Spencer Smith Miniatures - test paint

The last blog entry was entirely sans pictures so here is just a peek at what I am thinking of doing. The miniatures I found are by Spencer Smith Miniatures and are a bit of an acquired taste. When I first got hold of these a couple of years ago I was horrified by their crude casting and no amount of three layer shading would make them look like Front Rank or Minden. They mouldered in their box for a while as I gathered intelligence on them from SSM fans (of which there are quite a few by all accounts), I was painting them all wrong! Once I realised that a "toy-soldier" approach was needed I fell in love with these strange lumps again with their block colours, minimal lining and rosy cheeks. To be really old school I should have stuck to Humbrol enamels but I have enough problems coughing without thinner fumes at the moment.

So here is my test paint for my as yet unnamed C18th ImagiNation, a Spencer Smith AS4 Grenadier in mitre cap marching (from C18th, War of the Austrian Succession range).

AS4 Grenadier raw and painted - front

Rear view of same

I got those coughing up a lung loss of mojo blues...

Pneumonia set in a few days after Christmas, I blame enforced jollity and having to be sociable. That was bad enough, stopping me from painting, reading a book or watching the history channels on the telly but the final straw was the dreaded loss of mojo which struck again. It is the affliction that every wargamer dreads, that utter despair at taking up a paintbrush. Just like the common cold there is no cure but there are a few things that can help to alleviate the symptoms slightly. Lion Rampant has gone on the back burner for a while as I have been playing it quite a lot, a short break from it will help and allow me to get some enthusiasm for my Vikings again. I have also returned to an old interest to ease me back into the swing of things, inspired by the splendid games put on by the guys from the Loose Association of Wargamers - I have yet to attend one but they taunt me with fantastic photos on an annual basis.

So I am trying to recover my enthusiasm for wargaming with  a foray into Eighteenth Century Imaginary Nations wargaming, more often known as C18th ImagiNations. Usually set around the period from the end of the Great Northern War (1700-1721) to the Seven Years War (1754-1763, historians can't count), this is the era of tricornes and firing lines between minor states and obscure principalities. In the general political confusion of the time it is easy to fit in a few fictional nations, usually of a Germanic, Balkan or eastern European nature, taking the inspiration from a time pre-dating the unification of Germany and Austria-Hungary, or at a pinch, Italy.

Why bother you might ask. Well, the idea has a certain "old school" appeal, many of the great and good of the early years of wargaming had semi-fictional Seven Years War (SYW) style armies to illustrate their books. There is also the personalization that you can apply to your own nation, uniforms, army composition, commanders and tactics can all be experimental without anyone shouting "historical shenanigans!", its all intended to be historical shenanigans!

So that is the plan to get me back to the table, armed with a copy of Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames - an excellent book stuffed with quick play rules, ripe for filling out into more complex games - and a few Spencer Smith miniatures I had knocking about. All I need to do now is to pick up the damn paintbrush...

Half a unit is better than nowt!

I managed to get half a unit of bondi assembled and painted in the last fortnight, alongside a minor excursion into huts. Well, half a Lion Rampant unit that is, they are only two men short of a point for Saga. One thing I can say about blogging, it certainly spurs you into painting things, just to have something to put on the blog instead of waffle. Well...alongside waffle in my case.

Gripping Beast plastic Bondi - charging to the front!

The bondi are made up from the Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors plastic set, with additional bits such as heads, belt-pouches and seaxes taken from the spares in the Viking Hirdmen box. I am not as keen on these as the Hirdmen, the bodies tend towards a rather hunched look, unlike the generally upright Hirdmen. Another problem is that the shields don't fit into the hands of a couple of poses. The hand is held at the waist but the chest and hem of the tunic prevent the hand fitting behind the shield boss without major and rather ugly re-sculpting. This is largely unseen if the shield is glued onto the arm but it is a minor annoyance. Minor gripes aside, they paint up lovely and there are plenty of characterful options between the two boxes.

...and charging away again!

I did have a slight disaster with my talc/varnish mix, one of the bondi (probably the last one in the line for varnishing) ended up looking rather frosty but fortunately a light coating of GW Nuln Oil shader followed by a fresh coat of varnish did the trick.

