Kingdom of Strathclyde warband

      "The heroes went to Cattraeth in marshalled array, and with shout of war,

      With powerful steeds, and dark brown harness, and with shields,
      With uplifted javelins, and piercing lances,
      With glittering mail, and with swords."

                                                                                                                 - Y Gododin

This is what I've been up to since the start of lockdown. 33 dark age cavalry to comprise a complete six point warband for SAGA. All figures are Gripping Beast. I already owned a metal mounted warlord and four mounted Teulu for my Welsh, but they were mounted on the smaller welsh cobs. For the rest of the warband I used three of GB's plastic Dark Age warriors boxes which come with modern horses. Unwilling to have my warlord and his hearthguard ride into battle on ponies while his warriors spurred on their chargers I felt a little mount swap was required. I was sad to lose the accuracy, but worth it for a unified warband. They didn't fit very well and needed their legs splaying into position in an operation that looked extremely uncomfortable, but I think they're in a place where they don't look too out of place with the others.

I tried a few new things on these. For the horses, I removed a step of highlighting. The reigns didn't get highlighted at all.This was in the interest of speed. I've always worried too much about getting things looking just right, and actually what I want is models on the table, not painting awards, so I'm continuing to cut back on things like this. Other shortcuts included using a citadel contrast paint for the flesh, which saved a lot of time, and not following the contours of the model but applying a loose zenithal highlighting technique (but without all the messing about with two types of primer). I think the individual models don't look as highly worked, but en-masse they look really good. This is something I am hoping to carry over into my next project (Saxons) but the Victrix models are more detailed than these fellows, so we'll see how it turns out.

Shields and banners are LBMS, tufts from Tajima1. The things that took so long on these were the spears. I am tired of plastic spears breaking, and they have a tendency to look like tree trunks on the Gripping Beast plastics, so each of these got his spear cut off and a hole drilled to take a wire spear. Again, I think this improves the look an awful lot, but I did get somewhat fed up of piercing my thumb tip with a tiny drill piece!

The bases were also an experiment. I have been struggling to get my bases looking the way I want, so after looking at a lot of images of bases that I admire online, I decided to cut out the flock and the static grass, and just opted for a range of tufts. Key to making this work was the 2mm tufts, which give scale, contrast, and structure to the larger tufts. In future I will lay in a bigger stock of 2mm tufts because I still felt there were too many of the larger sized tufts here. I also experimented with using cat litter to represent stones and gravel. A marvellous, if curious, choice. Again, I will be using this material as my go-to technique in future.

These chaps will be organised into three units of warriors and two units of hearthguard. in SAGA Strathclyde levy cannot be mounted and must carry javelins, not bows, which sacrifice a lot of range. I'm not keen, therefore, on having a foot element to this warband, especially as they can activate the whole warband using just two SAGA die. I have enough spare models to round out the two units of hearthguard into warrior units, but I don't have enough space in my storage foam for another 8, so I'll see how they fare on the battlefield before buying more storage. 

I also hope to use these in various guises in Hail Caesar, or other larger games as well. It has already been pointed out that I am well on my way to having enough for Gododdin, but I'm not convinced my thumb could cope with being pierced another 257 times for a 1:1 recreation.

I'll leave you with another couple of photos of the whole lot. I'm glad these have turned out better than the Germans in the last post. I was starting to fear that I had lost the touch!

Book Review -- Viking Britain; A History - Thomas Williams

Just a quick review for this one. Enjoyed it, and whipped through it fairly quickly. Williams has a interesting style. Many of the amazon reviews for this bemoan his tendency towards colourful, fictionalized prose rather than a dry academic style. While admittedly in the first chapter this is a touch overwrought, it's actually a style that helps make the book more readable than many other popular history offerings. It is also described as a 'narrative history', so, frankly, what did the reviewers expect?

Another strength of this book is placing the various phases of Viking invasion/colonization within a cultural context. Thomas is extremely strong when showing the interaction between Norse and Anglo-Saxon cultures, and tracing the roots of ideas back to their origins. This book is perhaps as much sociological as it is historical as it is narrative.

If you are looking for a dry who did what where and when, this isn't for you. If you are however, interested in getting close to the Viking and Anglo-Saxon view of the world, a world heavy with local myth, and replete with death, then this book is extremely evocative.

Overall, I feel that the original (alternative?) title I have seen this book under- 'Viking Britain: an exploration' is a lot more accurate, and would perhaps draw less ire from those simply looking for an enhanced timeline in prose form.

