The Deluge - C17th Test Units

   I think I mentioned after Salute this year, that I came away not having spent much money at all. The one thing that did really tempt me was a game by a Polish games designer called By Fire and Sword, which had just released it's 2rnd edition. The set of rules focussed on the wars the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth found itself in during the 1600's, with various invasions by the Ottoman's and a couple by either the Swedish or the Holy Roman Empire. I managed to not buy the starter set but spent the next couple of weeks trying to decide if I regretted that choice or not.

   At the same time, someone on Bluesky was trying to encourage me to start a 10mm project as they have been saying its like 15mm, which I think look great on the table, but better and cheaper. I didn't want to double (or triple) up on any era, so I wasn't going to jump into any project. Then it dawned on me that I was interested in a new era and I had a scale I wanted to try, why didn't I dip my toes to test the theory?

   I plan to use Pikeman's Lament to play these - although, I'm keeping the basing vague enough that other rules can take over in the future - with two bases of any model being a unit*. I had looked at copying the By Fire and Sword starter set with The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth on one side and the Ottomans on the other, but realised if I looked at the eastern side of their realm about 20 years earlier I could do a cheaper intro game against the Swedish instead and, if I enjoyed the scale, I could work up to the Ottomans. The back of the book has units for such an engagement, so I'm copying that for my initial game - which is only 11 units between the two sides, still a lot of figures but more manageable than the Ottoman units.

*making half strength units easier to track and set up easier

   I bought a few test packs just to see if I enjoyed the painting side before I bought whole armies and this post is the first of those units - the Polish Winged Hussars and some Swedish Musketeers. 

The first unit of Polish Winged Lancers has come up a treat if I say so myself. They need to have some grass of some sort to break their bases up but otherwise, I'm really pleased with them

I then decided to test out infantry. The exact lists I want to try need 2 units of Commanded Shot - which are half sized musket units - but I wanted to see how the full sized units would look too, so I used a single pack to do a unit of each.

The Commanded Shot unit below

The regular unit of Musketeers

I'm working my way through some more Polish Winged Hussars as I type, but I am now fairly confident this project is doable. The pennants on the Hussar's lances might break me though.

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Fjord Serpents - Karvi Longship 2

  I'm still trying to focus on getting on with a few key projects* that I want to be able to put on the table as soon as gaming becomes a bit easier again, and Fjord Serpents is pretty high on that list. The aim is still to get a single starter box done asap with the second to follow once a test game has been played.

*he says fully knowing what the next post will be

   This is the 3rd ship I've finished and is the second Karvi, which is the smaller of the two classes in the box. It holds 4 bases of infantry and I decided to give it a sail to link it to the Snekkja I finished last week.

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Fjord Serpents - Snekkja Longship

   I came away from Salute this year after spending less than £20 on myself*, and that was only on dice**, a single pot of paint and some questionable gnomes, mostly because as I walked around the show looking at the games, I realised just how many rulesets/collections I've not even put on the table yet and this rather killed my appetite to buy more things. Recently, I've been trying to focus on getting some of the unfinished and unused armies ready for the table top and had a few quick wins - see my 2mm projects, however, my Fjord Serpents project isn't going to be quick, so I need to make sure I am making some movement on it.

*lets not ask about the mug full of dice my 4 year old was desperate for

**because everyone always needs new dice

   This is the larger of the two ship types in the main boxset - the Snekkja. It carries 6 bases of troops compared to the Karvi's 4, and with the main box having two leader models I am giving them to the Snekkjas.

   I've painted the ship and crew in a similar way to the last ship, changing the exact paints used on the crew as I didn't write them down and I plan to mix bases up a bit more for variety anyway. Plus I did the same sail pattern that I have on my 28mm ship from Adrian's Walls.

   Ideally, I need to get two more ships finished so I can test the rules out and then start on the last 4. This is very much a game I am aiming to get done, so that when Wayland Games reopens, I can play it there.

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Fjord Serpents - Karvi

   As a general rule I'm avoiding buying games on Kickstarter* as for the price a lot of them go for makes buying them blind and without knowing it is definitely being posted to you just seems too big a risk. However, when I saw the Fjord Serpents game on Kickstarter a few years back, I was in before I'd even thought about it. This became one of those Kickstarters that I was fairly sure wasn't going to deliver once the manufacturer they had lined up couldn't meant the quality they wanted for the price and they had to start looking elsewhere. I'm fairly sure the ships and figures were supposed to be plastic with resin hulls but I might be wrong, while what we got were resin hulls with 3d printed parts and crew.

*which means I've missed some amazing games that then haven't gone to retail

   For me the Dark Ages, or Early Medieval period as it should now be called, is just the most fascinating part of history and something I am always drawn back to, and a Viking longship game just had to be bought.

   Then when the backer kit came out and the rules were made a bit more open, it became fairly obvious that a "standard" game would be about 3 to 4 ships, I looked to add another pair so I can have two fleets of 3, before realising that those two ships cost more than just buying a second starter set - with the only loss by doing this of not having a the varied prows that come in the single ship sets.

   It's the crew that have completely blown my mind. As the warfare is basically land warfare but on water, with the crew doing the fighting in shieldwalls and not the ships (like in Napoleonic naval warfare for example), I knew I'd be painting some, but each box comes with 322 figures (on stands of 3-4), this might take some time. I've decided to give the crew more of a gist of a paint job rather than spending loads of time, I've based in brown, highlighted in brown then done quick layers in a limited palette with the idea being they look about right as long as you don't look too closely. This is going to be a long project.

   This test ship is a Karvi, the smallest war ship in the game, which has 32 crew. I've gone for the plain red sail you see in a lot of art online, but I plan to vary sails in the future.

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