Mixed Batch of Figures - Dark Age Cavalry, Polish Renaissance, Wild West, WW2 & ECW, all 28mm

Well its been quite some time since my last post - real life havng caught up with me, organising & celebrating my Dad's 90th Birthday, helping my son and his family move house (still ongoing) and keeping on top of a busy work schedule and helping run a local sports club!

Anyway here is a bunch of stuff that I have got painted and completed over the last few weeks but not havd time to 'show and tell'. Overall not my greatest work but at least I've got things moving again....

All the Dark Ages Cavalry in one line!

First up are 11 x 28mm Dark Age cavalry, these are being presented as Norman allied cavalry or even as mounted Anglo-Saxon warriors - I have tred to keep the iconography neutral (as far as possibe) to give that flexibility.

Norman Allied Leader, Conquest GAmes figure on a Wargames Atlantic Horse.

The reverse view, showing shield

The group contains a leader plus a standard bearer, as well as nine other fgures armed with a variety of hand weapons ranging form swords, axes, javelins and spears. There is also a guy with a lance nad pennant.

Two more Conquest Games figures on Wargames Atlantic horses.
Both have been given kite shields and wear leather armour. The standard is generic.

And onther view of the two figures

The leader is on a round, 40mm base, as per the rest of my collection, there are actually three plastic figures, all left over Conquest Games Normans, seated on Warlord Atlantic Horses, the other figures are all metal and from a batch of Dark Age Cavalry I sourced form eBay at a reasonable price.

First three of the metal eBay batch

The metal figures have been suplmented with platic shields and a variety of metal and plastic weapons. The eagled eyed amongst you will see that I have base two figures together of a single base - a departure from my usual approach but a neccessity resulting from a very weak end to the javelein in the hands of the figure on the left - basing them together willl hopefully protect it a bit from my (and other's) sausage fingers!

These guys are all unarmoured and have a variety of weapons as well as kite & round shields.

Not the greatest picture, central guy is the one with a weak javelin
so I glued hime to a shared base with another figure, t tryand give it potection

These figures have been given a mix of kite and round shields, to give a feel of Norman influence on the more well off warriors but a reliance on older kit by the less fortunate.

A clearer view of the shared double base and the offending javelin

These guys will make an apperance at Stamford Bridge!

Final two figures

And final view!

Next we have two Polish Officers to be used in my Vienna 1673 games, they were again sourced from eBay at a bargain proce and you can never have enough Poles on the tabletop.

The two Polish leaders

I refrained from adding wings to these guys, prefering the to be able to be used as more regular cavalry, one is unarmoured and brandishing a pretty mean looking mace, whlist the other is armoured but is checking a scratch built map.  The map being used to cover an unfortunate cut into the horse's neck line.

And another view

Next up is a test figure from the Wargames Atlantic Panzer Lehr sprue that came free on the front of September's MinatureWargames magazine. I'm pretty pleased how he has turned out and I'm going to build a few more figures to join him.

Warlord Games Panzer Lehr figure, changing magazines on his MP40

Next are two venerable Warlord Games ECW pikemen, I have a bunch of these fully armoured fellows and I plan to build these into a small unit as and when I get time. I chose a light blue uiform for them but will likely try other colour conbinations for the remaining guys.

Two fully aroured and uniformed pikemen, ready to repel cavalry!

The reverse view

Lastly we have four Wild West townsfolk from Wargames Foundry, these have been lanquising in my loft, garage and/or workbech for far too many years and I felt it was time to finally get them done. I'll hand them over to join Mike N's vast 25/28mm Wild West collection as soon as I get a chance to go to a club night again!

Some fairly well armed Wild West townsfolk

Three Winchesters and a Shotgun, heavy firepower if they are able to aim straight!

That's it for now - hopefully not such a long wait for the next post!

28mm Renaissance Foot

These guys ahve been lanquishing on my workbench for some time now, they got 50% painted before I was oh so easily distracted into doing other things....

Pleaseingly, with the grondwork already completed I was left wit the fun part of finishing off the figures to a tabletop standard. In the group of nine figures are 6 x Warlord Games Landschneckts plus 3 x Warlord Games ECW figures converted to be suitable for my Marian Wars project.

The Landschneckts are five musketeers plus a crossbow man. These were all undercoated white and then painted using a range of paint types and colours, suitably garish in nature and with a good helping of leather jackets etc. The skin was shaded using Army APinter Flesh Tine and the rest of the figures with watered down Dark Tone.

