GB Plastic Stuff

Eight various Vikings and Saxons, plus nine generic shooty persons, all from Gripping Beast, and acquired quite some time ago. They were speed-painted, and I think the finish is too glossy again, but they fit in style with the other thirty or so GB guys already painted.

Complete Vikings

There was a WIP post of this twelve Viking raiders - now they are complete with basing. Pretty standard methods were used, and while GB plastics get some bad rep because of the badly modelled joints (where the plastic parts are glued together), they are very simple to paint. 

They are probably even better to be someone's very first figure than a handful of 1/72 plastics, if a beginner does not mind the higher price.

The Saxons and Vikings converge for a photo.

GB Viking Warlord (from the plastic Hirdmen set)

Here we have this 28mm plastic figure, all suited up. He is made from the parts of the command sprue of the GB plastic Hirdmen box. The other figure from the sprue is the guy with the horn from the previous post.

Fifty Shades of Quick

Another four fierce fighters are finished. These are from the ebay loot I made in December. There are still more than twenty figures just with an undercoat and some work on the chainmail and weapons. Figured I'd rather double drybrush and shade the metal parts first, to not interfere with the clothing and faces later - drybrushing metallics on usually results in the little pigments flying everywhere.

Gripping Beast test fig

This figure was part of the lot I had won on an ebay auction and of which you could already see some WIP pictures. About a dozen were assembled, another 10 or so glued on bases and the rest was still on sprues. I am now done undercoating them and drybrushed the chainmail and weapon parts with gunmetal, except for this one figure I wanted to finish to see how it looks.

Besides the standard procedure of undercoat - block - wash - highlight, in the final stages I used blending and some freehand patterns on the shield, blending VGC Bonewhite over VMC Buff, and a thin brown wash on the flesh parts.

I evened out the base with some plasticine as well.

Viking Village Vendetta!

So Christmas activities, family together and whatnot, it seemed just right to have a classic Viking-style showdown on the dining table. Jarl Bjarni's goats were stolen by Jarl Eirik Storrison's men, who were a tad hungry and set up a feast as soon as they got home on their longship. 

The table featured a wooded hill, a longhouse (of wooden bricks apparently, as I ran out of glue and didn't want to make a cardboard one anyway), a river and a longship for decoration and some walls at the end of the longhouse's yard. 

The hungry Vikings drink a lot of ale too. Scenario rules:  only three men can leave the house in one turn. Each rolls an 'intoxication level' dice, 1 means the man's completely smashed, 2-3 means he has to roll direction dice after every move.

Vikings rebased

Since the earlier troubles with the acrylic varnish, I still had to do something - why not rebase my Vikings, I asked myself. So a quick removal from the ugly old bases, a touch of matte varnish so they don't glow in the dark, and here they are. Set is Zvezda's Vikings, a very useful one with lots of neat figs.

The skirmish line is departing. Used more static grass and some moss on the bases.

Gold of the Vikings deathmatch

 Been playing a round of matches with my ruleset (named Gold of the Vikings as it is mostly about looting) this weekend.
Cards for the game here, one pack for initiative, one pack for ambush, one pack for close combat. The other two are for blessings of the gods and morale. As it is more often played against non-player opponents, we rolled the dice to decide who pulls them.

 Ruleset, only 10 pages, most of it covering the card text. I made the cover picture with a Bayeux tapestry customizer flash thingie, but don't know the source, searched through a bunch of websites until I finally found one.

 Round 1, Viking vs. Viking #2. I set up a shield wall, separated the command and bodyguards plus the berserker and three archers.

Before going on, I'd like to welcome the newest regular reader, The Angry Lurker... I just started following his blog and he returned the favor, I guess

A long Viking ruletest

After 4 turns on the map (which apparently took 2 evenings), meaning the sacking of two monasteries, three villages, two open field battles and one sea battle, I can state that the rules are working with some minor un-scripted bits (for example, the map card 'Tired' reduces only terrain and not sea movements, so I changed it to affect both, because rowers can be tired too).

