Viking Celebrations

All that pillaging can make a chap quite thirsty! Cheers Ragnar ... hic!

Figures from Gripping Beast - who else!?

Great for adding a bit of extra colour to your Viking Age games.

Dark Ages Movement Tray Fillers

The Warbases movement trays are excellent but they still present the problem of a bare tray when your units start to take casualties (unless of course you happen to play Hail Caesar!). My other trays have been painted brown - which is better than plain wood or plastic. But I still wanted to make things look better.

See what I mean... bare wood spoils the effect.

So here we have my new "unit filler" bases.

As you can see they're made up from spare bases covered in casualties, discarded weapons, severed limbs, lost shields, etc.

The casualty figures have yet to be washed and highlighted but the rest of the bases are complete.

I've made enough for 20 casualties, in a variety of base sizes. I didn't want to make any more until I had decided whether it worked well. Which I think it does. What's even better is that they're mostly made from odds and ends from my bits box.

Warbases Saga Sticks

For a while now I've been using some lengths of wooden dowelling as SAGA measuring sticks but I decided that I'd like something a little more bespoke. After chatting to the guys at Warbases whilst attending Colours I found out that they still made suitable measuring sticks plus they could be customised however I wanted. I opted for one set with SAXON etched on and the other with VIKING (both in the freely available Colonna font). Just £5 pounds for each set. So here they are.

Made from 3mm MDF and I think that they're a superb product! In fact it's been a pleasure to deal with Warbases. They're friendly and efficient, the products are great and very reasonably priced. Highly recommended.

I also ordered a set of movement trays. They're suitable for 8 x 3 of 20mm square bases - ideal for my Saxons. Here's a picture to illustrate.

Again, a top quality product at a good price, only £1.70 each. All I need to do is sand and flock the edge to match my figures.

Durin's Folk - SAGA with Lord of the Rings

Years ago I bought quite a few of the LotR range of figures from GW. I never really got that in to the so-called "Strategy Battle Game" as I found it quite unrewarding... However, now we have SAGA, plus the forthcoming Hobbit movie has once again piqued my interest in gaming with these figures.

Here's a couple of test figures for a paint scheme for my Dwarfen force. I think the deep red plus the white linen effect go quite well, especially with the gold edging. What do you think?

I have a large Moria Goblin force already complete, not to mention a whole heap of Orcs. Initially I'd use the standard SAGA boards for Vikings (Dwarfs) and Welsh (Goblins - apologies to any Welsh readers I can assure you it's nothing personal!). The next step would be to get my own dice made by Warbases and then create my own battleboards for each side.


Some close ups.

I've just noticed that the bases need tidying up with a bit of black around the edges!? Ooops ;o)

Saxon Ceorls

It's been a bit longer than I'd hoped since my last post however a number of real-life issues have rather diverted me from the noble art of painting toys, e.g. work, trying (unsuccessfully) to sell the house, etc. But now I've finally added a few more Ceorls to make a decent unit for War & Conquest. As mentioned before, they're actually Musketeer Duguth, but a mix of bucklers and larger shields means that can be used for either era.

Now a slightly closer pic of the front of the unit. Hmmm - need to find a simple flag for the chap with the red shield!

I've really enjoyed painting these lovely figures. Hope you like them.

Next on the list are more Huscarls and some Thegns, or perhaps I'll paint up some villagers?