Pigs!

It's been very quiet around here lately due to several factors including enjoying the very nice Swedish summer but mainly because I've prioritized painting over blogging. Here are the first results of these painting sessions – some prime Dark Age bacon, with a serious attitude!

These are iron age pigs, closely resembling wild boars (they even have the imposing tusks).

Once more these are from the boys at Gripping Beast, my regular suppliers of Dark Age goodies.

With these finished I should have plenty of choice of what livestock to steal when raiding.

Thanks for reading! Coming up are some more landsknechts/reisläufers.

Cattle and Cane

Taking a short break from my Italian Wars French (don't worry, I'll get back to them soon) with a quick Dark Ages diversion: The next game in our Dux Britanniarum campaign will be a cattle raid and for this we naturally needed some cattle – and sheep too it seems. I've had these Gripping Beast models in the lead pile for a while and now was the perfect time to finally paint them up.

This was a quick job, mostly using drybrushing and washes and for such limited amount of work they turned out pretty good I think. I have no idea if the colours are correct though, but they look fine to my untrained eyes. The sculpts are perhaps a bit rough but perfectly serviceable.

I must apologize for the bad pictures. Lately I've had some real trouble taking good pictures. They just look washed out with most of the the highlights killed, and I can't quite figure out why. I think I need to experiment some more with my setup.

Anyway, speaking of our Dux Brit campaign, I have started on an AAR from our second game (we have played three so far) but work, family obligations and computer trouble have kept me from working on it. Hopefully I'll get some time during this coming week to finish the report.

Thanks for looking! Have a great week everyone!

Italian Wars French 1 – Reisläufers 1

Finally I have some new painted miniatures to show you. These are the first 4 bases of the first pike unit of Swiss mercenaries (Reisläufers) for my French army for the Great Italians Wars. To begin with, there will be two units of Swiss pikemen, each consisting of 6 bases – 3 standing and 3 advancing. The plan is to eventually bring them up to 9 bases each with an extra 3 bases of attacking pikemen in the front rows.

The miniatures are from Pro Gloria and very nice they are too. They required very little in the way of cleaning up, which is always a big plus in my book.

In a stroke of genius (ha!) I have decided to do the units as combined Reisläufer/Landsknechts units, which means they won't be 100% correct for either faction but I'd like to keep all my options open. In line with this, the flags, when I get to them, will be removable.

The Italian Wars project have changed a bit since I talked about it last time. Originally my plan was to make a couple of French units to fight against Dalauppror's splendid Imperial Landsknechts/German mercenaries. However, since our good friend Søren, of Black Powder Games, joined us as the Imperial player the plan changed – and the project grew. After some discussion we decided to move to a slightly later period instead of the early wars, as we were keen to paint up some lovely colourful landsknechts and gendarmes in full regalia. There's really nothing quite like the spectacle of two armies for the Italian Wars on the tabletop. So instead of Fornovo, our focus will now be on the period of the battle of Pavia, ie the 1520s.

This had the added bonus of us being able to use the army lists straight out of the Pike&Shotte rules, which would give us a rough guide to our forces – always a welcome thing when you start up a new period.

My plan is still to paint up a core starter-force to get some games going, and then add to it when I have the time and inspiration. By now, I probably hade enough miniatures in the lead mountain to at least double the number of units, but first things first. If it's one thing I have learned, it's that you should start small and then add to it, rather than try to paint too much from the start. I have the "boxes of shame" (ie half-finished projects) to prove it ...

The modest starter army will consist of:
2 units of Swiss pikemen, 6 bases each
2 units of gendarmes, 3 bases each
1 medium artillery, 1 base (I might do another base of artillery if I have the time)
2–3 command bases

As you can see there are a fair number of miniatures left to paint. It's always easier to get painting when you're working to a set deadline, so Sören and I have schedueled a first game in late August. Hopefully we'll both be ready by then!

Back to the Reisläufers then. These models actually proved a bit of a challenge to paint, for several reasons. The first was it always takes me a couple of miniatures in a new army and period to get a "feel" for them, add to this models from a new manufacturer that you also have to get a "feel" for, and it was a bit of trial and error before I got the colours and details right.