The remaining three figures were two musketers and a pike man, these where  made-up pretty much strainght out of the box. Only real changes being on the pike man who had weapons hands swapped with Wargames Atlantic Conquistadors figures and a hat from the same grafted un the oringal figure's head.

Again these were undercoted white and then finished off in the same manner as the figures above.

All varnished and based as usual.

28mm Gripping Beast Dark Age Cavalry

Its taken a bit of time to build and paint these little guys this week, its been a busy week in 'real life'. So these figures are to be used in the forthcoming 'Battle of Stamford Bridge' in December, to represent the English horse thath was alledged to have been present at the battle.

Completed unit of Dark Age Cavalry

This is my first box of these figurs, 12 in all, each one represented in an unarmoured dress and carring a range of spears, javlins, swords and axes. For the battle I'll add another 2 boxes to give a good sized mounted force for the English agaings their Viking opponents.

These guys will represent lighter cavalry used by the English ad other nationalities. the models clearly do not have any stirrups for the riders and thus cannot be used as lance armed 'knights'

The figures made up well, I actually made the executive choice to replace the supplied heads with Victrix Ango-Dane / Viking heads as I actually like the sculpts better and the helmets supplied with the kit were a little too 'early' in appearance for my taste.

Another view of the unit

I spray painted the figures black and then added a top down spray of white to give a base highlight before setting to with my paint palette. All the horses were painted using speed paints, as were some of the figures. They grey horse had a white dry brush applied and where I used regular paints I applied appropriate washes before varnishing and basing.

Reasonably pleased with this weeks work!

Finally a closer look at the rear rank

Vikings and Saxons, 3D Printed figures

This week I was able to work through a set of 3D Printed figures that I acquired off eBay. They were listed as Vikings and Saxons and were a pretty reasonable price, the sets were Viking Berserkers, Dark Age Slingers and Saxons, 24 figures in total.

The Saxon set

Now on arrival and looking at the figures I was a little disappointed with the quality of the sculpts, of the 10 Saxon figures, there were only a couple of stand out figures - the commander, pointing and the standard bearer. That said after painting the figures - they will all look OK, en masse in a suitable army.

These Saxons are definitely not 'historically' accurate, with somewhat suspect chainmail designs.

My biggest criticism of these Saxon fellows is that they are not historically accurate - they are definitely a fantasy version of a Saxon warrior, with significant embellishments to their chainmail shirts. It is once you start painting them that you realise the limitations of the sculpts and the poor definition on the faces and other details.

The remaining Saxons in close-up

Not showing very well in the photo is an attempt to print a flag design on paper and then attach to the moulded flag, concept good, execution leaving a little to be desired!

As noted the Saxon commander was a nice figure but looking at the above rear view it is very doubtful that a Saxon warrior would be a carrying a two handed sword as depicted on the model.

Victrix Housecarl

By way of light relief I had found a Victrix Housecarl hidden in the clutter of my work desk, so I felt I had to paint him up, He'll be joining his friends to fight the Vikings at Stamford Bridge in December!

Next up was a group of six Dark Age slingers, these were relatively few and far between in the battles that I'm interested in playing but the figures supplied here looked interesting. All my comments about the Saxons from above apply to these!

I placed most of these figures on a multi-base,
the unit included two female fighters and I painted these accordingly -
representing a unit made-up of old and young alike with 

Another view of the slingers

Finally we have the Viking Berserker figures, these all painted up nicely despite sharing mainly of the concerns I had for the Saxon figures. These guys are all bare chested and carrying axes, swords etc. As all of these had acres of bare flesh exposed, I painted them with my usual Army Painter Barbarian Flesh and then used Flesh Wash to add muscle definition, this worked pretty well on all figures.

8 x Viking Berserker figures.

Some nice figures in this set - the Standard Bearer is again somewhat fantasy in origins but the overall feel of these fierce follows seems to have come through. 

The shield was added to a figure that had lost it's arm in postage
and it nicely obscures the missing parts.

Overall, not a waste of time and money but the figures do have some challenges, these chaps will be joining their brethren for the 1066 Campaign.

Battle of Fulford Gate, Part 2

Moving on from Week One, we had change n personnel, as the waring commanders took breaks (holidays actually!), leaving us with the following players on each team.

Vikings -  Rupert (King Harald), John (Tostig) and Dave (Jarl Gunvald) all ably aided by Mat

Anglo Danes - Steve (Earl Edwin), Phil  (Earl Moncur), helped by Mark

The situation at the start of Week Two, conflict along the river line with all to play for...
Harald's troops nearest camera with Tostig's contingent and then Jarl Gunvald.

