Army Review: 28mm Vikings and Saxons

Before the army review, a quick workbench update. The hussars did get put onto painting sticks last night, so were ready to join the dragoons and horse grenadiers for priming with the airbrush this morning:

Apart from the priming, today has been quite light on the hobby front. All that's been done is to stick the hussar general group plus the horses and drivers onto painting sticks and assembling the two wagons. I'll prime them tomorrow evening, then on Tuesday I will probably make a start on the horses:

Anyways, back to the Army Review. Today I bring you my collection of Vikings and Saxons/AngloDanes for Saga. They are a mix of Wargames Factory and Gripping Beast plastics (and one Gripping Beast metal figure).

Gripping Beast Viking warlords - not sure why I didn't finish the basing

Wargames Factory Vikings/Saxons

Wargames Factory Vikings/Saxons

Gripping Beast Vikings with Egil Skallagrimsson

Gripping Beast Saxons/Anglo Danes

I'm pretty sure that I'll be rebasing all of these at some point, so that I can use them for ADLG and maybe other rules as well. If I base them in 3s, that should give me flexibility to use them with a range of rules.

Challenge Day 52 - Whatever Happened To....

....Leon Trotsky?

He got an icepick

That made his ears burn

Whatever happened to dear old Lenny?

The Great Elmyra and Sancho Panza?

Whatever happened to the heroes?

Whatever happened to the heroes?

Well, Curt posted them here on Sunday: Heroes Bonus Theme Round

Voting is a bit different this time after the last round was subjected to ballot stuffing during the last day. Rather than using a handy little poll widget, you need to enter your votes as a comment, so it is a good idea to open the page twice - one to view the entries, the other to place your votes in the comments box.


My entry was the hero of the eponymous Egil's Saga, a rather nice Viking warlord from Gripping Beast. You can read a brief summary of his life as the accompanying text for my entry.

Here are a couple of pics to whet your appetite:

I went a bit OTT compared to my normal standard painting this figure. The cloak got 4 highlights and 2 blending washes over the base colour; the wolfskin got 3 highlights and 2 washes; flesh  and hair got 2 highlights and a wash; everything else got at least one highlight and wash.

Challenge Day 36 - Waiting Kills

It seems I'm not the only person suffering from lethal anticipation every other Sunday at the moment. Over on the Facebook group which James set up for Challengers to engage in sledging each other errrmmm Badger baiting errrmmmmm friendly banter, Loki has posted that "Dont know about the rest of you but the waiting for the bonus round post is a killer"

It most certainly is. Given the short time that Curt has between the deadline for entries and getting them posted on the same day it's difficult to see how he finds time to eat. For this round, I think he will be making time to drink though - working out the points for some of the entries will surely be giving him a massive headache.

But for us Challengers, those long hours between the deadline and the post going up are filled with worried anticipation. When will it go up? What will everybody else have submitted? How many points towards our targets have we scored? Will there be pie? Or bacon? Or cake?


I've had a fairly relaxed day today, with not a great deal of painting done. Last night I'd finished painting my Hero and added texture to the base. I drybrushed the texture this morning. I've left it there for now.

I also got a bit of work done on the PyRats, just the clothing in a bunch of bright colours, plus the boots and hats of those with them in blacks and browns. There's not much left to do, so I should finished painting them tomorrow.

When I've finished the PyRats, I'll get the berserkers done. That will leave me clear to work on the bulk of the pirate army over the next  few weeks.

Pics of Anne's Cleavage (And Some Updates)

OK, to be more accurate, pics of cleavage painted by Anne! 

This lovely young lady was a gift she sent me via Fran. I would have received it a few weeks ago if I'd been able to make it to BlogCon. I'm pleased as punch to add such a wonderfully painted figure to my collection.

She also sent me this figure from Reaper, which looks as though it will be great fun to paint.


And now for the updates....

15mm Swiss Halberdiers

I finished prepping these during my lunch break on Thursday and primed them with gesso this afternoon.

28mm Berserkers

I prepped these yesterday and primed them this afternoon with Vellejo black surface primer.

28mm Mordheim(?) Figures

I received these two figures in a prize draw on someone's blog several months ago (or did someone gift them to me?). Anyway, these were prepped at the same time as the berserkers and primed with Vallejo white surface primer this afternoon.

NSL Fleet

Last night I got one batch of ships prepped, washed and assembled. I spray primed them this evening. The other batch got washed today and are now on long flight pegs ready for priming tomorrow.

Batch 1

2 Helgoland heavy cruisers; 4 Danzig class escort cruisers

2 Frankfurt class escort cruisers; 3 Nibelung class corvettes

Batch 2

2 Rommel class attack cruisers; 2 Kiel class light cruisers; 4 Emden class light cruisers; 2 Pola class frigates

I'm going to try to prep and prime the rest of the fleet this week. I'll probably go for a pretty basic dark grey colour scheme for these, with some panels picked out in a military green.


15mm Sci Fi - Heavy Grav Tanks and APCs

I've clearly had a busy afternoon and evening. As well as everything else, I also got round to finishing these vehicles from Critical Mass Games. They are from the ARC Fleet range. The bases were tufted and flocked, the vehicles sprayed with matt varnish and then glued to the bases. I'm quite pleased with how they've come out. After taking the photos, I added some magnetic sheet to the bases for storage and transport.

Grav APCs

Heavy Grav Tanks

Tipped to show the detailing of the  anti-grav units

Well, that's an awful lot of photos for one post, but they do show an awful lot of work that I've managed to get done since Wednesday.

Stuck in the middle....

