Tuesday 11 February 2020

Dux Bellorum 1 pagan English warband an AHPC post

I remember buying a wargames illustrated in Carlisle ,I'd just walked Hadrian's wall (which was great fun)
It  had an article on the War of the Roses and on the cover, an illustration of the battle of Barnet 1471 which continues to be a battle I want to cover again in better detail, but I digress.
 There was another article on a new rule set,Dux Bellorum by Dan Mersey covering warfare in  Britain between 400AD to the Norman era and seemed to have nice mechanisms of differentiating between each group of hairy psychopaths, and appeared to offer rather more than a shoving match with spears that dark age battles can become.
In the article there was an example of building two armies out of two of the new gripping beast plastic sets, at the same time another dark age skirmish game  Saga  came out and I duly bought the plastic boxes and both rule sets, clearly advertising in magazines work!
Some years later and very little/ nothing had happened, I'd bought some metal dark age figures on Ebay but that was it, I'd initially gone off the great idea because I didn't really want two dark age armies in chainmail,  it seemed a bit silly, anyway dux bellorum got bypassed by  Lion Rampant/Dragon Rampant and dux bellorum and Saga gathered dust .
I then went to Colours a couple of years ago and found someone selling lots of cheap Black tree design ancient Germans which I had no use for and late Romans, obviously I bought them.
  I hadn't bought the Picts which I deeply regretted and then saw the same chap at Salute and was able to buy the Picts, phew! With a few more purchases I now had enough figures to give me a pagan Saxon army , Pict army, Late Roman ,Irish and Romano Brits  the armies aren't that big ,the Saxon one is eight bases , I've chosen  ten figures a base ish , so there are 70 figures here, one more base to go, they're mostly Black tree design Germans with round shields,  the armoured chaps are gripping beast plastics in  the back rows are various unknown Ebay types. I quite like the barbaric hairy, fur covered pagan Angles, looking at them now they look a bit like a bunch of Game of thrones extras!

 A unit of companions.
 A noble unit


 Some back row chaps
 Another unit of nobles
 More back row types.
 Final unit of nobles.
 Back row types.
 Ordinary warriors

 Second unit of ordinary warriors
 Final unit of ordinary warriors.
Big mass of hairy pagan English.
I know the helmets are slightly anachronistic
 ( too late on the companians and too early on the nobles) having uniformed shield colours is also wrong but makes the disparate force hold together, plus they're my toys and I'm happy with them!
If it doesn't work out with Dux Bellorum there are plenty of other rulesets I could use them with so I'm just happy to have completed them!

Points 70 x 5 gives me 350 points so I'm halfway to my total.

 The shields are handpainted but were pretty straightforward so I wouldn't bother with extra points.
  I wont be doing quite so many in one go in future, I thought dark age figures, surely I can knock them out but that wasn't the case,  next post will be 4 figures!

All the best Iain

36 comments:

  1. Great looking force Iain, must be great to see this element of the project completed

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    1. Thanks Dave! Good to get a big lump done!
      Best Iain

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  2. Great looking forces Iain, look forward to the game reports! We've had so much fun with DB over the years.

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    1. Thanks Cyrus! Looking forward to finally giving this rule set a run out!
      Best Iain

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  3. I like these, strong dynamic poses. An interesting and lucky journey from project idea to completed stands.

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    1. Thanks Norm! Good to get these chaps done!
      Best Iain

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  4. Wow! 70 figures at once is a big undertaking especially in 28mm. Must be very rewarding to field an almost "instant" army coming off the painting desk in a single swipe.

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    1. Thanks Jonathan! Too many in one go to be honest but glad they're done now!
      Best Iain

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  5. Great job! That’s quite a lot of painting and they look really great. I love the dark ages and mine have set dormant for too long. 😀

    Unsolicited opinion: I found dux bellorum to be a poor rule set. I didn’t like that you have to keep your men from charging in too early which doesn’t suit my impression of shieldwall combat; I doubt troops were just dying to run into a wall of spears and shields. Plus, the only real use of the LP is to cancel hits. But that’s only my opinion that you didn’t ask for. 😀
    I’m still looking for my go to dark ages rule set.

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    1. Thanks Stew! Unsolicited opinions welcome! That sounds like warriors as opposed to shieldwall, either way I'm not fully commited and am quite prepared to try other rules!
      Best Iain

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  6. What a great haul of points Iain, that must have felt good! Superb job Sir.

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    1. Thanks Michael! Yes I'm very happy with them!
      Best Iain

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  7. That's simply fantstic. What a work!

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  8. A nice big lot of hairy pagans! Nice painting, and so many in one go!

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  9. That’s a huge batch, and all of them beautifully done Iain. I like the uniform shield design. Who’s to say that hey didn’t have a dictatorial chieftain?

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    1. Thanks Lawrence! Yes that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
      Best Iain

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  10. great Lain good test. congratulations nice army.

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  11. beautiful found the single bases inserted in a large, solve the diatribe of the basing I will adopt it for skirmishers.

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    1. The bases came from warbase, they do more irregular ones now!
      Best Iain

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  12. That's some force you put together and I cn think of at least galf a dozen sets of rules they could be used for/

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    1. Thanks Joe! Usefully flexible troops!
      Best Iain

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  13. Really impressive troops, Iain! Great work!

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  14. I love the Pagans Iain, these look great, loads of character as well.

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    1. Thanks Oli! Yes nice characterful sculpts!
      Best Iain

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  15. The longer than usual gap between posts makes senses Iain, if you have been painting all these figures...great work!

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    1. Thanks Keith! Yes, took longer than I planned!
      Best Iain

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  16. 70!? That's a lot in one go mate. Bravo on the effort and the result looks great!

    Almost makes me want to get back to my own Dark Ages project.

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    1. Thanks Dai! Yes 70 probably too many, be good to see you doing a dark age project!
      Best Iain

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