Liebster Blog Award

My good gaming chum Dalauppror very kindly gave me the "Liebster Blog Award" for which I feel very honoured and humbled. This is his motivation:

"For having put up with all my different gaming project the last time, my quite newly found gaming friend Jonas need´s a puch for his excellent blog A Conflict of Interests, a blog with too? many inspirational pictures and posts."

Thanks mate for your kind words! It's certainly a pleasure "putting up" with all your projects. :)

I've seen the award on various blogs over the last week or so, and it's a very nice way to bring attention to the less known bloggers out there. The rules for the award are simple enough:

• "Copy and paste" the award on your blog, and talk about it a bit.
• Select for the award your five favourite blogs with less than 200 followers, leaving a comment on one of their post to notify them that they have won the award. You need also to list them in your own blog.
• Enjoy the moment, knowing that you have just made someone's day. 
• Of course, there is no obligation to pass the award, but it is a good deed really.

Now on to my five selected blogs. It was pretty hard to single out only five, but the ones I choose are great blogs, very inspirational and could to with some more followers. Here goes:

Merseybooks
Dan Mersey, author of several books and games about the Age of Arthur/Dark Ages as well as other periods own blog. I really like Dux Bellorum and I'm looking forward to his new game, A Lion Rampant. Very interesting reading.

Nowhere to Lead Soldiers
Lovely painted models from Ni. Tchirititch from Canada. Check out those shields!

Metal Mountain
More lovely painted goodies. This time from Olddorg, based in England. I particulary like the Claymore Castings miniatures painted for the battle of Otterburn 1388.

The English Civil War in 6 mm
Pretty much does what it says on the tin. My own adventures in 6 mm have ground to a halt, but seeing all Lee's great looking units makes me want to pick up the tiny troopers once again.

Wargamer Blue
Lots of inspiring projects from Beccas "down under".

Now off you go and read – and follow! – the above blogs (if you aren't already that is).

For those of you still here, I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome my new followers: StugG, rousell68, sgt.steiner and Jehan. Thank you very much for joining me, and I hope you will enjoy the blog!

Dux Viking Age AARs

As I'm sure many of you are aware, Dalauppror and I have been playing a mini campaign in the Viking Age using the excellent Dux Britanniarum from Too Fat Lardies. The original game pits the invading Saxons against the defending (Romano-)British, but in our campaign we just swapped them for Vikings, commanded by Dalauppror, and Anglo-Saxons, commanded by me, respectively.

Second game: The Vikings, set on plundering the Saxon village,
are repelled by the Saxon Lord and his elite thegns.

The changes to the rules were kept to a minimum – in fact we only changed one thing: In battles, but not in raids, the Vikings were allowed to form a shieldwall. Of course, we could have spent some time to develop new rules for berserkers and what not, and make period flavoured Fate cards etc, but I think the game worked fine more or less out of the box. Also, our relaxed approach allowed us to get gaming straight away, with minimal hassle, which is always a good thing in my book.

Third game: The Saxon archers keep watch in the old Roman fortress,
as the great fyrd is standing by ready to crush any Vikings who dare show themselves.

Anyway, I won't post any lengthy AARs here, as Michael has already done such a smashing job over on his blog. (Even though the reports are to be regarded as Viking propaganda!) Instead, I wanted to collect the direct links to all the different AARs in one place for easier reference for myself in the future:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Fourth game: The brave greater fyrd make a um ... "retreat" back into the fortress
as the Viking horde tries in vain to capture any of the Saxon nobles.

Oh, and if I were you, I'd keep my eye out for the upcoming Too Fat Lardies' Christmas Special ...

Vikings WIP

These past weeks have been very busy with "real life" issues as the end of my paternity leave looms closer and I'm getting ready to go back to work (I still have all of December off as well though). As a result I haven't managed to take some pictures of the finished Wild West posses. What hobby time I've managed to scrape together have been spent painting some reinforcements for my Viking warband for Saga to bring the total points up to six. As I haven't had any luck with the tricky Anglo-Saxons in the league I'm playing in (four straight losses and a place firmly at the bottom of the list), for my last couple of matches I have decided to try the more straightforward Vikings.

Here are some WIP shots of the two new units: one unit of Hearthguards and one unit of Warriors. As usual – click for bigger pictures. A word of warning though: They are even more speed-painted than usual, and so look quite sloppy up close. 

Hirdmen/Hearthguards

Bondi/Warriors

Bondi/Warriors

The Hearthguards are Crusader Miniatures, and the Warriors are from Artizan Designs.

I'm working on the shields right now, and then it's the usual last steps before the models are completely done: varnishing and some tufts etc for the bases. As I want to get back to painting the Welsh I'm quite keen to get these vikings finished as soon as possible .

Before I leave you this time, please let me welcome my new followers: Barks, Captain Richard's miniature Civil War and EinarOlafson.

Many thanks for joining up, and I hope you'll enjoy reading about my various projects.