Pics of my Saxons went up on Curt's blog last night (link to post). The 22 figures gave me a base score of 110 points, plus a bonus of 21 points for the hand-painted shields (the standard bearer was shieldless), for a total of 131 points. That boosted me to 12th place between Ray in 13th and Fran in 11th. The question which is the clown and which the joker?

Before I sate your lust for mini-pr0n with pics of 28mm Saxons, a quick update on the late 30YW horse. After posting here last night I did get the washes done. I also applied a black undercoat to metalwork (flagpole finials, pistol barrels) then dry-brushed with Bronze or Oily Steel as appropriate. This evening I have done the saddle cloths (Gold Brown) and the wood (pistol stocks, flagpoles). I'll probably do the holsters and flags before I go to bed, maybe the horse markings as well.I doubt that I'll have finished these before I go to Usk for the tourney and I can't do the basing until I've got hold of the other 6 figures and painted them so it may be a little while before my next entry for the Challenge.

Challenge Entry #4: Twenty Two 28mm Gripping Beast Saxons

And here they are. Can these Soft Southern Saxons defeat those Naughty Norsemen? Only time will tell.

Hmmm, not sure I want to take these guys on

The Eorl and his bannerman

Rear view - the cloak and the windsock each got about 4 or 5 shades and highlights

The Eorl's bodyguard

The rest of the Thegns

A close up to show the rear of the shield. I like the way the wood came out (more obvious here than on spear shafts and axe handles). This came out from a basecoat of Cork Brown, my Brown "magic wash" and the Klear/ink coat.

I started these from a white primer with a black/brown wash for pre-shading, which in retrospect was a mistake. I think I might have been better off doing a black primer then dry-brushing with white as the colours on the clothing came out rather brighter than I'd intended. I'll give that a go when I do the Normans.


Prize Draw

There's still a couple of hours left to enter if you haven't done so already. I'll be posting the winner tomorrow evening.

Analogue Painting Challenge: 28mm Vikings

I did finish the Vikings yesterday and the pics have been up on Curt's blog for a day now, so I can post them here. Do check out Curt's blog - the entries by my fellow Ronin are well worth the effort of looking through.

I was quite pleased about four things:
1) I hadn't realised that hand-painted shields get a bonus point, so I was getting 6 points a figure instead of 5 giving me a total of 120 points for that entry.
2) I am currently in 11th place with 236 points (but will drop down the rankings during the week)
3) I am ahead of Ray (currently languishing in 19th place with 120 points), but I expect that the dastard is secretly painting up a massive entry of several hundred figures
4) It's only 1/6 of the way into the Challenge and I'm already over 1/4 of the way to my target. I'd thought that aiming for 800 points over the three months was stretching myself, but it doesn't appear to be so.

So, with the Vikings done, what have I been up to?

28mm Gripping Beast Saxons

These are now assembled, based and primed. I took a different approach to the basing this time and did it after priming the figures (with Vallejo white polyurethane primer) and the metal washers they are based on. Rather than brushing slightly-thinned PVA over the entire base and then dipping it into sand/gravel mix I brushed spots and smears of thicker PVA onto the bases then shook coarse grey ballast over the figures, shook off the excess and left them to dry for a while. Then I brushed thinner PVA into the gaps and covered the bases with medium grey ballast, shook off the excess and left them to dry again. Once I thought the glue had dried, I went over with an even thinner coat of PVA to seal the ballast and left them to dry again. Finally I went over the basing with primer. They are now sitting at the back of my painting area to allow the primer (and underlying PVA) to fully harden.

The next step will be to give them a black/brown wash before painting to provide some pre-shading.

15mm Late 30YW Horse

Thinking that I could probably do with a break from 28mm (not to mention assembly of plastics) I've decided that after the Saxons are done, my next unit for the Challenge will be the remaining cavalry from my 30YW leadpile. When I got the figures out to start prepping them, I remembered that I also had 6 mounted standard bearers sitting in the leadpile without any obvious use. "Hmmm, what if I mixed them in with the rest? That would give me 10 bases, 8 of them with standard bearers. I can always order some extra figures to make up a 3rd regiment later."

So, this evening I have prepped 30 horses and riders - at the moment they are soaking in warm soapy water. I'll probably rinse them before going to bed and put them out to dry overnight.

Preparing for a FoG:AM Doubles Tournament

A clubmate and I are taking part in the Godendag doubles tournament at Usk in a couple of weeks time. the theme for the FoG:AM competition is "Rise and Fall of Rome" so we are taking Early Alans. Today was the last date for submitting army lists, so I was putting the finishing touches to ours.

We'll be trying it out tomorrow night at the club, which will also be a good chance to check out the differences between V1 and V2 of FoG (Godendag is using the V2 rules). The camera is packed and with 2 of us playing on each side, there's no excuse for not taking any photos nor writing a turn-by-turn record for writing the AAR.



Oh, you want pics of the Vikings? Go on then:

Challenge Entry #3 - Gripping Beast 28mm Vikings

Here they are in all their glory. All parts got at least basecoat and wash, some parts got highlights as well. The shield designs were hand-painted and I noticed when looking at the photos that some need some touching up, which I'll do at some point. I decided to seal them with neat Klear rather than my usual Klear/ink mix.

The bases got a basecoat of Khaki Grey, followed by a wash of Burnt Umber. I then dry-brushed with Khaki Grey, Iraqi Sand and finally with Sky Grey. I think it looks effective. I decided against using any tufts for these figures, but did use two different mixes of flock - Moorland and Meadow Grass.

All Together:

Blackshields:

Blueshields:

Greenshields:

Redshields:

Yellowshields:

And for anyone who thinks pink is a girly colour, this gent doesn't agree with you!

Hope you like them!