Lords, Nobles, Champions...and Sheep?

Just a quick update this time. I've had some exciting happenings in real life, as last week I heard that I have managed to get a permanent teaching job at school i've been working at for the past 9 months. Full time teaching jobs are like hen's teeth on the Central Coast region of NSW, particularly history teaching positions, so I’m very, very chuffed!

As far as painting and gaming has been going, I've finished painting up and basing the nobles and lords for my Saxons for Dux Britanniarum. I’ve used the rules to generate a background for them. My Dux Brit campaign will see the Saxons attacking the lands of the British Kingdom of the North. The figures I’ve used are the excellent Musketeer Miniatures. Shields are all the superb LBMS offerings. I used the same basing formula as I have for my SAGA vikings, which I feel works for a Northern Britain feel.

26 year old Ecgwald is the leader of the Saxon warband. Ecgwald may be of average build, but he has the constitution of an ox. The Saxon is wodenborn, the scion of an aristocratic family across the sea in Germany.

Ecgwald’s champion is Offa, a tall and strong 28 year old. Offa is a master at arms, skilled in the use of sword, saex, and spear.

Fighting with Ecgwald is Aedelbehrt the Able, a short and wiry 31 year old. Aedelbehrt is also wodenborn, the son of a chieftain leading foederati along Hadrian’s  wall. Growing up in the foederati fort, the young noble developed an unquenchable appetite for the fairer sex. Aedelbehrt is not entirely happy under the command of the younger Ecgwald, believing himself more suited to leadership.

21 year old Oswine is the last of the nobles fighting with Ecgwald. The young Oswine is the son of a lesser foederati noble serving on Hadrian’s Wall, and he grew up alongside Aedelbehrt. Oswine is in awe of Ecgwald, to whom he is entirely loyal. He also does not approve of Aedelbehrt’s lustful behaviour and self serving attitude.

On a similar vein, I’ve been working on a supplement for Dux Britanniarum centred upon the Norman conquest of Southern Italy in the 11^th century. I’m a fan of SAGA, and acquired starter armies of Byzantines and Normans. While SAGA is great fun, it is not really the most historical ruleset about. I started working on an adaptation of Dux Brit to use down at the club, and it snowballed into a bit of a monster. 

The working title for this is Terror Mundi, after the epitaph of Robert Guiscard, and Rich from TooFatLardies is going to be prettying it up and releasing the supplement as a pdf next month.

The supplement will allow the player to take the role of Norman, Byzantine, or Italo-Lombard. I’m painting up a Norman and a Byzantine force at the moment, so have posted the first few nobles. As with Dux Brit, Terror Mundi includes background generation for the nobles, so as with the Saxons, here are the first few Byzantine and Norman leaders with their potted bios. The Byzantines are from Crusader minis, and the Normans are Gripping Beast. I've really enjoyed painting these up, and even did a little bit of modification. The Norman warlord has a greenstuff scarf added to his helmet, and the Byzantine commanders have had sashes added. These were coloured according to rank, although no record exists of the exact colours. With the basing for these, I wanted to emulate the sunburnt Apulian landscape, dry but still green. 

The Byzantine commander is John the Ambitious, a 35 year old man of average build. John is a deeply devout man who loves nothing more than debating an obscure theological concept. He is a bureaucrat, faithfully and dutifully administering his district, collecting taxes and enforcing the will of the Catapan.

32 year old Marinus is one of John’s subordinate commanders. Tall and strong, Marinus is the consumate professional, fulfilling his duties for Christos and Basileus. Marinus is a veteran, having marched with the imperial armies in campaigns against Lombard, Bulgar, Turk and Saracen.

The Norman warlord is Tancred, a 30 year old of average build. Nobody dares ask Tancred where he got the scars on his face, but the men whisper that he was once a brigand. Regardless, his skill in sniffing out hidden wealth is well known, and he is known as ‘bras de fer,’ a man skilled with lance and sword. Tancred's shield is a hand painted design based on the de Hauteville arms.

Tancred’s champion is the 26 year old Ludolf, a tall and strong man with an uncanny skill when fighting in the saddle.

Finally, I recently acquired a load of sheep, rabbits, pigs, boar, and even a stag and a hind from Warbases, where I usually get all of my laser cut mdf bases. I figure i'll use these to spruce up my terrain a bit, and the sheep can also be used in SAGA and Dux Brit raids scenarios. This lot are some rabbits and some Soay sheep. They are lovely little figures and paint up a treat.

So there you have it, a bunch of Saxon, Norman and Byzantine nobles, champions and lords. There will be lots more coming in this vein. I’m working my way through basing 

Something Fresh - SAGA Vikings

Well, it's been a while between posts, so I hope you are all going very well, had a fantastic Christmas and 2014 is puttering along nicely.

The last few months have been very eventful in the world of Ben. Following my last AAR, I popped down to MOAB in south Sydney to put on a demonstration game of Chain of Command. It was a great day, and you can find out all about it over on the TooFatLardies blog here. Speaking of the Lardies, i've also written an article on using Chain of Command to game the mammoth Battle of Hannut, between the French tanks and dragoons of the Cavalry Corps and the German 3rd and 4th Panzer divisions in 1940. This appeared in the latest TooFatLardies Christmas Special, an excellent collection of thought provoking articles, scenarios, and gaming ideas which, while coming out of the Lardy stable,  easily translate into many other rulesets. The mini campaign in my article could easily be used with Bolt Action for example. You can grab it here for the very reasonable price of £6.00.

