Follow the Hird

Things are progressing well on a number of painting fronts, with another Swiss pike block, the first half of an Irish SAGA warband and a few bits and bobs ready for photographing, posting and, hopefully, some actual use!

But it is high time I finished showing the Vikings. You've had the crud, you've had the Jarls and now you can have the Hird. All of them are plastic figures built from the Gripping Beast Hirdmen box, built pretty much as nature intended, i.e. no conversions.

Only the various warriors to feature now. And the standards. And the odd boat or two...

Is there anyone else out there who never knows when to finish a project???

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This is the entire Hird banded together in a dozen, looking like a unit. I still struggle with four figures making a unit in SAGA terms (and, indeed, in Donnybrook also if you choose an elite unit). It is the age-old dilemma between grouping them for aesthetics and some staying power or keeping them in fours and having all that flexibility...

Patterned clothing was a Viking thing, if only a hemline decoration, so most feature some sort of pattern on tunic, breeches or both.

Throughout the entire force, I have tried to choose different parts from the box to make different looking figures. I still have various options to cover.

The three fours, as it were. I have kept the shield designs simple for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I think their simplicity actually helps them stand out better on the table and secondly I think that is how they would have been historically! No two will ever be the same, however, regardless of how many Vikings I end up painting.

Best laid plans

I had a couple of things I wanted to achieve in my wargaming when I started the year.

1) I wanted to play more games - that is looking likely.
2) I wanted to get my SAGA gaming underway, including painting up two or three starter warbands. Job done, pretty much.
3) I wanted to paint up a few more units for our "Malta" game. Again, job done.

I then figured I would finally move onto a project I had considered for some time, namely the Austrian wars of the mid-19th Century, with maybe some 6mm Napoleonics as a distraction and the odd skirmish force for "The Crescent & The Cross", Border Reiving or similar.

That is where the plans fell over.

It is all Nephew Nick's fault.

We had figured on doing a Verdun-inspired game in our guise as the "Wyrley Retinue", for which I already have the figures. That lack of need to paint more figures for a specific project gave me the time to paint up what I fancied.

But Nephew Nick does not really do anything beyond the death of the musket...

So, a quick discussion or two later, and 2016 will be the year of the...

Burgundian Wars!

I have been busy digging out the Swiss and Burgundians I painted for Warhammer "Armies of Chivalry" a decade or more ago. I will be adding various Perry plastics and Old Glory figures to the Swiss ranks whilst Nephew Nick finally paints up his Perries as Italians.

So there we have it. Nephew Paul is busy (???) looking for a suitable scenario, possibly but unlikely to be an actual Swiss-Burgundian affair, to which we can lay out the figures and see how things go.

So, in honour of an old collection being rejuvenated for next year's show game, here are a few Swiss by way of an introduction.

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A mix of Foundry, Front Rank, Old Glory and Essex figures in this Berne/ Lucerne/ Appenzell pike block. All the banners are Freezywater, available from the Lance & Longbow Society.

Uri/ Zurich. Figures as before, with the Uri Fahnrich an old Gary Chalk produced fantasy figure (Fantasy Warlord?) The "Uri Bull" to his left is an Essex figure.

A mix of Basel, Schaffhausen, Unterwalden and others.

I am going 6x4 for a standard "Pike & Shotte" rules unit and 32 figures in an 8x4 formation for a large unit.

The Uri contingent in close up.

Howdy Jarl!

Sorry, but I could not resist.

(No, I have not gone all ACW on you. As a period, I remain unconvinced by it, as all I see, no doubt far too simplistically, is lines of basically identical troops standing firing at each other...Complaints to the usual address).

No, here are the two warlords I built for my Vikings, namely Harald Ravenmane and Erik Stormbrow.

Both are built from parts from the Gripping Beast Viking Hirdmen boxed set, Harald's axe being converted by the simple expedient of lengthening the shift of a normal hand axe with a length of plastic rod to make a two-handed version. Both are mounted on 30mm diameter metal washers to make them stand out a bit from the rest of the troops.

Somewhat surprisingly, the SAGA Viking warband is not allowed Dane Axes, unlike the Anglo-Danes and Norse-Gael, so this axe is somewhat anachronistic in game terms, but I like it so it stays. (Until I break the end off inadvertently with some rough handling at any rate...)

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Erik Stormbrow. Many of the plastic shields I have used I distressed beforehand with a craft knife and cutters to show some usage. The sword looks enormous ion this view, but it is normal size! Most of my Vikings also have patterned clothing in some form and Erik is no exception with his striped trousers and patterned tunic hem.

Harald Ravenmane, showing the elongated axe haft.

A close up of Harald's shield, the only one I have done so far with any sort of fauna depicted upon it. Once again, I have done striped trousers and a patterned tunic hem.

