Age supplement in PDF that should be available this fall, but you will still need the Donnybrook rulebook to play the game. The PDF will present rule mods and special characters to set your games in the 7th-11th centuries (and probably a bit more either way). I'll have more details on this as I have more concrete information.

In a bit of other news, sometime during Historicon I passed 500 posts (I think this makes 505)! I just wanted to thank everyone who keeps stopping by. I find blogs a great tool for myself to catalog projects and I often look up old posts to see how I painted something or verify the number of models in a collection without digging out the storage boxes (my collection has long outgrown the two large display cases I own). The fact that anyone else wants to follow my rambling is icing on the cake.

Thanks, and stay tuned!

My First Saxons!

Yes, I am excited about painting these models! I normally start with a pile of rank and file and 'reward' myself with leader types once I've got a good muster of troops, but this time I wanted to assemble the leaders of the warband first.

 

This will be Lord Aeth-something... I haven't decided exactly, but there are a pile of good Saxon nobles that begin with that syllable! There are a lot of great shield transfers out there, but I decided to paint all of my shields by hand. To some degree that will limit the level of detail that I can add, but I think they will blend in better with my style of painting.

The Lord's most trust retainer carries the holy Christian banner of his house into battle. Of course the flag is Quindia Studios and made in the same style of the Grand Alliance, GNW, and AWI collections offered at the LoA store. No, there are no plans to offer Dark Ages flags in the shop at this time - this one was just for me!

The paints used are Wargames Foundry, except for the metallics which are Games Workshop. Both models were given a dusty campaign appearance with weathering powders.

Quick review - The Footsore Miniatures are a joy to paint. There was virtually no flash on these models, which is important on chainmail as you can never quite get rid of mould lines without ruining some of the armour. The models are crisp and even tiny details like the button on the pouches are easy to pick out with a brush. These compare well with any other brand I buy and if you are thinking about starting a Dark Age project, they are well worth considering.

The rest of the armoured lads are up next!

Donnybrook Dark Ages

I spent very little time in the dealer hall at Historicon. In fact I really only took one tour through on Saturday, mostly to visit a few folks I know like Rob Walters of Eureka and our own Bob Miller of Le Roi Soleil, the dealer for Warfare Miniatures in the US. I also stopped to visit a new friend, Bill Thornhill of Footsore Miniatures. We met for the first time at Historicon. I knew Bill had placed an ad in BLB a few years ago for his Musketeer Miniature line... what I didn't know was that Bill has a wonderful and growing range of Dark Age models under the banner of Footsore Miniatures. Ok, I know this isn't news, but it was news to me.

After preparing for six months to run BLB at the con, I was spoiling for something different and the Footsore minis came at the same time I had just finished watching this season of Vikings and I started rereading The Last Kingdom series (yes, I know there's a TV show for that too - not quite the same, but I will check it out when I've finished the books again). Bill had some 4-point Saga warband deals available at Historicon (and on his website) and I picked up the Anglo-Saxon set and an extra character pack. I spent the last few days assembling the fyrd and managed to basecoat them this afternoon!

I should have snapped a few pics before basecoating, but if you head over to Footsore Miniatures you can see lovely examples of the painted models to get an idea of what I'm working with.

After getting home and taking stock of what I wanted to do, I realized I need more (and they are on the way)! The plan is to build two Saxon warbands, rival earls or eldermen of Northumbria and Mercia. These groups could then be pitted against each other or combined into a larger force to face the painted Foundry Vikings I already own (and have lots of unpainted lead for as well). I have a wonderful pair of Viking longships from Adrian's Walls and I'm planning to scratch build a small village to go with my Historicon boards (and others. of course, but the Historicon set up is the only coastline I have at the moment).

I am also using Dalauppror's 1-2-3 basing method for this collection. I've been looking for an excuse to try this and Dark Age skirmishing seems perfect. It gives the flexibility for skirmishing, the convenience of quicker movement, and the coolness of mini-vignettes. Yes, I glued them all down before painting them and it will make it a little harder to paint, but it will be a little faster as I won't waste a bunch of time painting details that are covered by by the shields or other models. If I can't reach it with a brush, you won't be able to see it! I will probably rebase the Vikings as well to match the new collection.

So what's with the title of the post? As I've said many times, I've used Donnybrook from everything from Warhammer to Darkest Africa. I have a handful of amendments to drag the published version back to the eighth or ninth century and we may even publish them as a PDF later this year, but for now suffice to say I'm planning on using my own rules rather than Saga. The Saga dice and charts are a cool idea, but seem a bit tedious to me - I am finding I very much prefer simple and straightforward mechanics these days, especially for skirmishing. Not that there is anything complicated about Saga and the charts really seem to add a lot of character to the encounters, but I KNOW Donnybrook without the need to usually look at any charts at all. This project is mainly for my table so I'll stick with that (besides, the force building rules are similar and I can always use Saga too).