Well, it is the Winter Solstice and I aim to be quite drunk for a few days so maybe there will be an update before the New Year, maybe not. In any case I will wish you all a Joyful Solstice, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in that order!

A Warbases grub hut for my Vikings

Well this week I found an old MDF dark ages hut kit that I bought from Warbases yonks ago. The kit (here on Warbases website) is just twelve laser cut pieces, including a simple door and door-frame with etched wood-grain detail but for three and a half quid you can't really go wrong. I decided to customise mine a little so armed with a google images search for "grub hut" and "grubenhaus" I applied a little extra detail.

The first thing I did was to add a little exterior framing, using old ice lolly sticks (I am addicted to Fab lollies so I always have a few strawberry flavoured sticks lying around). With the grub hut being such a simple dwelling I opted for the classic cross at each end with the door frame against the cross on one side. This was easily done by splitting the lolly sticks along the grain to make roughly equal width rustic looking planks which were glued in place using PVA. I didn't use the door frame that came with the kit as the framing would provide two sides of the door frame and it was easy to add a third to fit the door.

Front of the hut showing the door frame and its new owner.

 Once the framing and the door were in place I applied a good coat of rough filler to the walls, letting it dry slightly and then dabbing it with a damp bristle brush to make it look like rough wattle and daub or plastered cob construction. At the last minute I remembered to leave a gap at the top, these things didn't have chimneys and windows, just a smoke-hole under the apex. When this was done I painted everything in white gesso before staining the woodwork in raw umber, followed by a black wash and a drybrush with cheap cream-coloured acrylic. The white of the walls was washed in raw umber and black mix and then heavily drybrushed back to white with gesso. When this was done I gave it a coat of matt varnish and turned to the roof.

Back of the hut showing the simple cross frame.

Thatching the roof was a problem, I tried the old method of using fire-clay but it doesn't seem to be the fire-clay that I used back in the 70s, it cracked and barely set properly. I scraped it all off and then after trawling the net I found an old terry towelling facecloth and cut it up to fit. The only tricky part was making sure that the nap of the towelling went in the right direction, once that was settled it was just PVA glued on with a separate couple of strips at the top to look like ridge-thatching. One heavy coat of gesso later it was starting to look like thatch. When it had dried for a day or so I painted it all black with cheap craft acrylic and then dry-brushed up with raw umber and cream. The final effect looks reasonably lifelike.

Close up of the terry towelling thatch

So for the princely sum of £4 (I had to replace the washcloth but it was only 50p from Dunelm!) I have a rather nice humble dwelling for my Vikings to raid. I really like these simple MDF shells for buildings, if I had to make the basic box from card or foamcore it would probably still be on my to-do list rather than sitting finished on my shelf.

More Vikings next time...probably.

Viking Hirdmen for Lion Rampant (and maybe Saga)

Well, less waffle and more pics this time. I finished my first unit for my Viking army today, a unit of six Foot Men-at-Arms in Lion Rampant terms or a unit and a half of Hearthguard for Saga. This means that the two Men-at-Arms units I need for Lion Rampant will give me three points of Hearthguard for Saga, two birds, one stone.

Gripping Beast plastic Viking Hirdmen - Front View

As you can see they are Gripping Beast plastic Viking Hirdmen that I made up straight out of the box, with only minor adjustments to the way the arms fit. Some of the arms have a slight shoulder attached which looks a lot better if it is filed flat and any gap filled with liquid greenstuff (from Games Workshop) or just bunged up with gesso at the undercoating stage if I forget.

...and from the other side...

They were an absolute joy to put together, very few bits and they all fitted reasonably well. The separate shields were the best bit, one of my bugbears is cast on shields. While cast on shields are good for painting as they shadow all the bits you would otherwise have to paint, you can't just take out a bunch of shields and paint them when you have five minutes to spare. Plastic shields are also easier to attach after painting than separate metal shields, just scratch away a little paint and use polystyrene cement, wiggling until the melted plastic is fully mixed for a stronger bond.

...and my usual view of them on the table (hopefully!).

Overall I am very happy with the way they turned out, especially as I now have flat varnish again so it is on to my next unit, twelve Bondi to back them up. More next time.

