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

A post from the AHPC 10 sci fi and fantasy

I have posted a couple of figures on the analogue hobbies painting challenge which I'm taking part in again and just for a change I've painted a games Workshop gang member for their Necromundia game. (from last century but they have rereleased it recently)
Its a  nicely sculpted figure, I haven't painted anything non historical for over a  decade and have no real plans to do any more but here he is as a diversion I guess?

Following on from the redemptionist is a palaquin of Nurgle, an old school warhammer type model which I am offering up as my contribution to the challenge.  Once more this was a fun thing to do but I am back painting troops now!
Next up will probably be some terrain I have been working on for over a year on and off and is finally finished!

All the best Iain

Great Italian wars 39 more shot and some crossbow

Here is the balance of the old glory Swiss shot following on from their comrades who were pushed up the painting que for the TtS! Tournament, in addition there are six Perry plastic crossbow men (with metal 16th century heads) which seemed sensible to do at the same time in both cases I use a single row as skirmish missile and simply double up the depth to indicate formed missile units.

I know some people don't like old glory figures but I know that as far as the Italian wars are concerned their range is characterful, extensive, easy to paint and even though they are not quite as cheap as they were, still reasonably priced.

I've got these done so that I can field a Papal Condatta army to confront my Venetian Condatta army. My teenage daughter recently informed me ( after I had taught her to play gin rummy whilst in transit somewhere) that she just couldn't believe I hadn't shown her how to play games with miniatures, it was also unbelievable and a bit unjust apparently! Still I'm going to take her at her word show her how to play TtS! and no doubt get roundly beaten! Even one game would be good.

Next up maybe some terrain? Although I think I've said that before!

Best Iain

Terrain 10 Big old northern European church

In June I posted the last church I painted up which was a small English Hornby plastic model and I mentioned that I was painting another church from TT combat, which is a model from their WW2 range so I guess it's French/ northern European? Anyway its for 28mm figures and is realistically large!
It's also made of MDF,I have been working on some other TT combat MDF buildings for the Italian wars and have tried to work out the best way of finishing them. The thing is if I add texture then I run the risk of losing the etched detail, so I may as well have made them in foam board. The other option is to do thin washes so as not to lose the detail.That's broadly what I've done and here it is with an Essex musketeer.

I've also done a bit of dry brushing and have done the spire as stone, the roof as tiles and the chapel roof as lead. The roof lifts off and I've got some heroic looking pews that I might paint at some point but I can't honestly see why I would use the interior, still nice to have the option. It's a good kit with the instructions online and went together pretty easily.

I think it's alright,I don't think it's brilliant, it's so big which makes sense for skirmish games like bolt action but I realise that I now want slightly undersize buildings. I will be able to use this for St Johns Barnet and the smaller church can stand in as St Marys Monken Hadley, although I have been tempted by another smaller chapel!

As I had to work through the summer we had our family holiday last week at half term and we all went to the Amalfi coast, no photos of castles and fortifications but as this post is of an ecclesiastical bent I thought no one would object to some medieval cathedrals, first up Amalfi in a Byzantine style.

Nice door made in Syria, I really like the contrasting stonework. Next up the Norman cathedral of Salerno.

It's a really nice cathedral,Norman on the outside, mostly baroque,apart from these pulpits which are great I think.

I also wanted to go to Salerno while I was in the area as it was one of the beaches my dad landed on in WW2, he did Sicily,Anzio and Normandy as well in a landing ship tank and was left with an abiding dislike of general Mark Clarke, which I learned about at an early age. It was also Salerno where he and his shipmates looted a piano from the first floor of a bomb damaged hotel with no stairs, so nice to wander and try and guess which one it might be!

More terrain in the pipeline and some more Italian wars stuff.

All the best Iain