Lots more to come as I expect this to my main focus for as long as it takes! I still have final thoughts on Historicon as well as I post those sometime next week...

Viking Berserkers

These are the first of my 'new' Vikings, meaning that I painted them last week. Berserkers are treated as Hearthguard with a bonus in melee and a penalty on their armor.

Viking Levy

Here are four of my Viking Levy models. I still need to paint a few more to field a SAGA 'legal' 12-model unit. If I had any criticism of SAGA so far it would be in requiring the 12-model units be bow armed. Archers would have been very rare in any Viking army, but any warband resorting to Levy end up with what seems like a disproportionate number of them. They aren't great troops and they probably need the numbers to be effective, but my 6-point SAGA warband has 41 models and with 12 Levy, that's roughly a third of my force with bows. Of course, to satisfy my issue I can replace the whole lot with another band of Hearthguard or Warriors and ditch the arrows entirely. Maybe I'll use them for my Anglo-Danish warband...

My Normans arrived this week, but I've got a commission to finish up before I can start on them...

Viking Warriors

Here are a few of the warriors that will form one of the units in my Viking Saga warband (click on each image to see a larger pic)...

Next week I'll post some pics of a few Viking Levy...

Viking Hearthguard

The photos for my Saga Vikings I posted last week were old so I thought I'd take some better pictures (click on each image to see a larger pic)...

These are Wargames Foundry models sculpted by Mark Sims (as are all of my Vikings). These stalwart veterans will form one of my Viking Hearthguard units.

SAGA

My life seems to FINALLY be returning to normal so I can get in some quality hobby time besides Flag Monday (Don't worry - that feature should continue at least through the rest of the year). I have another unit of AWI militia finished and awaiting photography, a unit of TYW infantry around the half way mark, a load of Warfare Miniatures in the mail, and of course I decided to start something new...

I check in over at Dave Imrie's Saxon Dog blog just about every day and he has an annoying habit of making me want to paint the same period he's working on (and he changes gears as often as I do). A week or so ago, he posted a small Anglo-Dane warband designed for use with the new SAGA game from Gripping Beast. I'd heard some interesting things about this game (including Dave writing "I have played 'Saga' three or four times at the SESW Club and I have to say...I'm hooked!") so I ordered a copy and it arrived yesterday. After reading through the rules (yes I read the whole book in a day - not only does it seem like an easy game, it was a fun read) I can't wait to them out.

Without going into great detail about the rules (I can if anyone wants, but there is a great review at The Man Cave), warbands are built with a very simple point system. The Warlord who leads the force (and your alter ego in miniature) is required and is free. Remaining models cost one point per group and the number of models in each depends on the class of troops you choose... 4 Hearthguard, 8 Warriors, or 12 Levy. The basic intro game requires only four points of models, moving to six points standard once you get the hang of things. Once purchased, models are grouped into units of 4-12 models. For instance, if you spend three points on Hearthguard, you could field them as one unit of 12 models, two units of 6 models, three units of 4 models, etc. You can play your first games with only 30 or 40 models per side.

Here's the great part. I ALREADY HAVE enough Vikings painted to field a four and a half point warband (the half point comes from only having six archer levy)!

These models are left over from a WAB project I started YEARS ago. I have nearly sold off this collection several times and I'm glad I didn't. They were painted with my first foray into the Kevin Dallimore style and happen to still resemble my work today. I want to go back and weather them a bit, beat up their shields to give a more battle worn appearance, and touch up the bases, but with the addition of ten models (4 berserkers and 6 archers which I already have in my unpainted mountain of lead) I can field the following six point SAGA Viking Warband:

1 Warlord (Weglaf Ravenshelm)
2 units of Viking Hearthguard (4 models each)
1 unit of Viking Berserkers (4 models)
2 units of Viking Warriors (one unit of 12 models and a reserve of 4 models)
2 units of Viking Levy (6 models each)

The actual composition might vary once I get a few games in, but you get the idea. This afternoon I dropped enough cash on the Perry site to get a six point Norman army (based on their minis from the Crusaders line). There may be a few anachronistic details for games set before 1066, but I think they will work well enough for a heroic style skirmish game.

I am looking forward to getting back into a regular painting groove and hopefully updates will come on a more regular basis in the future.