WIP#2 Ledung Warriors

Continued the painting of the last unit of Swedish Ledung Soldiers...

Have a nice weekend !

WIP Ledung Warriors

I start to see the end of the first part of my Baltic Crusade Project, left to do are:

• 12 Heathen Warriors - Almost done pictures in a day or so...
• 6 Swedish Crusader Knights - Not started.
• 12 Swedish Ledung Soldiers - Made some small conversions as you can see in the picture below, they are now all primed and the painting can start...

Heathen Warlord

Let me introduce the Heathen Warlord and his Hird. Now I only got 12 Hethens left to finish and the Heathen warband are complete, at least for now...

I also have some Swedish Crusades left, 12 Ledung soldiers and 6 Mounted Knights, to finish part 1 of my Baltic Crusade Project.

The minis in the pictures are: Front Row: 3xGripping Beast Jomsvikings.

Back row are first the Gripping Beast Scot giveaway from Northern Fury, the bannerman are from the Gripping Beast Jomsviking box and the last to the far right is the Gripping Beast Harold Godwinson mini.

Painting a Heathen Banner...

I have come around to paint the Banner for the Heathen Warlord, the new one as the last Warlord was slain by the Crusaders commanded by my Daughter...that turns 10 today...they grow to fast...

Anyway back to the banner buisness...

At first I was aiming for a Wolf banner but in the end I settled for something for the Odin worshipers.

I found this pictures of Odins Ravens Hugin and Munin, a good inspiration for my Banner

Based on this Cloakbuckle I made me a concept sketch of how I wanted the ravens to be on the banner, please don´t laugh...

So the painting started... I made the banner of linnen cloth and used black as basic colour followed by a Red base, Vallejo Hull Red I think.

I then freehanded the outline of the Ravens based on my concept sketch.

Followed  by adding some more details with a dark gray.

I now added a bases for some knotwork around the edges. and added some more red, this time Cavalry Brown.

Some more hightlights for the gray and also the red...

Some tearing to have look a bit more used and barbaric;)

Glued to the banner pole.

Given to the proud banner man.

And last a picture from the photobox.

The rest of the Warlords hird are also geting some paint at the moment...here a picture od then showing of their new Daneaxes;)

The minis in the last picture are:

Front Row: 2xGripping Beast Jomsvikings and the last to the far right is the Gripping Beast Harold Godwinson mini:)

Back row are first the Gripping Beast Scot giveaway from Northern Fury and the other two are from the Gripping Beast Jomsviking box. 

Mounted Danish Knight

Just had to paint one more Dansih Knight, also from the House of Thott.

Mini from the Perry HYW range.

And here a picture of the 3 Thott´s so far, suppouse one of them are the Danish Knight and member of the Privy Council Peder Axelsson of the House of Thott. Rumour tell there will be some soldiers to fight for them to...

Lion Rampant the first test game

I have had the honoure to help Daniel Mersey (Authour of the Dux Bellorum rules) out with some playtesting of his new wargaming rules, Lion Rampant.

Lion Rampant are a medieval, big skirmish game. Single mounted 28mm minis are prefered as there are casualty remowal during game (multibased minis ofcours work with markes, but some of the Skirmish feel are lost), the rules will also work with use of smaller or bigges scale minis to:)

For a basic Lion Rampant Host you will need about 12 mounted and 38 foot minis, but the rules are so flexible that you get a good game using smaller forces as you will see in the AAR below.

Each Host are divided in to groups of 12 or 6 minis, so a basic Hoast compose of about 6 groups depending of the troop types.

The Host used in this AAR vas alittle more then half the usual and was composed of:

Heathen (Commanded by me)
1x12 Wb - Warband (including the Leader)
1x12 Wb - Warband
1x6 Ps - Skirmish Archers
1x6 LH - Light Horse Archers

Crusaders (Commanded by the Daughter)
1x6 Kn - Knights (including the leader), normaly Impetuous but these was fielded as Drilled.
1x12 Bd/Bw - Ledung Infantry a mix of heavy spear and heavy bow/crossbow
1x12 Bd/Bw - Ledung Infantry this unis with the scenario VIP that sould be escorted at all time.

The scenario stated that the Crusader should escort a VIP across the board, the Pagans wanted ofcourse to stop this from hapen. The 2 Hoast was deployed on the both short edges. We played this out on the kitchen table so it was just 110x80 cm

Skirmisher and Warband can move through and fight in terrain without any penalties...

The pagans sent the Skirmishers and Light Horses forward to harass the advancing Crusaders as the warband made a general advance...

The Bishop choose to ruch forward with his knights to sweep a cleare way for the VIP... The Allmoge started an slow advance, especialy for the group that chose to move through the mudy field...

