Anglo-Danish warlord and huscarls

     After a rare bit of after work painting I can now introduce the longest members of the 'I'll paint that next' part of my painting desk, my Anglo-Danish warlord and two units of huscarls. These guys have been on my desk since I bought them at Salute 2012 and they have been continually pushed back by that next shiny new project, but with a game planned for tonight and my club staying at the 4 point mark for Saga for the time being, it seemed the perfect time to try out yet another faction to see if their play style suits me.

Anglo-Danish warlord Harold Half-Dane and his retinue

      My general build at the moment seems to be a couple of units of huscarls and a couple of units of warriors giving me hitting power and numbers. My next plans are to try out the archers, that are still sitting on my desk, a unit of slings, that have been there even longer, and then try for slightly bigger games in general. If I can end up with a couple of units of huscarls, 2-3 warrior units and maybe a combat levy unit and a shooting levy unit for each faction (with Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish sharing a lot of units) that will give me a lot of flexibility in the long run while I find my feet in this game.
   
      Now I need more painting time to paint some OO scale figures for the railway and the dark age archers are starting to look at me funny.

      Thanks for reading this.

Scale creep

     Scale creep, or just a variation in sizes from 28mm, is something I haven't really run into in my modelling experience so far. Every time I have built an army for any system in the past it has been either using the 'official' range of figures that go with the game or just using figures entirely from one manufacturer. Looking at modelling a Very British Civil War, however, has meant that I have been searching through ranges from companies I hadn't even heard of before and sometimes picking a single figure or two to boost an unit from a different company, so my desk at the moment has figures from ranges like North Star, Empress, Musketeer, Sloppy Jalopy, Reiver Castings, Gripping Beast, Great War, Crooked Dice etc, so this has meant I can now see the variation in size a 28mm model can have.

     

Left to right; North Star, Sloppy Jalopy, Empress, Reiver, Musketeer and Great War.

     I was planning on using the models from Reiver as the bulk of my forces as their range is absolutely amazing, even getting the figures in my hands I was really impressed by the sculpting, but size wise they are just way too small, even with green stuff underneath the model to try and give him a little more height. The Musketeer figure next to it is also a tad small, but in mixed units the result isn't that bad you would notice it, so I don't mind.
 
     What do other people think?

South African Grey Shirts

     The guys in the photo below are my South African grey shirt unit of mercenaries for my vbcw B.U.F. force. For anyone who is unaware of the fascist movement in South Africa before the start of WW2 (including me before I researched it to paint this unit), the grey shirts were the movement with the biggest member base. 

     I see this unit being multi use. They make a great militia or rifle unit for vbcw but I can also use them in any pulp hunting game that takes my fancy. There is a risk my painting desk might end up covered in either dinosaurs or mammoths before the summer is out.

     Looking at the picture, now it is up, I think they could do with a little more work but as a unit I am pretty happy with them. I really just need to sort out my photography.

Thanks for reading.

Return of the Cricketers

   My first finished model post, it's been 7 posts, but here it is. 

So first up are the South Essex Cricket Club players, club doctor and umpire. The normal 10 man unit will be able to count as riflemen and as militia depending on what I need them to be, while the umpire and doctor will probably join the command unit for their brigade (spotter and medic?).

Next up is the transport for my BUF mercenaries. They are getting grey shirts so giving the same treatment to their transport made sense. I need to find my transfers to give it BUF markings and give it a driver but other than that it will do the job perfectly.

Last up are my Killa Kanz. I still want to use these guys to try out weather powders but as there is a very real risk I will ruin them doing it I thought I would get these photos up first. Maybe do a before and after post?

Over all I am pleased with the amount I managed to get finished this weekend and I am especially pleased with the better picture quality my new camera is achieving. 

Thanks for reading, hopefully I will have some more posts fairly shortly.

Painting desk 2

     After spending ages taking pictures of the models on my painting desk and then writing a blog about them, to get this whole blog writing thing going, I can now happily report that almost a week later those models are sitting on my desk in much the same condition as the blog last week shows them.
      However, I do have something to show for my weekend's painting efforts;

 First up are the models I bought on Sunday at broadside the great war miniatures British command and the traffic warden and St. John's ambulance medic pack from crooked dice, the figures from both will be spread between the command units of both Albertine and BUF factions. Also shown are the Mutton Chops figures to finish off my South African riflemen unit. 

Next up are some toys I bought on ebay. I'm not sure how I am going to split these up yet but I am really looking forward to painting them up for my vbcw armies.

One of these will be given to the South African rifles as their transport, as they will be used in games other than just vbcw.

Last up are the cause of my interest in vbcw, the Sloppy Jalopy cricketers. I know these guys are doing the rounds of the internet at the moment, everyone seems to own and pack, so hopefully we will see more figures like these in the future. Mine are on the verge of being finished, and I will do a proper blog on them then, but I am pleased with how they are looking now. 

