I must say the flash looked great at first ... but no seems a little harsh. It does illuminate the banners well. Excited be the completion of my Saxon and Viking armies I rushed some images. More and better will follow. Now all I need is some good rules to do Dark Ages. I'm hoping that the Aurelian rules might fit the bill with some period fluff added.
I now have over 200 28mm Dark Age miniatures painted. Not sure what the final count actually is. Not too sure why I did it all but the bottom line is ... I simply love learning and thinking about Dark Age Britain. Anything from the legions withdrawing to Hastings gives me a fancy tickling.
One of the new additions to my forces are the Little Big Men Banners. I finally painted the banner bearers, set everyone up and thought - could use some more of those really. Not sure if I will.
I also finished the generals for each side. Now each is done I'm coming to envisage these as Athelstan and Eric Bloodaxe although at the time of painting I had no conception of this at all. I think my Viking general fits the bill but I had trouble sourcing a Saxon king model. In the end of went for one who is using equipment that is (possibly) at little early to be Athelstan. However, a king might wear equipment out of ceremonial reasons rather than purely practical ones so ... you never know.
I have tried to group the warriors of both armies into units based on shield colour. The designs are similar but not the same. The over colours are the same and I think this looks impressive but is a possibility for the period too. I think the people in the past are usually more organised than we like to imagine. I am particularly pleased by the red and white shield units in the below two images.
Love that green flag showing a 'British' (I don't really like Celtic) cross.
The above image of the blue shields did not come out too well. I only recently had the idea to group warriors with similarly coloured shields. I do like it.
The above banner shows the possibility of British allies for the Vikings (historically correct for Eric Bloodaxe against Athelstan) or groups of Viking Christians (again correct.)
Whoops ... blue/grey near red/yellow ... what was i thinking.
The front right of the above units are my beserkers.
I'll distract any readers from the above poor image to add these forces I intend to use in Sword and Spear games. Each has three commanders. The Vikings have 11 units with 2 skirmishers. The Saxons have 13 units with 2 skirmishers. I intend to disregard the points in the army lists as there isn't much point for every Saxon unit to pay for spears when I have no cavalry for the Vikings. I also think the Saxons should outnumber the invading Vikings. The Vikings have 3 units of armoured dane-axe wielding warriors and 1 beserker units while the Saxons have 3 armoured units but also 3 units representing the lower quality fyrd - local levies pressed into service.
So ... whats next ... some battle reps following the general outline of some historical battles. Brunanburh here we come!
