Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Progress among the Vikings

     Now that the dust from the Christmas festivities has settled a bit I spent some time digging deeper into the pile in the "toy room" and uncovered more Vikings (as well as some hapless victims). To my sorrow I also found that I didn't have as many longships as I first thought (unless the others are hiding deeper in the vault), but to my surprise and amusement I found that the project that Pat had undertaken a few years back had gotten farther than I remembered. He had painted sixty or so Vikings to a near-complete status as well as a couple of dozen Vikings that were  looting and some Saxons that were, well, loot themselves. This greatly accelerated the establishment of the Viking forces. Unfortunately the French were in bare-metal status while, worse yet, the Saxons were still all in bags. I assembled the materials on the gaming table to get a look at the dimensions of the undertaking; it looks a goodly task but not insurmountable.

the entire project, may have to add a couple of extra longships



hooray! some are already mostly done!

Viking looters & Saxon loot, these must be put to use
(amphorae? were those still around in the Dark Ages?)

a batch of two-handed axemen

the French, not even primed, but they are based

the Smer longship,
plenty of problems as an historical model, but good for gaming

looks even better with a few warriors on the deck

meanwhile the Saxons slumber in their bags

I admit that I was concerned over the size issue, but they mix well
Old Glory on the left, Wargames Factory on the right

same, the Old Glory Vikings seem a little more "buff",
 but they seem to get along fine
    
       Now all I have to do is get disciplined and start painting at least an hour a day. I am looking for some leader figures in the "Heroic" 28mm size so that they stand out on the tabletop. Anyone with suggestions/recomendations please leave them in the comments box.

4 comments:

  1. foundry has a few but they are in packs and are expensive. also, I still have the drinking guy and finally found the cape i was looking for yesterday. also, gripping beast sells a plastic set that MI Toy used to stock and get again. it comes with a few capes and some arms that will make a good leader. I have a few rather psycho looking bearded heads from the games workshop white wolf knights that i would be more than happy to part with. might have a cape with a wolf's head on it as well if you are interested its yours.

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  2. I remember the Gripping Beast set, I thought that I had a box but it appears I was mistaken. The 40K heads sound cool if they will mesh with the torsos of the other figures....sometimes the boys at WG get a little carried away with the size....I am glad you found the cape; that mini was neat just as he was, but nothing says style like a cape!

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  3. Here is an link to a PDF set for a viking campaign. Looks pretty interesting..
    http://www.jimwallman.org.uk/wargame/VIKING.pdf

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  4. We really enjoyed playing a Viking Campaign using "Age of Blood"
    http://tasmancave.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Age%20of%20Blood

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