Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Vikings










These are my Vikings, depicting the army of Harald the Hard. The first image is a whole army shot.
The second image (below) shows my command element, that of Harald of Norway. Harald is a Tin Soldier huscarl figure conversion, with a beard and wine bottle foil cape added. The standard bearer was painted by me, the banner is Harald's Landwaster raven banner carried at Stamford Bridge-the banner itself is actually a 28mm Gripping Beast effort. Harald was reputedly very tall himself, so only a great banner will do for such a man.
The third image (below) is that of the berserkirs, which have been heavily converted as well.
The final two shots show an extra blade element which is the start of a new DBA Viking army. Check out the detail on his cloak. The standard bearer was painted by me, and was a product of a head swap from a Tin Soldier Bondi figure with the head from their Viking javelinman figure. Again the banner is a 28mm Gripping Beast product. Basing by me.















Harold of the English


This is my command element (Blade in DBA). It depicts Harold Godwinson, and friends, of course. The standard bearer is carrying a red Wyvern, which both my daughters think is incredibly cute. I tend to agree.

DBA Anglo Danish


This is where it all began...with an old WRG 6th Edition Anglo-Danish army. Most of the painting and converting was done by a great artist, David Cooper, from Australia back in the late 1980's. The miniatures are by Tin Soldier Fgurines, the basing you see here is by me. It took a great deal of thought, prevarication and delay before I took the plunge and rebased, learning from the internet almost exlusively. This is a whole army shot, you can barely see the lone Psiloi hiding at the back, "in the rear, with the gear".

Saturday, October 10, 2009

De Bellis Antiquitatis

De Bellis Antiquitatis, or DBA for short, is a set of simple, fast play wargames rules for fighting ancient and medieval battles in miniature. I began playing WRG 6th Edition rules in the late 1980's, mainly with a large Anglo-Danish army, before taking a break. I came back to wargaming and modelling in search of something with a smaller template and quicker to play, not to mention less emphasis on list tinkering. I have found that in DBA. A rule set that I am also very interested in more recently is Impetus and Basic Impetus by Lorenzo Sartori. This promises to add a little bit more flavor to some of the armies which, under DBA, tend to be a little uni-dimentional. In terms of modelling and painting, I, like many, cut my teeth on 1/72 scale WW2, so although this blog will mainly focus on ancient and medieval wargames, other periods and genres will feature occasionally.