October comes to a close

Having given away the vikings I had previously painted to a friend I had to start over with my 6 point warband. Again its been another busy month here and I met my target as detailed in the previous post. So as not to repeat myself I shall explain the modifications I carried out on a few archers.

The chap on the left is the standard figure,in the middle I added fur trims to the arms (can be seen better from front in the next picture) the one on the right had a nice bit of fur added to the cloak top and bottom.

Again as above on the left is the standard figure.

This set again the left figure is un-modifed the centre figure was modelled to have a sword and scabbard all from milliput. The right most figure the cloak was modelled from milliput again.
Overall I am happy with these simple modifications and they change the appearance of each figure nicely.
As I met my target earlier than expected this enabled me to complete the baggage elements for Saga early so without further ado here are my valued livestock.

Two Highland cows and a couple of Wild Boars I picked up at the Derby show from Irregular miniatures.

Warband at the ready

Well that's my target for the month achieved, I have converted, painted and based all the figures needed to complete my 6 point Gripping Beast Viking warband.

The warlord had a small conversion making a cloak with fur trim around out of milliput.

The first point of hearthguards, the second figure was gien a fur trim to the cloak and the standard bearer underwent a little surgery to enable him to hold an axe behind the shield.

The second point of heathguards, all these had to be modelled to have hair as they all had mail face and neck protection. The last model received a fur timmed cloak as an extra.

Third point of hearthguards, nothing major here just the addition of hair instead of mail.

The first unit of warriors, the only extra work on these were the spear conversions, blogged earlier.

The second unit of warriors, only the spears converted here again.

The last point 12 levy archers. A bit of conversion work went into these as the figures only come in 4 identical poses I shall document the changes to these in another post.

Bloody Big Viking

I got bored during the week and have been suffering with a heavy cold, so needed to cheer myself up. I got lured into the recent foundry purchases and had no option but to have a look at some of the figures in more detail.
I then figured I may as well paint one to break up the painting of the Beast figures. I choose to paint one of my Warlords. Now the only way I can describe this fella is he's a F**king big bastard.

With character figures in particular I like to take my time and make them stand out from the crowd. No problems with this guy at 38mm high he is huge. I started with the undercoating and mounting the figure on the base. I then did the mail armour using vallejo gunmetal over black then highlighted with mithril silver. Next up I touched up the undercoat on the non armour areas I had hit and worked all the flesh areas before starting on the clothing. I decided to add some pattern to the trims in a simple Celtic inspired design.

Next up came the beard and helmet at this point the figure starts to come to life for me.

I decided the pink only diminished the colours and patterns of the tunic so changed that to a darker green, I worked the leather items and then base coated the cloak with desert yellow.

I then worked the cloak up to an off white using thinned washes of desert yellow mixed at differing ratios with bleached bone.

Finally giving a highlight of vallejo off white on the highest points.Next up was to work the fur and Raven perched on the shoulder.

Next up was adding the details, painting the weapons and adding a border to the cloak, Sealing with a coat of Gloss varnish and two matt varnish coats before basing the figure up.
The Final result :

Warband broken in ..

I finally got around to playing Saga last night and had two excellent games with Trev.
The first game we played a six point head to head, My Vikings against Trev's Anglo Danish, The dane axe combined with the battle board abilities make them a lethal combination and a very tough nut to crack.
Viking levies in comparison I found out are almost useless, and in all rounds of shooting I failed to even hit a barn door, but they make a great sacraficial target.
The first game ended when I managed to catch Trevs warlord in the open without any support to take casualties and using his fatigue to increase my armour and another to lower his meant I had enough hits to kill him.

Game two we decided to do a four point game, I choose 1 point of beserkers 2 points of hearthguard and a point of warriors. Trev took 2 points of hearthguard (with Dane axe) 1 point of warriors and a point of levies. Again The hard part was countering the Dane axe (Valhalla does have its uses). The game was very much one of attrition but my hearthguard got the better in this contest and Trev was reduced to a Warlord with only levies left again I attacked his Warlord and as levies cant take the kill shot for the lord i pulled out another lucky victory.
Looking forward to next week as we are going for a four player session of Saga

October target update

Things are progressing nicely and having modified all the spears, I have completed the 2 points of warriors.