In terms of wargaming, the emphasis in this text on the fact that Anglo-Saxons would repeatedly choose symbolic sites, such as those replete with megaliths, as sites for battles will influence my Saga tables with a lot more fights occurring around barrows and undulating landscapes. Likewise, the brief descriptions of the problems with siege craft in the era is one that needs thinking about, and explains why the 'Protect the Burgh' scenario from Age of the Wolf was less interesting than it perhaps should have been.

Saga Vikings v. Welsh AAR.

First post about an actual game rather than modelling or reference materials. This might resemble a proper wargaming blog at some point.

This here was a game played using SAGA version 1 rules (because it's what we had to hand) with 'The Challenge' scenario. Only I failed to read the wound special rule for the warlords, so it turned into something else. Oh well. You live and you learn.

Here's the board at the start of the game. I think my scenery is finally starting to take shape. Still a long way to go, and the mat hides a multitude of sins, but I was pleased with how the game looked, and the preponderance of terrain elements definitely helped the game.

I was playing Vikings on the right, and good friend Chris was the Welsh, defending his home turf from the marauding invaders. A challenge had been given, in the hopes that the Welsh warlord could save the deaths of his wards in single combat.

The armies waited in the wings. The vikings with two units of warriors, two units of hearthguard, one unit of berzerkers, and a unit of levy with bows.

The viking line, including bright bag of cheesy snacks that I forgot to crop out.

Ranged opposite: the forces of the Welsh. Two units of javelin armed warriors, one mob of levy with slings, two units of hearthguard, and one unit of loyal hearthguard retainers mounted on small Welsh
ponies.

The challenge was accepted, and the Viking warlord was struck to the ground.

Where's he gone?

Yes, this shouldn't have happened, but it set the stage for the conflict. Determined to retrieve their warlord's body, and maybe enact some vengeance upon the Welsh, the Vikings surged forward and formed a shieldwall, ready to push into the center of the village and reclaim some semblance of 

honour or die in the attempt.

The Vikings retain their discipline despite the early loss of their warlord.

The Welsh pushed forward on their left flank hoping to roll up the Viking line swiftly, while their  warlord retreated to the safety of his unit of hearthguard and laid in ambush behind a hut, along with a unit of warriors.

The Welsh left, with Hearthguard pushing forwards to disrupt the Viking line supported by javelin throwing Warriors.

After a brief tussle in the field to the north, the vikings push into the center of the village to occupy the ground where their leader lay felled.

Sensing his moment, the Welsh warlord led a charge into the closest unit of warriors and drove them back.

In the thick of it, the battle-hardened Vikings knew what to do. They sent wave after wave of warriors against the warlord and his unit of hearthguard. The brave Welsh fought off every single attack until the warlord stood alone, exhausted. At this point their came a blood curdling cry as the berzerkers finally became incensed by the sight of so much bloodshed. They sprang forwards and tore the Welsh warlord to shreds. Vengeance had been exacted.

Stunned by the ferocity of the wild northmen the Welsh could only pick at the edges of the Viking force as the berzerkers changed tack and charged north into the teeth of the Welsh attack, taking on another unit of hearthguard and wiping them out entirely, before finally overreaching themselves and falling to a fresh unit of Welsh warriors.

Their most potent warriors gone, the vikings held on for several more rounds, until they were finally overwhelmed by the Welsh javelins. The levy archers, still in shock at the death of the warlord and unable to do anything except cower behind a haycart for the entire fight, finally slunk off to find either their longboats, or death at the hands of vengeful villagers in the depth of the Welsh countryside.

A good time was had by all, and probably the most fun I've had playing Saga. A few rules issues, but  it didn't detract from a good game, and in fact helped create a damn good narrative. This was the closest I have come to having the Vikings beat the Welsh, and this despite the early loss of two Saga dice for me in the early rounds. Fortunately I was mostly able to compensate for this by repeated use of the activation pool. It's convinced me I need to finally sort out my Norman force, and create a player guide sheet for Saga 2.

We also had our second ever game of Bolt Action following Saga, and again the terrain is starting to come together. The spree of field boundary making I have been on recently is paying off, but there's a lot further to go before I can produce a battlefield I'm proud of, so I'll only put one shot of it below, and not do an aar. We did find that playing from short board edges rather than long produced a somewhat more tactical game, so in future I think we'll be exploring this option, at least until I decide to pony up for the Chain of Command rules. I enjoy Bolt Action, and can see how, when one is in practice, it could play extremely quickly. However, I suspect that its lack of granularity may at some point become problematic.

Cheers.

Dark age cloth colours reference

Does what it says on the tin. Pictures for reference. Culled from all over the place, if it's yours and want it take down just shout at me.