Crud 3 - Revolting Revolutionaries

In an all too common Mathematics faux pas, I posted "Crud 4" before "Crud 3"...

So, the "Revolting Revolutionaries", aka "Crud 3". I put these together ages ago and wrote an article for Battlegames magazine (issue 14 or 15 I think) about wargaming the Freikorps and their enemies in 20mm, in which several of these figures featured.

My Late WW1 Germans needed some opponents other than the Late War French I also own, so, inspired by the likes of Hans Fallada's "Kleiner Mann - Was Nun?", a text I had to study in my youth for German A Level, set as it is during the Weimer Republic, I set to in my favoured 20th Century wargames scale, 1/76th, or 20mm to you and I. During my studies, I encountered the likes of the Spartacists, the Freikorps, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, rampant inflation, the rise of the Nazis and all that other period stuff.

"How different was that?" I thought.

I already had a good grounding in the sort of period figures available for The Great War, but needed a more civilian feel for my Spartacists. Cue some Irregular Miniatures Spanish Civil War figures, some It Figures Volkssturm, Partisans also by It Figures, Great War spares from the likes of It Figures, Irregular and Tumbling Dice, lorries, wagons and the like from whoever makes them and away I went. In short, if I felt it would fit the bill, in it went. The whole thing was a sort of wargames curry!

They will not stand up in a straight fight against the Freikorps, but that is why I like scenario games so much, because they do not necessarily have to! One memorable game saw them defending a station building, eager for the arrival of some explosives so they could blow it up, whilst being assaulted by the Freikorps. In the last turn of the game, they left out the back door whilst the Freikorps tried to get in the front and BOOM!!!!

I really must get these figures out again soon. Happy memories...

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Ex-British army Mark IV by Emhar fronted by a mixed selection of anti-Fascists/ Communists and an ex-French army 75mm gun. The two figures with armbands are It Figures Volksturm, the others Irregular Miniatures SCW. The gun is from Tumbling Dice.

The Tumbling Dice 75mm and crew. The crew are also TD, French WW1, with a head swap from a WW1 Russian nearest to camera holding the shell. Captured equipment would have been quite common, hence the foreign kit, including Adrian helmets.

The big lorry is from Irregular, the figures a mix again, the Hotchkiss from It Figures. The smaller lorry is a Model T Ford built from a kit made by Polish company RPM and marketed as a WW1 Ambulance. The standard bearer is an identical figure to the one in black, but an arm bend did the trick to make him something else.

In addition to the politically-motivated civilians, the Red ranks also have a few ex-soldiers in their ranks. These are again It Figures (no longer available?), their armbands a simple strip of sticky label painted an appropriate red. The portee is Irregular Miniatures again, its crew a mix of Tumbling Dice and Irregular I think.

It Figures Russian sailors, painted blue to represent their German counterparts, with an It Figures Maxim. These, with the ex-soldiers, provide a bit of quality to the Crud.

Irregular Miniatures wagons, the red one converted with card panels to represent a delivery van of some sort. The teamster is another conversion, having had his sidecap shaved down and scored to represent hair. A civilian paint job completes the disguise.

Crud 4 - The Lowly Levies

At last, I can present for your amusement/ pleasure/ critique/ disinterest/ other (delete as appropriate) the figures that prompted the whole "Crud" theme in the first place.

When starting out with a SAGA warband or two the middle of last December, I chose Vikings simply because I already had some Gripping Beast plastic Hirdmen figures available to build after using this particular boxed set as a source of parts for Islesmen for my 1314/ Malleus Scottorum project.

But no, being me, I did not want to paint my Jarl or Hirdmen, I had to start with the rubbish I tend to steer towards. So, here are those self-same Thralls that started the whole thing, 12 levy slingers made from parts available in the Gripping Beast "Dark Age Warriors" boxed set. I would have preferred archers, but you do not get the parts for them in this set, so slingers it had to be. They fit the bill very nicely for SAGA, however, and will get some trial outings at the very least.

The first games are set for this Sunday. Having played just two games so far this year, I hope to get at least a couple in this Easter weekend. Both of my 4-point Viking forces are now finished, so I will post some more photos soon, I have started on more stuff for this basic project, we have a campaign in the offing and it's all good!

I might even remember to take a few photos of the games in action to log my experiences and these Thralls might even hit something!!!

Sunday could be a lot of fun.

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The complete unit, ready to run at the first sign of trouble as all good levies should.

I tried to give them an earthy feel to represent better their lowly status. Bright colours and washing facilities were out, but this guy at least got a bit of hem decoration on his tunic.



And this one can stretch to a knife and pouch for whatever pass for his personal effects. The beauty of plastic figure kits is their ability to be customised to suit, the variety they afford from a few simple parts, their potential for conversion and the extra bits you seem to get in all these kits, to enable the addition of details such as the pouch and dagger.

