They clash at last!

So, after a bit of a gap, here’s another long-overdue post. Following on from painting the Gripping Beast Vikings I was working on, I managed to finish them off and eventually paint up an opposing force of Anglo-Saxons. The two sides share a drawer in GHQ, and eventually an argument spilled over into violence (likely over whether to fry their fish like good Aenglishmen or have them in warm milk like crazy Norsemen…). The results were seen on the field of tabletop.

After a bit of too-ing and fro-ing the two sides eventually approached each other

 

 

A ravens-eye view of the final approach

 

The Anglo-Saxon warlord with his eorldermen, on the right, prepares to tear up the side of the hill into the body of the milky-fish eating invaders

 

We know action’s really happening when the SAGA dice come out. Not just cheesy insults now!

The Eorldermen and their boss take matters into their own hands and take the fight to the Vikings

The bruising contest just before its sudden conclusion. The Vikings didn’t carry this day, but after conceding that fish taste better with chips when they’re fried, they vowed to have it out with those pesky aenglishemen again at some point.

The Vikings are Coming

The first of my Vikings have been mostly done - I just have to do the bases to finish them off. The next four hirdmen are on the way, and as you can see below I've painted up a Beowulf figure from Eureka Miniatures as the initial warband leader.

Finally, the English are done. I'll call them that, as they'll be a core group that I'll expand into both Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Danes for SAGA. There's only four points worth at the moment, as I'll concentrate on building an opponent for them and some terrain before expanding each force. Of course, they could just test their mettle against some orcs or goblins from Middle Earth, of which I have plenty.

So, the Anglo-Saxons are coming along nicely, but as I've got a few different types, I thought I'd have a look at the different brands and see how they compared size-wise. Below is a picture of a Wargames Foundry figure on the left (with a plastic shield this time). In the middle is sculpt of one of Beowulf's bodyguards from that most excellent of figure manufacturers, Nic, at Eureka Miniatures. Lastly on the right is a Saxon Thegn from the Gripping Beast plastics box set.

The Foundry figure looks a bit tall, and the other two are still listed as 28mm, so maybe there's a bit of scale creep in the Foundry line. The other two mix nicely though, and I'll put up further pictures of some of the Eureka Dark Ages range as I paint them.

So, in the ongoing quest to put together an English force for SAGA I've been working on a series of figures. Some are what some guys at the club and I believe to be old Wargames Foundry Anglo-Saxons that I purchased on eBay, while the rest are plastic Gripping Beast figures. So, there I am peacefully preparing the guys for undercoating and such, and the sword and hand of one of the lads in a particularly dynamic pose just drops off! Given it's unlikely there's any sort of warranty on old Anglo-Saxon huscarls losing bits of limbs, I thought I'd better simply pin it and pop it back on. Not a big task, but just in case anyone searching online hasn't seen shots of it done before (though I'm sure there's someone who has the time to do a full live demo on You Tube), here's a few pictures of the process.

The patient's wrist after cleaning it up with a file and drilling the hole

Far-shot of the brass pin in place

...and a bit more detail. I'd already measured it and cut it to size.

The pin seemed like it may have been a bit long, but...

...after a bit of liquid green stuff it seems like a good fit.

After warming up with some basic painting (LotR Elves from the first box-set, a few that had been undercoated and deprioritised continuously for the past few years) I decided that of the options I had for painting, the one that would possibly give me biggest gaming-bang-for-buck, and something that I'd been meaning to do for a fair while, was some figures for the game SAGA. So I arranged a Friday night game via the club Facebook page and was ready to go. Except of course I had no figures to run in it. Mark, who was going to ref the game for Paul and I. Mark assured me that he had between his and someone else's figures enough for both of us, but I wanted to get something done. So I managed to get four Anglo-Danish/Saxon hearthguard painted up (minus finished bases) and got them into the stoush on the night.

The short version was that it was an educational game, we learnt all the basics, and I found the SAGA dice and command options to be just plain fun! Here's a few shots of a small part of the action:

The English defending the village

Vikings on the way in...

Raiders at the northern end of town

My lads preparing for action