In Lion Rampant each unit that want to act have to roll a activation roll. It is easyier to activate a unit that want to do what it "historicly was intendend for"...i.e. Knights likes? to charge, Skirmishers to move, and so on. If you fail an activation it is "turn over"...

As the Crusaders so incautious sent their leader in the first line the Pagan Leader choose to scream out a challange of single combat to the Bishop...that accepted !

The 2 warriors left the protection of their retinues and approched each other for the duel...

The pagan leader should have understand that it is a bad idea to fight a mounted knight all alone... after a short fight the Bishop was the vinner and the Pagans lead was spild on the white snow...

This event sent a chock wave throught the pagan warband that started to retreat...

Meanwhile the Pagan Warbands rallied their skirmishers and Light Horses continued to harass the Bishops Knights and take their toll...

One of the pagan warband rallied with a hurry and advanced and Charged the Crusader Ledung Soldiers. Warband are good in the Charge and Leding Soldiers are good in the defense... 

In combat all minis in a group take part in the fighting.

As the Bishop and his knights in vain tried to chase away the Skirmisher the Ledung escort continued to fight their way through the mud pagan hoard...

After a long a brutal combat the Crusader Ledung soldiers had were down the pagans and had a free rout away from the battlefield...

The Bishop noticed the chase and hurried after them, leaving the last group of mud sooaked Ledung soldiers to their destiny in the pagan land...

This was a wery nice try out game, suppouse the rules got a god judgemetn as the Daughter understod them quickley, learnde to quickly to exploit them and afterwards have asked to play again...

I will post some more Lion Rampant AAR during the spring and hope fully be able to tell you some more about the rules if Dan let me;)

4th group of Heathen Warriors

Sorry but there are more Heathen incoming, seems to be quite a few to convert for the Crusaders...

after this group there will be two more of 6 minis and last a Heatguard group of  6 minis including Leader and Banner.

All the minis in this group are from the Gripping Best Jomsviking range EXCEPT the minia hiding in the back row to the right...

The man svinging a daneaxe I got as a gift from a friend and converted him some... new weapon, changed the helmet in to a fur cap and gave him a saex and pouch from the GB plastic Vikings. 

I might have been told the manufacture and range but I don´t remember at the moment...any guesses ????

Craving for 15mm Vikings?

I found a buch of unpainted 15mm Vikings in a box at home, my last FoG army that newer got quite finished and never will, at least not by me...

So are you Craving for some 450ish 15mm Vikings, including about 40 archers, 2 ships, 10 mounted and camp followers, please let me know dalauppror@gmail.com and I hope we can sort some thing out.

A swift calculation tells me I bought them for about £150, I dont expect to get it all back but if you give me postage cost (£15 Worldwide) and some of the money I spent or maybe a trade (28mm Dark Age, medieval etc I´m open minded) I hope we have a deal:)

By the way, the minis are a mix of manufacturs, mostly Esses, OldGlory 15´s and Baueda.

Pagan Light Horse

For my on going Baltic Crusade project I decided to reinforce the Heathens with some old Light Horse Archeres minis I had in my collection.

I painted these some 10 years ago for my Late Romas, but now they got an new wasch and a little fixing, new snow bases and are moved some 800 years forward...

Suppose they will represen generic Nomad Mercenarys, maybe of  Pechenegs descent or as the Russians called them "Svoi Pogyane" i.e. "Our own Pagans" ;)

3rd Group of Heathen Warriors

More pagans to fight against the Swedish Crusaders...

This time we have the following minis...

Front row: Gripping Beast - Jomsviking, Gripping Beast - Scott, givaway?, Gripping Beast - Jomsviking

Back row: Artizan - Viking, and 2 Gripping Beast - Jomsvikings.

The Daughter paint some more...:)

My 9...soon 10 year old Daughter have shown some more interst in painting minis, so she have now finished yet one more Fantasy mini.

This time a old Games Workshop Bretonnian minis, not sure what it was called, maybe "Lady of the lake" or just "Grail Sorceress" ?  Anyway I´m glad that she seems to like painting it:)

YES ! I made the base, so it would look like the rest of the minis we will use in our winter fantasy setting...

I also got a bit inspired so I found some GW wolfs in the old bit box...

The Wolfs will be perfect to hunt down the 2 heroes of the story...2 small children in mideaval outfit, that I also had to paint... The minis are from Hasslefree Miniatures.

Heathen Warriors #2

Here comes the rest of the 2nd groupe of Heathen Warriors, hereto the Berserk belong, but he is hiding in 2:nd line, maybe not that berserk or he havent been feed the death cap just yet;)

Minis from several sources...

Front row: Gripping Beast-Jomsviking, Warlord, Gripping Beast-Jomsviking

Back row: Musketeer-Saxon, Foundry-Viking and Gripping Beast-Berserk