Quick Tip - Shiny Varnish

When it comes to finding a good matt finish I think I have tried just about everything going. I settled on Windsor & Newton Galeria because it was easy to find locally, dried quickly and no noxious fumes. However, it can be a little variable in damp weather and just recently my figures had been as glossy as an oiled otter. Thinking about this I remembered how we used to make "dry" paints for dry-brushing back when it was all the rage. This involved adding a small amount of talcum powder to the paint and then slightly thinning with water - the result being a dense paint that grabbed well and dried extremely matt. I tried this with my ailing matt varnish and hey presto, I have non-shiny soldiers again.

Before and after shots of a previously shiny billman!

To be honest, I didn't have any talc in the house but I did have some athletes foot powder which had talc and corn starch as a base. I only hope it doesn't turn my retinue into a band of fungicidal maniacs...

...I'll get me coat.

Vikings in Lion Rampant

As well as the Wars of the Roses, I am interested in using Lion Rampant for games set in the early medieval period (or late dark ages if you prefer), specifically the period from around 950-1066 CE. The three main armies of this period for me are Vikings, English and Normans with a possible foray into Wales, Ireland and Scotland should it all go well. I am using the term Vikings to cover any Scandinavian group such as Danes, Norse and everywhere they settled, such as Ireland and the Danelaw. Not technically correct but everyone knows what you mean by Viking without going into details. The same goes for English covering both Saxon and later Anglo-Danish. All the units and rules are there in the book for this end of the period but they are not explicitly covered in the suggested army lists. This leaves a little work to do in order to field an army of vicious Vikings or steadfast Saxons.

So starting with the Northmen it is merely a matter of choosing how I want my little Danes and Norwegians to perform on the battlefield. In my (admittedly amateur) understanding of the subject, Viking armies can be broken down into the following broad divisions, excluding allies, for gaming purposes:

• Hirdmen – the more professional end of the spectrum including the leader (King, Jarl, Hersir etc.) and his bodyguard or just bands of seasoned warriors in helmets, chainmail hauberks, carrying a shield and using a spear, axe or sword. The backbone of any Viking army, probably available in reasonable numbers even in smaller warbands. I will depict the Hirdmen as Foot Men at Arms in my retinues.

• Bondi – less professional or merely less well-off types, usually sporting a helmet and shield and carrying a spear, with an axe or sword in reserve. These would probably be fairly numerous second-line troops in a large army and well represented in a typical Lion Rampant retinue. For me these are Foot Serjeants, with the ability to form schiltron depicting the shieldwall.

• Levy – thralls and paupers, told to bring a spear and shield and to try not to mess it up or run away. Not much used outside the homelands due to the logistics of moving large numbers of poor troops but could be applicable to a Viking vs Viking game or one set in the borders of the Danelaw. Probably best represented as Serfs.

Which is all easily translated into Lion Rampant units but lacks a little flavour. To these I would add a couple of other types:

• Raiders, youths and other enthusiastic types – not even remotely trained in forming shieldwalls, battlefield tactics or restraint. These are the expendable first few off the boats or into the fray, possibly including the odd berserker or two and a lot of nobodies trying to make a name for themselves. These obviously lend themselves to Fierce Foot in Lion Rampant terms.

• Missile troops – not as numerous or as well formed as in Norman armies but could be found among the Bondi, sporting either javelins or bows to harass the enemy and keep their heads down. The lesser classes of missile troops in Lion Rampant are best represented by Bidowers with bows, javelins or a mix of the two.

So they are my five preferred troop types for my Viking armies. Fortunately Dan Mersey has posted his own idea for a Viking army on Boardgame Geek (http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1223593/1066-retinues) where he gives his 24pt Viking army as:

2 Foot Men-at-Arms* @ 12 points
2 Foot Serjeants @ 8 points
1 Fierce Foot @ 4 points

This translates as 12 Hirdmen, 24 Bondi and 12 Raiders in my own terms. The Hirdmen and Bondi are easily put together using a box each of Viking Hirdmen and Dark Age Warriors that I bought from Gripping Beast for use with Saga. I am not sure how I am going to represent the Raiders yet, they may be best served by using more dynamic poses in metal. Now all I need to do is paint all these plastic Vikings up! Pictures soon.