Second, I made the mistake of trying to paint too big a batch at the same time. I find 6–8 is about the sweet spot for me personally, but as I knew I had quite a few of these buggers to paint up I tried to push myself and do double this amount, This proved a bit too much, at least for the level of finish I went for here, and from now on I think 10–12 will be my absolute limit in terms of what I'm comfortable with (again depending on the level of finish) and I will do the rest of the pikemen in batches of 8 (or 2 bases).

Third, I was going for a very bright finish on these models, and therefore I wanted to avoid using my regular technique that's largely built on washes. In my experience, washes can dirty up the models and the end-result can feel a little grubby. This looks great on eg Dark Ages miniatures, but this time I wanted something different. Instead I tried the Foundry three-step method. Now, I'm normally using a lot of Foundry colours as I like the triad system although I don't use it as intended. Instead I add washes and mix the shades to get the results I'm after. This time I tried the system straight out of the bottle, so to speak, and wasn't very happy with the result. The main problem was a lack of contrast, especially in the darkest recesses. So I had to go back and add washes to get the contrast I wanted. I think the root of the problem might be that I'm using brown undercoat instead of black and this obviously makes it impossible to blackline the different areas and get a good definition. Well, whatever it was that caused the problem – no time saved was saved by using the three-step method so lesson learned.

Well, as I said, a bit of trial and error, and hopefully the rest of them will prove easier to finish.

Thanks for reading – have a great week everyone!

Liebster Blog Award 2014, 100+ followers, 25 000+ hits

There certainly seems to be no shortage of things to celebrate lately as the blog has passed 100 followers and 25 000 hits a while back. I have lost track of all you new followers so I just want to take the opportunity to thank all who have signed up – old ones as well as new ones! 
 

Over the last couple of weeks or so, I've also received no less than five nominations for a Liebster Award. I'd like to offer a heartfelt thanks to CLAM (who was the first one I believe) from Clamshells&Seahorses, Rodger from Rebel Barracks,  Søren from Black Powder Games, Mattias from Northern Wargaming and Christopher from Bunker Hill. They all have excellent, excellent blogs of their own so if you haven't checked them out already I urge you to do this right now.

I'm greatly honored and humbled by all this attention, so thank you guys!

Now, originally there were quite a lot of rules concerning this Liebster Award thingy – questions to be answered, other blogs to be nominated and whatnot – but as time went on, people started to ignore most of them so I'll do this my own way.

First off, the questions and answers. Originally, there were 11 questions to answer and then you had to write 11 new ones yourself but I'm a lazy bastard so I've just picked a few I thought would be interesting (?) for most of you.

How did you first get into the miniature/war-gaming hobby?
I got into the hobby through fantasy roleplaying in the mid 80s. Although I was aware of model soldiers before (mainly thanks to the old Prince August moulds you could cast yourself) I didn't know you could actually play games with them.

Why did you start blogging?
Primarily it was to track my projects and by showing them to others a way to inspire myself to actually finish the projects I had started. In 2011 had a period of waning inspiration and too many projects half-completed, so I wanted to force myself to finish them. Perhaps subconsciously I was also looking to get into contact with some local gamers, as I was the only one in my then-current group of friends who was into the hobby part of the hobby (that is, the painting and modeling).

Would you say you are more a collector, painter or gamer and why?
I guess I'm a little bit of everything, but I see myself as more of a gamer. Although looking at the time spent on the different activities I'm definitely a painter, and looking at the money spent (and asking my fiancee!) I'm most definitely a collector – or maybe more of a hoarder ...

Gripping Beast Saxon commanders.

Could you limit your gaming and collection to one period and one size? If so, what?

No, I probably couldn't as there are far too many interesting periods and conflicts to game. However, if for some reason I had to limit myself I would unsurprisingly choose the so called Dark Ages in 28 mm, as this is my absolute favourite period and scale.

If you could only buy from one miniature company from now on, which one would it be?
Well, looking at the answer above it would have to Gripping Beast as they have by far the most diverse range for my period of choice.

Who is your all time favourite miniatures producing company?
There's obviously some great companies out there, producing some truly excellent miniatures for all imaginable (and unimaginable) periods and scales – the afore mentioned Gripping Beast, Perry Miniatures and Pro Gloria to name but a few. But for sheer personality, whimsical charm and well yes, nostalgia, the mid to late 80s Citadel will always have a special place in my heart. Comparing those fantastic old models with the technically superior, but utterly overworked and devoid of any trace of personality, crap Games Workshop is peddling today makes me so so sad.