Fighting was intense with each side taking casualties, the Anglo-Danes, defending the river line held back the Viking Bondi & Hirdsmen, leveraging their advantage their defensive advantage. But, cunning old fox, Harald, realised that the trick in cracking the Anglo-Danish shield walls was to exploit his crack troops - learning from the exploits of his Berserkers he then committed his Hearth Guards to attacking the enemy lines with their two handed axes.

Immediately he started to see success and this was picked up by Tostig and Jarl Gunvald who committed their crack troops to the attack as well.

Tostig's Hearth Guard, punishing the extreme left wing of the Anglo-Danish line - held by Mercian General Fryd, who were unable to stop their assaults.

Soon both winds of the Anglo-Danish Army were in trouble, Earl Edwin's left flank, held by General Fryd, were being mauled by Tostig's Hearth Guards, eventually they cracked and retreated. Leaving the ford uncontested.

Earl Edwin's Housecarls, rushing to re-enforce the left of his line, eventually engaged with Tostig's Hearth Guard, trying to recapture the ford, but to no avail as night-time arrived too soon.

On the Anglo-Danish right flank, a contingent of Housecarls had been strengthening the flank and doing good work. However at the Bridge the Berserkers had continued to do their work, disrupting the shield wall and fighting to the death. This allowed Harald time to deploy his Hearth Guards along the same part of the river bank and finally the two Fryd units (one General & one Select) gave way and routed. leaving Harald in control of the bridge.

Nip and tuck in the centre

In the centre the fight continued to be very close fought, with neither side gaining any huge advantage, Anglo-Danish advantage in holding the defendable river line being offset by better quality Viking troops and some unfortunate dice throwing.

With one turn to go, disaster struck Earl Edwin's forces, both of his sub-commanders were struck down in personal combats, whilst this had no immediate effect it meant that the good Earl Edwin was left with an initiative disadvantage and a lack of field commanders to help save any vassalating units when they were morale tested.

On the Anglo-Danish right, Vikings take control of the bridge,
as English units retire from the fight

So as night fell the umpire declared a marginal victory for the Vikings, who had taken both the Bridge and the Ford and had a number of units north of the river. The Anglo-Danes had fought well, holding their own for most of the day, until mounting casualties took their toll.

This periodic campaign will now move on to the Battle of Stamford Bridge, historically fought just 5 days after Fulford Gate but in wargames terms will now be scheduled for December!

Casualties taken by both sides will be factored into the Order of Battle for Stamford Bridge, whilst both side can expect to receive re-enforcements - on the English side the arrival of King Harold and his Army and on the Viking side the arrival of more supporters and Harald's reserves.

Finally the map from the game that may be of interest to our viewers / readers!

Table-top Map, English deploy on village side of the river,
Vikings deploy on the sloped side of the table

Cruel Seas - Again!

After a week's delay - due to preparing to stage my 'Battle of Fulford Gate' game, I've been able to complete the last batch (for now) of Cruel Seas vessels.

This week's Cruel Seas output

This time we have a group of 2 x German S-Boats plus 3 x Vosper MTBs and a couple of sinking vessel markers. The painting process was pretty much the same as previous postings, although the two German vessels ended up being a little darker than those I did in the last batch. I'll likely go back and dry brush them lighter at some point if it ever crosses my mind again!

Two German S-Boats, one of each type

As can be seen the paint job is a little darker than the previous two I've done.
Not sure how much of an issue this might be.

I decided to make a couple of sinking vessel markers by cutting an MTB in half, using a razor saw and ensuring the cut ran diagonally so that I could utilise both sides as a sinking vessel. Truth be told, when making the models I managed to ping one of the torpedo tubes across the room as I cut it from the sprue - never to be found again!

I briefly considered scratch building a new tube but that was beyond my skills and I didn't want a vessel with just one torpedo tube as part of the flotilla.

Hence the sinking versions!

3 x Vospers, two different types

Another view

As noted the trickiest part of doing the sinking vessels was picking the cut line, I allowed this to go through part of the cabin superstructure to make it appear that there are two 'equal' sinking models'.

Sinking vessels with their decks on show.

The other thing to consider on the sinking vessels was that the under-side of the water-line boats is hollow, thus I had to find a way to full out their hulls. Looking at images of MTB hulls they appeared to be pretty flat, I opted not to model the propellers so it was a matter of supergluing strips of wooden coffee stirrers to the hull and when the glue is dry carving off the excess and then sanding down before painting black.

And same with their hulls on show.

The sea on the bases was painted with Citadel Paints 'Stegadon Green' before using clear PVA glue to build some wave texture on the water surface. I stippled white around the sinking vessels to simulate foaming water etc.