More Flat Paper Anglo-Saxons

 

Here are some more of Peter Dennis' Paperboys paper flats, this time some mounted Saxons. I haven't done any horsemen before in this style. 

Like the infantry, they look best from directly in front or behind, but unlike the infantry, these horsemen have a much smaller angle of acceptability — the horses are depicted in a three-quarter view, but when turned to the side it soon becomes apparent that they have no actual length. Most of the time, on the wargames table, they'd be viewed pretty much square on though, and they are after all just gaming markers, so it's not a huge deal.

These figures will be of fairly limited usefulness on the tabletop, as the Saxons were really mounted infantry rather than cavalry, and almost always dismounted to fight.

Now I just have some missile troops to do, and then I'll have the basis of a 28mm 9th - 11th century Saxon army to build on.

 Next Day...

Here are the first few bases of archers completed, freshly mounted and still with their PVA boots wet.

I initially place the figures with superglue for rapid adhesion, but alone that glue isn't strong enough to stand up to repeated handling. So, for strength and durability, I encapsulate the feet of the figures with PVA. When that dries clear, it's pretty well invisible. 

 Next Next Day...

I've finished 12 bases of archers and one of slingers, which should be enough archers for just about any Anglo-Saxon army based for Hail Caesar. As for the slingers, I don't know... I probably should actually check the army lists.

I've also redesigned my movement trays to make them more compact and easier to pick up. 

The Wars of the Roses

Here's a group of 15mm Wars of the Roses men-at-arms I got more than 30 years ago as part of a sample pack from the Tin Soldier Company.

I don't really know anything about the WotR or who was who, so I just picked a couple of banners more or less at random. I don't have any immediate plans for a WotR army, but you never know.

Peasant Hovel Upgrade

Hovel, along with some very angry peasants.

I remodeled the thatch on my little peasant hovel in Blender using a new alpha brush, and got a far superior (and faster) result than the original. Then I split the STL in half fore and aft, and printed it so that the layer lines followed the fall of the thatch. The overall end result is much, much better than the original.

Regrettably, my desktop computer shat itself without warning, so until I get it fixed ($$$) I won't be able to update the online files. Hopefully that won't be too far away, because I'm currently having to use a couple of very inferior machines to access the internet at all, and working in Blender or the like is completely out of the question.

1980s Essex Medieval Heavy Foot Soldier

Here's an old Medieval wargaming miniature from the 1980s, produced by Essex Miniatures.

Essex were among the first to start producing larger scale 28mm miniatures, although they actually advertised them as 25mm. Up until then, 25mm had been the standard, and Essex armies towered over their opponents on the wargames table. Basing systems had been designed for 25mm figures too, so Essex figures tended to be very crowded on bases designed for the smaller scale.

They tended towards rather caricatured, cartoonish features, but I always rather liked them, except for their horses which looked a bit small and spindly underneath their gigantic riders. Eventually they also started producing 15mm miniatures which were excellent as well, and a lot more affordable than larger scale armies.

Finished at last...

These little guys are 15mm medieval crossbowmen. When I bought them, some years ago, they were being made by a company called Tabletop Games, long defunct, alas. The moulds now belong to someone else, I don't recall who, and they're still in production.

I'm not completely sure how long it's taken to actually get them painted, but it has to be at least ten years. Nobody can accuse me of leaping in and rushing things, that's for sure.

There are surprisingly few companies making 15mm medievals these days. I guess the period has fallen out of fashion or something.

I've based them for use with the Hail Caesar rules.

Base texturizing on the cheap

You can spend an arm and a leg on various flocks and powders and sand and stuff for texturizing figure bases, or you can spend nothing at all for as much stuff as you need to keep covering bases until the sun goes out and the universe descends into entropic stasis.

Go to any cabinetmaker or carpenter and ask them if you can have some MDF sawdust. They will probably look at you like you're crazy, but never mind about that.

MDF, when it is sawn, disintegrates into a fine, slightly clumpy powder that is perfect for texturing figure bases, and it doesn't look as out-of-scale as sand usually does. It can be coloured just by stirring some paint through it, letting it dry and rubbing it through a sieve, but its natural creamy-tan colour is pretty good for representing sand and dust.

I've coloured the MDF dust green, but that's all I've done with it, and I haven't contoured the base at all -- just glued the MDF dust straight on to a flat, painted bit of 3mm MDF. The variable sizes of the dust clumps make decent small surface rocks. If you wanted more depth and/or variation in colour, you could seal, wash and dry-brush it as well.

Making life hard for myself

Right now, when I have a minute spare and enough enthusiasm to sit down and squint through a magnifying visor at tiny metal men, I'm in the process of preparing a bunch of 15mm early medieval spearmen for painting and basing.

These little guys are (I think) from the now-defunct Tabletop Miniatures. I've had them sitting around for so long that I don't remember exactly what they're supposed to be, but when it comes to 11th-12th century Europe, one lot of heavy spearmen look much like another

That's the beauty of medieval European armies when it comes to wargaming; figures for one army will fit seamlessly into just about any other without looking out of place. An English peasant or soldier looked pretty much like a Spanish or French or German peasant or soldier. There are differences in detail of course, and some troops are visibly unique, but you can get away with a lot in scales as small as 15mm.

Anyway, I undercoated these guys many years ago, and dry-brushed their armour, and then put them away and forgot about them until yesterday. I found them languishing in a drawer and decided to finish them off.

The figures were originally cast with hefty great telephone-pole-like long-spears, and the metal being quite soft, they had ended up looking like those long foam noodles you give to kids to beat each other with without risking any actual injury — you can see some that I've cut off in the photo. If there's one thing I hate on a wargames figure, it's a bendy, noodly spear. So, I decided to get rid of the cast spears and replace them with nice new straight one made from wire. Or, in this case, dressmakers pins.

This is where life got difficult. Not very difficult you understand, just a bit tricky. Removing the upper part of the spear is straightforward enough, but the lower portion is cast into the figure's hauberk, and so has to be carved away. Then the hand has to be drilled out to receive the new wire spear. That's not too bad. The fiddly bit is actually making the spear.

I've seen spears made from wire that have just been cut and a blob of silver painted on the end to represent the spearhead, and from any distance at all they look fine, but my obsessive-compulsion forces me to go further. I hammer the pointed end of the pin flat, and then reshape it into a more-or-less spearhead-shaped wedge with a grindstone, then cut off the head of the pin and superglue it in place in the figure's hand.

All this takes, what, about 12 or 15 minutes per figure. Not much really, but it mounts up; this bunch are 20 figures, so that's four to six hours prep work before I even get on to painting the little bastards. So far I've got one guy finished and painted, another seven with nice new spears, and another twelve to go. And then there's the next unit of spearmen. And the next.

Sometimes I try to convince myself that maybe a bendy spear isn't that bad... but I can't. I just cant stand seeing the poor little metal buggers out there on the battlefield armed with nothing but a foam noodle.