End of March musings

We are a quarter of the way through this year already, so time to take stock.

1) I have played precisely two games - a 15mm Napoleonic affair with my Austrians vs Nephew Nick's French and the "Mayhem in the Med. c.1565" outing for the Wyrley Retinue at the WMMS Show earlier this month.

2) I have spent well over my budget already this year...

3) I have painted around 90 28mm figures, all infantry, and finished off another 11 or so I started before Christmas got in the way.

I always see myself as a slow painter, but I am seriously pleased to have got through effectively 100 figures (-ish) so far this year, as well as acting as family taxi, working full time and having a life. I even have time to speak to my wife occasionally! A fair chunk of these figures were additions to the "Mayhem" ranks for the show game, but I have also managed to paint up two 4-point Viking warbands for SAGA, the last figures for which I varnished this morning before tidying the man-cave. I will photograph these once I get the bases textured and the first ever games of SAGA are set for Easter Sunday, so I may even squeeze in a game report or two...

So what does Quarter 2 hold?

Well, changes of mind aside (and I expect there to be one or two...), I plan on some Dark Age civilians, an Irish warband and possibly a Norse-Gael one as well. So, Ireland in the Dark Ages is very much in my wargaming thoughts. I blame an old issue of the short-lived "Wargames World" magazine of a couple of decades ago, specifically the issue that featured a scratchbuilt model of an Irish Rath - a ring fort to you or I. I have that issue in my loft somewhere, so I think a sort out up there is in order too, before it gets too hot now we are officially into warmer times after passing the equinox in the early hours of this morning.

After that, I feel a need to get something less skirmish-orientated underway and those 19th Century conflicts are most appealing...

 

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To close, I have a couple of shots of the sort of modelling project I like. I am not a fan of plastic or other kits, which may be why I tend to avoid WW2 in the main, though I do build figures of course, but I do like to tinker with the sort of detail bits that I think help to raise the level of a game.

Boxes, barrels, crates and the like are easy to place into all sorts of game situations, but our "Mayhem..." game features a harbour. After watching the "Pyke" episode of "Game of Thrones" recently, I had to have some stuff from there. So here goes...

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Dockside cranes! These are made from strip wood I bought at a model railway show, their bases being metal washers. The discs two-thirds the way up the upright are from the push out bits from "X-Wing" game fighter display cards, the spars from cut down spears. Finally, the rope is either cotton or Gale Force 9 model rope, rope eyes from small lengths of biro inner, staples used as rope securing points on the uprights and bent wire for hooks. Simple but effective I think.

As well as ubiquitous barrels (from Ten Commandments, who make stuff for railway modellers and who are well worth a look), I made some net-drying racks. The netting is security fencing material from "Greenscene" (model railways again...) and the weights on the nets are old anglers' lead shot. I have a stash of this stuff lying around from aeons ago - I think I have been fishing twice in my entire life.

Final reinforcements

Somewhat out of sequence, I present for your viewing a few shots of what will probably be the last figures I will paint for the Wyrley Retinue "Mayhem in the Med, c1565" game. These were finished in the week running up to the show.

I want to move on to pastures new now, though, so. like I said, these will be the last for "Malta".

I do have vague plans to boost the forces though. The Turks are quite easy, as after adding cavalry and artillery, along with some more infantry and bespoke command, they will do for a couple of hundred years and numerous opponents. The problem is which opponent I want to build to go with them...

Hungarians for Mohacs? Imperialists for "The Long War"? Poles? Imperialists for Vienna (1529 or 1683)? Imperialists for Peterwardein and Eugene Of Savoy?

The Christians are a little trickier. Spanish and Dutch? English in Ireland? French Wars of Religion? I certainly like the look of the last two...A few more cavalry and I already have Border Reivers!

So, what crop will those new pastures deliver first? Hmmmm.

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More Old Glory Sword and buckler/ target men. A mix of Spanish, French and "unmarked" probably hints that I should build them into a French Wars of Religion set up...

A close up of the rear rank from the above photo.

Some Vendel arquebusiers.

The religious contingent. Brother Inebriatus, Brother Leelove, the priest I painted up as a sample Arthurian character a few years back and have finally based, Brother Spock and Brother Gluttonus with unfeasibly large left hand. The priest is from West Wind, the monks from Foundry.

Some Gripping Beast Arabs, from the plastic set. Half the bows in my box were broken, so I built them like this. When I had finished, I kicked myself for not doing a simple hand-swap conversion for some variety!!! D'oh! They did prove to be demon shots at WMMS though, killing four tower guards with their first volley regardless of the hard cover provided by the tower walls!

And Gripping Beast Arabs built as spearmen, from the same plastic set as the archers above.