Do you read Battle Reports and what makes them inviting to read?

I do sometimes, especially if it's a game or a period I'm interested in. I'm looking for a combination of clear graphics, pretty pictures and a well written text. The text should preferably be short and to the point, but not dry. I don't want a detailed report of every turn but rather a summary of the action, and some key event highlighted in more detail. If it's a system I'm not familiar with I'd also like to know how the rules affected what happened on the table, while if it's a game I'm familiar with the text should be more of a summary. Finally, there should be a paragraph or two discussing what happened in the game, the reasoning behind the tactics and decisions made and also some thoughts on the rules and scenario. Quite a lot to live up to and the reason I've not posted more AARs on this blog!

Right, that's the Q&A out of the way. On to my personal nominations. Well, most of my favourite blogs have already received a nomination, but apart from those linked above, I'd like to mention a few that I find really inspiring and a great read:

A Light in the Dark
Lots of pictures of impressive 10 mm Dark Ages armies with some excellent conversions to boot.

Realm of Chaos 80s
Great blog with some serious 80s nostalgia stuff.

Camisado
This blog is mainly about the early 16th century, with a focus on the Italian Wars. Lots of lovely landsknechts, reislaufers and gendarmes and a great inspiration for my own project for this period.

Well, that's all for now. Thank you again to all readers, followers and those of you who take the time to comment – it wouldn't be as fun without you!

PS: I had planned to do a prize draw to celebrate all this, but it will have to wait a while as Dalauppror just launched his giveaway in celebration of achieving an impressive 400 followers and 300 000 hits – certainly numbers to be inspired by! There are some very nice stuff up for grabs, so pop on over to his blog and sign up before it's too late.

The Fate of Alt Clut – Part 1: Introduction

After lots of talking – and lots of painting and terrain building on my part – we finally kicked off our new Dux Britanniarum campaign last Monday.

I choose to base the campaign in Alt Clut, the northernmost kingdom of the Britons. Here they are trapped between the raiding Picts in the north, primarily from the Pictish kingdom of Fib, and the aggressively expanding Angles in the east, primarily raiding from the former British kingdom of Bernaccia.

As you can see, this is a three faction campaign and we will use the simple rules from the Raiders book to determine who has the initiative in each month, and gets first say as to what they want to do. This will be a pretty loose campaign, with whoever showing up commanding one of the forces – but in theory I suspect it will just be Michael/Dalauppror and me for the most part.

As I'm keen to try out all the factions (this being is our first campaign in Dux Britanniarum proper, rather than some sort of tweaking for another period) we'll be alternating between them, so that no one will play eg the Picts for the whole campaign.

To begin with, we plan to do one full campaign year and then we'll see about continuing. Alt Clut is a one-province kingdom, which means the total campaign shouldn't last too long. However, three forces still means quite a lot of games: 8 raiding months per year, with a possible 2 games per month makes it a maximum of 16 games for the year. Though in practice I think it'll be much fewer than that.

For the first game, rather than roll for initiative I simply decided that the Picts had the initiative and would raid an Angle village, as we were eager to test out the new Raiders' rules.

Dalauppror set up the table in his usual excellent way and away we went. We had another guy from the club, Jesper, joining us and he got to command the Picts while Dalauppror took the Angles and I acted as game master/referee. I got so caught up in the game, I forgot to take pictures, but luckily Dalauppror managed some snaps so a big thank you to him for letting me use these in this post!

The Picts had a whole four rounds headstart, but some not too great rolls for movement meant they had just reached the outskirts of the village before the Angles turned up and the fighting began.

The table at the start of the game: the Picts have arrived from the top-most edge
and made their way to the village, while the Angles have just arrived,
ready to drive the raiders away.

A group of Picts managed to enter one building and quickly found all the loot they wanted (the raider's special rules for looting paid off nicely), while their comrades outside managed to hold their ground against the on-coming Angles.

The Picts are getting ready to plunder the barn,
while the Angles are getting ready to attack the intruders.

The Angle's elites arrive, to try to even out the odds a bit.