As I mentioned in some previous updates, I finished my studies in November 2013. After four years of study, it's a little surreal to wave goodbye the the world of University - at least for the time being. I had
embarked on my degree with an aim to going on to complete pro-graduate studies, however the school which I completed my 10 week internship in has changed that. It's a local junior campus of a larger college, serving over 1200 year 7 to year 10 students. The kids, staff and the executive are all fantastic, and it was a really rewarding and fun place to do my internship. Fourth term last year, I was in almost every day with casual work - very nice to be paid, even if it was a little challenging to teach mathematics, cooking, and even needlework. I've been offered, and accepted, a full year long contract to teach History and Geography for 2014. This is doubly exciting as in Australia we have a new national curriculum rolling out, with a much less insular and more global slant, and i've been able to create a major unit for year 9 covering the First and Second World Wars, and area which I find fascinating and very relevant. Consequently, i've built up a unit based not on badly out of date text books but rather loads of contemporary accounts, sources and fresh and new resources and documentaries. I've even got a film study in there, based around building historical empathy and using the superb 'Joyeux Noël.' I'm looking forward to getting a chance to try it out, and we're due to kick off around the middle of first term.

So, perhaps that goes some way to explain, if not excuse, my sabbatical from this blog. However, despite the paucity of posts, I have been painting away in my spare moments, and have finished a few projects. My plan for this year is to do shorter, but more regular updates on this blog. The occasional essay-lengt AAR will still be in there, however for the most part they'll be a bit shorter.

When I'm painting, I usually listen to either podcasts such as the excellent Meeples and Miniatures and In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, or to audiobooks. I've been listening to Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories series. If you haven't read/listened to them, they're Cornwell at his fun-if-predictable best. As a result of this, and chatting with some blokes at the local gaming group, I decided to dip my toe into Tomahawk Studio's greatly lauded SAGA ruleset. I picked up a Viking and Norman starter army, along with a set of the rules, a copy of Robert Ferguson's excellent and comprehensive Hammer and the Cross and some MDF odds and sods from War Bases.

I've always had a fascination with the Viking era, and my visit to the Historiska Museet in Stockholm did little to suffuse this, especially when parts of the collection seemed to follow me to upside-down land, what with the Sydney Maritime Museum hosting an exhibition including a reconstruction of the Gokstadt Ship. An excellent part of this exhibition concerned textiles and dying techniques, including some examples of cloth coloured with traditional methods. I leaned heavily on this, along with Jenny Dean's excellent site, when deciding on the colour schemes for high and low status warriors. I do like painting dark ages figures, as choosing colour schemes requires a mix of creativity and historical research which I really do enjoy.

So without further ado, here are some pictures of my SAGA Vikings.

First off, the warlord, a superb sculpt from the lads at Gripping Beast Towers. As I was reading Njal's Saga while painting him, I imagined him as Kári Sölmundarson, hirdmann of the Hebridean Jarl Sigmund, mercenary, avenger of Njal's hall burning, lethal warrior basically all-around viking hero. Add to that the fact he is one of the only survivors in one of the most famous of the icelandic Sagas, and I think it's very fitting that Kári leads my SAGA war band! According with a warrior of such renown, he's dressed in the best of 10th century fashion, with a rare and exquisite red dyed tunic and some fancy striped trews. His helmet and armour is highly polished, and his shield is decorated with one of the most intricate of the excellent Little Big Man Studios shield transfers, and the shattered shield of a vanquished foe lies below his feet.  Speaking of which, i've tried something different with the basing. I've gone for a cold  Northern European autumn look, with moss covered stones and fallen leaves over damp, soggy ground - think Northumbria, Scotland, the Orkneys, Ireland, the Hebrides or even Iceland.

Next up, the berserkir. These feral warriors fought sans armour and with great ferocity, feared by foe and friend alike. While their historicity is not solid, individual berserkr do appear in the sagas, and there was an excellent article in a recent issue of Medieval Warfare magazine. These guys all got striped trews, as they're high-status (if violent and insane) warriors. Shields are hand painted, and this is my first attempt at larger areas of flesh. I tried to avoid the 'skeleton' look which can be the result of my usual layering approach to painting. More layers and a more gradual colour transition than i'm used to seems to have avoided this - to my eye at least. I armed these guys with short and long handed axes, as I imagine that the battle-crazed berserkir could wield such heavy weapons with comparative ease.

These lads are the hirdmenn, plastic figures from the beasties. As with the warlord, colour selections tend towards the rarer high status dyes. A mix of axes and swords for these lads, and they're all well equipped with mail and helmet, even if the mail is not quite as shining and the helmets a little more battered than those of their fearless leader. Shield designs are LBMS transfers.

Finally, here are two units of bondir, the warrior types. This lot are less well equipped than the other warriors, no mail and helmets are rare. To counter this in the SAGA rules they usually operate in larger groups. My war band does not as yet have any thralls, levy archers of even lower status and who fight in even larger units. For the bondir I chose to use a muted palate of mostly lower status dyes, browns, yellows, muddy greens, with a few splashes of colour here and there. Shields are again from LBMS.

So, that's it for the vikings. I've got another unit of hirdmen and and have plans to grab a pack of thrall archers which will take the group up to 6 points. Incidentally, they've yet to be 'blooded', but one of the local gaming groups run a fair bit of SAGA so I plan to take them down next month and see how the rules run. Going by the way my freshly painted units usually perform, i'm not holding out high hopes.

The Norman warband are undercoated and waiting in line while I finish off what i'm currently working on, 1940 French and German troops for Chain of Command... but more on them later :)

I'll pop up another few posts in the next few days, including an update of my plans for 2014 and some pictures of my British Parachute platoon who were glimpsed in the last Chain of Command AAR.

Till then, keep painting and gaming!
Ben