Vikings have some awesome abilities, my goal was to make the game a bit unbalanced, advantages to the Norse side. Different types of units react differently to certain combat cards, for example, Berserkers take damage instead of fleeing while Bondi in a shield wall take less injuries; Norman cavalry receives 2 damage cards, one for the rider and one for the horse etc.
We began with 3 longships, 3 armies on the Player side, 1 Dane longship NP, 1 Irish army, 2 Saxon armies, 1 warship, and 2 Norman armies, 1 longship. Seeing the tact of Norman cavalry, one player chose to switch and command the Normans while one more player joined the game so the Vikings' roles were filled again.


Villages: in the first village there were some Saxon warriors but they made little resistance and escaped from certain death, killing one player's Berserker (snap, it's really useful). The second village was quite a slaughter, but little treasure was found (third was looted by the NP Danish army).
The monasteries instead provided quite a lot of gold, and the monks didn't really resist the aggressors (when approaching a monastery, player pulls a card to decide the priests' behavior).
Battles: I fought one against Irish NP, killed one with my Berserker, then one another with some luck, the others didn't bear the fight and ran for their lives, sheltering in a fort.
The second battle was fought by Danish non-player army against Normans. In the first turn, a Dane archer died from a rider's strike, but a berserker with some divine help (in Berserk mode with one extra strike, receiving a blessing for another extra strike) put an end to the rider, then a Huscarl killed another, crushing the enemy plan to outflank the skjaldborg heading for the immobile enemy infantry line. Meanwhile, the remaining Danish archer killed a Norman infantryman in the first line. Some fight was made between the two shield walls, then the Normans fled with three casualties compared to one of Siggtrig the Dane's (Jarl Endriđi's arch enemy).
The objectives were to do some sacking for the war leader to see how trustworthy his subjects are, then gather together again after 3 turns to get reinforcements and aim for a higher goal, perhaps a bigger treasure. The armies are now retreating to an island where their Jarl awaits to receive his part of the loot.

Vikings, moar vikings

OK, dear readers, here's my first try at a lilbit more complex basing. It's very fine sawdust on a very old plasticine, hope it would hold ;)

But back on the topic: the viking hordes are now ready to set sail.

Following up the Read more link: longships, buildings and poor Norman and Welsh/Irish conversions. Before that, have more Vikings..

Prepare for raiding

Started painting the last batch of Norsemen, here's a quick sketch I put together (darn, these times I just wish I had a tablet and I could move on coloring it... Oh wait, I've got paints... let's see where it goes) for celebrating it. 

Other news: I had also been working on a card-based ruleset of Viking raiding, including sacking of monasteries, burning villages and similar things.

Well what about the opponents? There are a lot of very fine stuff around including medieval civilians, Saxons, Normans etc. So many choices! Now I only have some conversions (which are actually totally out of context figs, WWII Brits and Germans with shields and spears, also some Romans as Norman cavalry), but it will come once when I'll have a full Dark Ages army.

Working on some buildings now (burrows, a monastery, stable/granary), tomorrow I'll make some scratch-built longships (tried my hands at one already, one with a complete hull and the plan was to make it swim, no success - at least I get the basics).

Vikings in Stephen I's Court - Viking fesztivál 2011

There's this annual meeting at my town where viking reenactors and other cool guys gather up to make a weekend's fun. Last year I didn't go because of the weather, and the only reason I've gone this year was to see the new knight's hall the owners built up. Only spent half an hour or so, because every each of the events (like medieval Hungarian riders vs. norsemen and so on) went on and passed. Basically I only came to practice photoshooting and visit the hall. The entry price has been doubled since last year, so in my opinion it totally didn't worth it - if I manage to come next year, a) I'll arrive earlier and on the first day of the event b) I won't come at all because the tickets are already at an insane price.