The Picts proved to be tough fighters and drove some of the Angles off, much thanks to some well-placed flank charges (nice use of Carpe Diem cards). However, they were now pretty badly beaten up and hard pressed from the Angles who had managed to reform their forces before it was too late.

The battle seesawing: while the Angle's elites press forward
to the left in the picture, the Picts have pushed back the other
Angels (to the right) and set them up for a charge by the cavalry.

We had to call the game off early due to running out of time and looking at the situation, we decided the Picts dropped the loot and made a hasty retreat while the Angles stood their ground not really being in any shape to pursue them. Counting up the casualties, we were a little surprised to see the Picts coming out on top with just 6 men lost while the Angles had lost a total of 13 men. A slight victory for the raiders then.

The Picts would replace their casualties and be ready to raid in the next month (April). The Angles in turn, would need to 2 months before they were up to full strength (May). As a result we decided that the Angles would not raid this month and as the Britons could not do anything (they can only initiate actions when they have lost lands) this meant the first month/round of the campaign was over.

In the next round the Angles will again not raid, preferring to wait until all their losses are replaced, and the Picts will therefore be free to act however they want. Rather than raid the now weakened Angles, we thought it would be more fun to pit them against the Britons. So the next game will be Picts against Britons.

It was great to finally start up the campaign, and to return to Dux Britanniarum – it's still by far my favourite game and campaign system, even though it's not without its faults (mainly in the presentation/text).

It's been a while since we last played the game, and I'm not sure Jesper had actually played it before, so we were a bit rusty. We spent some time flicking through the rules (which, let's face it, could be better presented and explained) which was only expected. We also made a couple of mistakes, but nothing too game changing I think. Overall, a great start to the campaign and I'm really looking forward to continuing.

Thanks for reading – have a nice weekend everyone!

Updated Casualty Markers

I've used my casualty markers from a couple of years back in a fair number of games now, but always found them a bit fiddly. When Warbases came out with their clever model I bought a bunch of them, with the plan to rebase the old casaulty miniatures on these. Well, more than a year later I've finally gotten around to it.

The old bases. Perfectly serviceable, but fiddly to use due to that tiny micro dice you first have to pick up, then find the right number on and then put back in the tiny hole.

And the new.

These are much easier to use and read in the heat of battle. An added bonus is that these go all the way up to 12 (even more than Spinal Tap!), whereas the old ones obviously only goes up to 6.

I took the time to add another highlight or two (not that it shows in these pictures though) when I already had them on the workbench. They were originally painted very quickly, and it felt nice to bring their standard up a notch or two.

Right, that's all the dark ages stuff for now. It's high time I turn my full attention to the codpieces, puffed sleeves and outrageous slashes of the Italian Wars.

Thanks for looking, have a great week everyone!

Medieval Civilians

One thing I really like about my friend Dalauppror's lovely terrain set-ups, is his use of extras such as civilians. It really gives life to the scenes on the tabletop and helps transform the game into an exciting story.

I've always wanted to do something like this for my own games and now, with my dark age village finished, I've finally taken the time to actually do it.

The miniatures are from Black Tree Design's Feudal Range and perhaps more suited to the proper medieval period, rather than the dark ages, but why be picky?

Fifty shades of ... brown.

They will make their first appearance on the tabletop this coming Monday as villagers, in the first game of our new Dux Britanniarum campaign. More about this later.

Thanks for looking, have a great weekend everyone!

Short Report from Salute 2014

A much belated report from that most spectacular gathering of wargamers and vendors a few weeks back, known as Salute. This was my first time attending and it was a great experience.

I arrived at the Excel Center at around nine o'clock and after some initial confusion I found my place in the already impressive queue in a separate hangar. The queue started to fill up even faster after I've arrived, and soon it stretched a good long way behind me.

After queing for little over an hour – the time made shorter by reading the show programme and studying the freebie minature – the doors opened and the crowd started to fill into the hall of the show.

Now, I had made some preparations and compiled a list of which vendors to see and what to pick up at their stalls – otherwise I feared I would just wander around in amazement and miss all the good bits, or go absolutely bonkers and just buy every cool new thing I saw. So with the list in hand I started to tick off the places to visit. First off was Foundry, due to the simple fact that they were pretty much the first thing that I saw when entering the show. After a quick browse through their racks of miniatures I picked up a fair number of blisters and some paints for my Italian Wars project.