8 of them still need there proper bases and I am just waiting for the wargames emporium to tell me they have arrived. So I can base them all up.

I have also finished the 12 levy archers, I have done some modifications to these figures as they only come in 4 identical poses, I will make a seperate post on the modifications once the unit is fully based.

I have based up my warlord and am quite pleased with the final result. I have used my own blend of flocks and some very nice Silflor tufts to set it off. I now have the Hearthguard to paint and to base everything up for the end of the month.

Spear modifications

I have had the Gripping Beast vikings many years in fact the figures were bought on the release of WAB shieldwall and at the time they came with lead spears. Now these things really dont stand up to much once they are on the table, and bend badly so I have made use of some wire I have and done a simple conversion to save me buying wire spears.

One bendy lead spear, so how do we fix it on the cheap.

 The tools needed, some wire, a scalpel, a pair of side cutters, superglue gel, a pin drill and the lead spears.

Using the scalpel remove the spear tip.

 Take the pin drill and carefully drill a hole in the bottom of the spear tip.

Now you should have a nice hole ready to insert the new spear shaft. Place a drop of superglue gel into the hole and insert the wire.

Thats it job done all that remains is to cut the new spear to length with the side cutters.

Foundry vs Gripping Beast

Ok so I had a dilemma to solve, I have been steadily building my Viking warband and started with Foundry miniatures. But alas did not enough for a full warband, however I have hundreds (well no so many now having equipped a couple of players with figures for their warbands) of Gripping Beast figures so began painting them up to mix in with the Foundry figures.
Therein lies one problem, the range of poses in the Beasts figures is a touch limited so I have spent much time making both major and minor conversions to give some variety. Having prepped most of them for my October target I kept having my eye drawn to the Gripping beast figures amongst my finished units and realised that although very nice figures they really dont fit to well with the Foundry Vikings. The real major drawback is I actually prefer painting the Foundry figures they suit my 28mm painting style better, so I was left with a hard choice to make but decided I needed to split the two manufacturers and treat them as seperate projects.
Now I should have waited a while as I have plenty of Gripping beast figures to complete that Warband but I got drawn to the net and had visit the Foundry web site.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the vikings had a 20% minimum discount and some had 60% off. You guessed it I became a moth to a flame and started filling my shopping basket with a wide range of goodies, even committing the ultimate sin of throwing a few extras in for good measure. In fact so much so that I will have enough figures to make 12 points.

Even better the entire order actually arrived the day after. So what else did I get then.  Well at present I only have 4.5 points of foundry finished, they consist of 1 point of beserkers, and 3.5 points of Hearthguard.

Newly arrived:

• 4 packs of Archers enough to do 2pts of levies.
• 1 pack of Huscarls so that will give me 1.5pts of Hearthguard. ( total will be 5 points)
• 4 packs of Bondi with spears enough for 3 pts.
• 1 pack of very knarly looking beserker/warlords so I can get 2 pts of them.
• 3 Warband leaders ( I could not choose one Honest)
• 2 packs of shields (to make my own fatigue markers)
• 1 pack of wire spears.

Now I have to be patient and wait to paint all these, as they are not prepared and if I am to stand a chance of making the club tournament then I need to finish what I have already started.

So the October target is to complete the Gripping Beast saga warband.
completed so far :

• 1 Warlord
• 2 Huscarl figures (Hearthguard) one of them is the standard bearer. (1/2 pt)

However I did prepare a lot of figures at the end of last month

• 1 point of levy archers (12 figs)
• 2 points of Hearthguard (8 figs)

So to complete this target I need to prepare the figures to take me to 6 points, This means 2 points of warriors (16 figs) and 1/2 point of Hearthguard (2 figs) including conversion work. Making a total of 38 figures to be fully completed by the end of the month.