Until next time, thanks for reading this

Club night game

      After running into Alan at Broadside on Sunday and having a chat about our experiences with Saga, mostly being turned into pin cushions by our local Welsh player, we both agreed to have a Viking on Viking game so we could both give our berserker's a try. Here is how it went:

     As we are both still learning how to play (as shown by how often the rulebook will make a starring role in the pictures), we both decided to use exactly the same forces. Warlord, a combined unit of 8 huscarls, a unit of warriors and a unit of berserker's.
     I set up with my warriors in the centre, with my berserker's on their right pointed at his warriors, and my warlord and huscarls on the left aiming at their mirror unit. Alan set up with his line based around his huscarls, berserker's reinforcing his huscarls and his warriors just trying to draw attention, a job they did remarkably well.

The first combat of the game was Alan's berserker's charging my huscarls, but a mix of having fatigued themselves double moving and charging a unit with high armour and good attacks meant his men bounced off my shield wall losing a man to my untouched unit.

On my turn I took the initiative and charged my huscarls and warlord into their mirror, losing 4 men to his 5 loses. Then using my battle board ability, Thor, I made us fight out a second round of combat straight away, with both of us losing another man each.

After an amazingly unsuccessful charge by my berserker's into his warriors, with both of us losing 3 men and me running away, I spent the rest of the game hiding my last berserker so I could keep his Saga dice coming in.

 Although I forgot to get a photo of the end of the game, this last photo pretty much shows you how it ended. The last few remnants of our units wiped each other out, mostly as we just started throwing everything at each other's warlords. The game ended with a victory to Alan, I had my warlord left compared to his Warlord and a single berserker.

The biggest lessons I learned from this game;

1. I still need to get my archers painted up.
2. I'm not use berserker's are worth fielding, at least in small games like this.
3. I need to focus on a single unit at a time and not spread attacks around too much.
4. Get better photos.

Until next time, thanks for reading this.

Broadside 2014

    I was at Broadside 2014 on Sunday and I got a few photos that I thought might be interesting for anyone who didn't get a chance to go:

The hall in full swing

Dead man's hand

Crush the Kaiser

The taking of Akaba

Dead Man's Hand

Bushido

      The show had a decent mix of big tables playing fairly major battles down to tiny skirmish games on boards that might only be a foot square. There was also a big range in what eras and genres were being played with everything from ACW naval ironclads, space battles, fantasy and historical land battles. Other than the hall being too hot, I would say it was a really good show.

What's on the painting desk?

      I was having a think last night on how best to introduce my armies and collections that are already painted and much as I want to just throw everything at this blog and say "here you go", I think it would just be overwhelming. So instead, I plan to show you what is sitting on my painting desk now, then as units get finished I will do a blog on the army it is part of.
   
      So first up are my Viking/Anglo-Saxon archers for my Saga warbands. Although I bought the Gripping Beast Viking archers I will use them for either warband to start with. All of my games of Saga so far have been small, 4 point games against Welsh warbands, and I have finally learned the 'take some missile troops lesson'.

       Next up is a multiple use unit. So far it is a mix of North Star's British North African Riflemen, their Hunters and Explorers and, still coming in the post, the Sidney Cohen and Geor from Empress Mutton Chops range to make it a nice 10 man unit. I plan to use them in two different games, firstly, dinosaur/prehistoric hunting games and, secondly, as a mercenary unit for BUF faction in a VBCW. I'll do the full unit background as soon as they are painted and introduce them properly.

      Last are a couple of models that aren't part of a planned army. I bought these Killa Kans with my brother as part of a modelling/painting project. These we just models we had talked about plans for, for ages and we figured now was the time to go for it. I plan to practise weathering powders on them. Lets see how that goes. . .

       Now to get on with some painting.

Starting with a Very British Civil War

     As my local club has the simple new game rule of 'we will play anything as long as the figures are supplied', I am working on getting two small factions up for a Very British Civil War. I wanted one of the factions to either be Edwardian royalists or Albertines while the other made sense being Reactionaries or People's armies for a proper contrast in backgrounds.

     I have settled on an Albertine force called the 'South Essex's Own Volunteers', and an as yet un-named BUF party force.

   

     While I wait for the models to arrive I'll leave you with a look at both side's flags

Enjoy

Here goes nothing

Hello to anyone that has stumbled onto this blog.

     I have been a war-gamer and modeller for 12 years since early 2002. I think my introduction to war-gaming followed a fairly standard route, my brother and his friends got into 40k and there isn't a sibling out there that could ever let another have an interest to themselves. I have since played 40k and necromunda on and off for about 10 years with a little gaming break while I was at university and in the last 3 years I have started getting really interested in other companies games, resulting in me joining a war-gaming club last year and heading down to my local gaming centre when ever I get the spare time.

    This blog isn't going to be overly focused on anyone game for too long. I am really bad for being a magpie when it comes to games and periods in history, but I am hoping it will be entertaining none-the-less. I plan to document the games I play, the figures I paint and then anything else I can think of doing.

     I hope you find this blog entertaining.

Mike