After this first stop I just wandered along the aisles, trying to take it all in, checking my list then and now and making the occasional stop when something caught my eye.

After a while I remembered to take a look at the games being played, and also to take some pictures of them.

A couple of more shopping stops – picking up some Pro Gloria landsknechts from Empress, and some newly released crusaders and accompanying transfer sheets from Gripping Beast, as well as my pre-order of Dux Britanniarum The Raiders from Too Fat Lardies and a pre-show order for a resin log fort I had made from Scheltrum miniatures – and it was already time for a quick lunch before meeting up with fellow club member Søren of the excellent blog Black Powder Wargames. We compared loot, chatted about the show and made another round through the hall together. We also made a brief stop at the bloggers meet up, were I said a quick hello to a couple of nice people from the blogger community. Then we rushed on for a quick chat with Barry from Warfare Miniatures and a look at the newly released Swedes for the Great Northern War. This was just one of the many projects I was tempted to jump into during the show – with so much excellent stuff on display I really had to restrain myself from buying into any new periods.

Instead I made another stop at Foundry, picking up even more stuff for the Italian Wars. And after a while I was back at their stall once again – "got to have some more artillery".

The show was drawing to a close, the crowds had thinned and my feet hurt so after a quick cup of coffee and another round, were I picked up some bits and pieces to complete the haul, I left the Excel Center and my first Salute with my wallet a little lighter and my backback a whole lot heavier.

Now for the rest of the photos. As most bloggers have already posted their reports, I think you've seen most of the great tables before, so instead this is just a random mix of stuff that caught my eye. Unfortunately the lightning wasn't very good in the hall, so some of the pictures came out a bit dark and blurred. I've tried to rectify this in Photoshop and hopefully it isn't too bad.

Wargames Illustrated had a very impressive display table of The Battle of Arklow during the Irish Rebellion in 1798.

Nice water effect. I'm a sucker for those.

Demo game of Chain of Command just about to start. A very nice table indeed.

A selection of models for World of Twilight. I've been interested in this game and it's pretty unique take on fantasy since it was released a couple of years back. I have a couple of starter forces for it (sadly still unpainted), but I've never gotten around to actually playing it. In a moment of weakness I also chipped in on the Kickstarter that ran last month ...

Lovely demo table for World of Twilight. There's something about the look of both the miniatures and the terrain that's very intriguing and original.

4Ground renaissance/fantasy town. The look reminds me of the old Warhammer look from the 80s, particulary the roleplaying version. A nice bit of nostalgia!

Gripping Beast's impressive display table for the upcoming crusaders version of the Saga rules.

Lots of nice details.

Even more details behind the walls.

A very cool game of the battle of Pelennor Fields (from Lord of Rings) in 75 mm scale. Huge table, huge miniatures.

A big troll and an even bigger siege tower.

The stunning Sword Beach D-day landing table. The picture can not in any way convey how big this table was. Simply amazing.

Lots to look at.

Some very nice water effects here too.

Demo table for the game Vahalla. I'm really fond of these small tables – this one was simple but very nice nonetheless. Nice to see some dark age stuff as well, there were a bit of lack of this in my opinion.

Another impressive table: Caesar's invasion of Britain. Some very nice ships.

A closer look at one of the ships (and some hands).

Finally some more small tables. This time for the excellent WW2 game Crossfire.

It's been a few years since I've played Crossfire but these demo games really made me want to pick it up again.

Looking at photos published on other blogs, there are still a lot of things I somehow managed to miss – even after having made numerous rounds of the show – and I just realized I completely forgot to check out the painting competition. Well, I guess that just goes to show how big Salute is ...

Thanks for looking!

Loot Markers

A slight change of plans this week as I've had some trouble transfering my pictures from Salute from my mobile phone to my computer. This means the planned report from the show will have to wait a couple of more days.

In the meantime, here are some quick loot markers I made for use in primarily Dux Britanniarum, but they'll probably work in other games too. They're just a nice way of showing which groups are carrying the spoils of war.

The boxes, sacks, barrells etc are from a couple of different manufacturers – mainly Gripping Beast, Ainsty Castings and Antenociti's Workshop if I remember correctly.

Some picts surveying the goodies.

Thanks for looking, have a great week everyone!