After both getting sucked into painting up ‘just a few’ of the marvellous 18mm Wiglaf Miniatures, Nick and I got our act in gear and tried a couple of games using Dan Mersey’s Age of Penda rules. Intended for the 7th century early medieval period – my favourite era of the so-called Dark Ages that saw the reigns and campaigns of Cadwallon of Gywnedd, Penda of Mercia and Aethelfrith of Northumbria – these rules are very abstract and simple. Dan refers to them as a ‘light’ set of wargames rules, which is an apt description – they are fun and quick to play, not requiring too much space or too many minis.

The game is played on an offset grid (or hexes can also be used), five rows wide and five deep. In about an hour, I knocked up a quick cloth to try out the rules. I cut a 90 x 90cm piece of green polar fleece fabric, dusted it with a few shades of green and brown from my spray paint collection, then added a grid with brown paint and a few tufts from Gamers’ Grass. It’s not award-winning stuff but I just wanted something to get started. The grid, by the way, is 18cm squares – in Age of Penda, you need to have room for 6 units (3 friendly and 3 enemy) in each space, so with my 80 x 40mm unit bases, this was about right.

The cloth was, fortuitiously, a perfect fit for my kitchen table, which was to be the field of battle for the evening.

Army generation is very simple as there are only four troop types (armoured and unarmoured warriors, mounted warriors and skirmishers) so I was able to quickly knock up a couple of forces using the combined figures from Nick’s, Matt M’s and my collection of Wiglaf 18mm and Forged in battle 15mm figures:

SAXONS (66 points)

4 x armoured warriors (including Leader) @10 pts

3 x unarmoured warriors @ 6 pts

2 x skirmishers @ 4 pts

IRISH/ WELSH (68 points)

2 x armoured warriors (including Leader) @10 pts

6 x unarmoured warriors @ 6 pts

3 x skirmishers @ 4 pts

With that sorted, it was quickly down to business. Like Saga and boardgames such as Colt Express, the game turn has two phases: Tactics and Actions. In the Tactics Phase, players place their Tactics tokens on the chart, a sort of shared battleboard. This is great fun as each tactic can be chosen only once, therefore you have various options to stymie your opponent’s plans.

In our two games, the two Special Tactic spaces seemed to be at a premium, as they give a range of useful options, including the much-desired Charge tactic that allows a player to move and fight in the same activation. Seize The Initiative also saw a lot of use as the player with initiative gets the first placement of a Tactics token each turn. (The rather lovely coin we used for initiative is an inspiration token from the Beowulf RPG.)

And so, to battle. Game 1 was over in about thirty minutes. I tried to make use of my superior number of skirmishers to pepper the Saxons with arrows, but quickly learned that unsupported skirmishers die quickly! There is a Skirmish option that you can choose if you pick Special Tactic, but I hadn’t worked out how to use it at this point and got royally stuffed by heavily-armoured vengeful Saxons.

The vengeful Saxons then charged my Welsh King and his bodyguard – which didn’t go well for me! By placing three of his armoured units into one space, Nick had the maximum amount of fighting dice (each unit has a Battle Rating of 5, meaning they were rolling 15 dice, plus an extra 1 for his leader). Hits were inflicted on a 4+ which pretty much destroyed my opposing forces (1 armoured warrior unit with leader, 1 unarmoured warrior unit and 1 skirmishers). The charger has a distinct advantage in that their hits reduce the Battle Rating of the enemy units who only fight back (‘Battle Back’) with what they have left…in my case. nothing!

This concentration of force felt quite appropriate for early medieval combat, if a bit bruising for my first big combat! The loss of my leader reduced my Tactics tokens from 4 to 3, meaning that I had less options next turn, by which time I was reduced to 3 warrior units – army broken and game over.

Well, after getting the initial scrap out of the way, we re-set for game 2.

Game 2 was a more cagey affair to start with. Having learned my lesson about getting too close to charging Saxon nobles, I held back the Welsh and Irish line and instead sent forward all my skirmishers. They used the Rush special tactic to get close to the Saxon vanguard and then unleashed a hail of javelins, causing a few casualties. Units can activate more than once, so I then used a Move tactic to get them out of the way.

There then followed some back-and-forth shooting as both sides took hits and then used Rally actions to try to recover. One thing we were beginning to understand at this point was that keeping 3 units in a square was critical for success (as you can share out hits on your own units, which have the opportunity to rally), but isolated units were more likely to die quickly.

Seeing an opportunity on the left flank, I sent forward three Irish warrior units to take on two Saxon skirmishers and a unit of warriors. Predictably, this went in my favour, destroying the two skirmishers and damaging the warriors. Unfortunately, killing the skirmishers freed up space for two enemy units in my square, which promptly saw me getting charged from behind by Eyrefrith and two fresh Saxon noble warrior units! There’s no actual rear or flank charge rules in Age of Penda but the damage was real enough as my brave Irish were battered. I managed to hang on by spending multiple Tactics tokens on Rally actions (there’s also a Special Tactic that allows an extra Rally action), but of course this took up most of my turn and held up the rest of the army coming to help.

Eventually, the Saxons crushed the Irish who had been cut off from the rest of the force and took out another Welsh warrior unit, which pushed my army past breaking point. I thought I had been doing quite well but my impetuous flank attack cost me the game, and rightly so.

Nick and I thoroughly enjoyed our two games. As DBA players in days past, we both felt like it had that ‘fast play’ feel, especially working in a compact space and being able to get more than one game in of an evening. The Tactics Board was a fun concept which forced much decision-making, but unlike Saga, we didn’t spend half the game looking at the battleboard – it felt very much like a miniatures game driven by the board.

In terms of period feel, the simplicity of troop types, emphasis on attacking in force and vulnerability of lone units all worked well. The grid allows very quick, no fuss movement and shooting (I was always surprised when playing To The Strongest! how much time you save by not measuring at all, and it’s the same here.) By the same token, you don’t get the fine detail of shield wall tactics as units can be arranged however you like within the grid squares, but Age of Penda is very much a ‘top-down’ game and so this isn’t really within its remit. Likewise, individual leaders do not feature, apart from the option to buy more or less Tactics tokens to represent better or worse leadership. That said, it’s a highly refreshing and enjoyable game that Nick and I are both keen to play again soon.

Age of Penda is available from Wargames Vault as a PDF or hard copy; hard copies are also available from North Star in the UK.

The Greek Myth ‘side project’ has taken on a distinct whiff of Troy recently! While I press on with the excellent Lucid Eye Amazons, I bought a copy of Rosemary Sutcliff’s Black Ships before Troy and very much enjoyed Alan Lee’s superb illustrations as well. Lee’s depiction of Memnon, King of Ethiopia, caught my imagination and I thought I’d have a crack at creating a few African warriors too..

[Note to self: this is NOT the start of a full-on Trojan Wars project. Signed me, 26.6.22 🙂 ]

Sutcliff’s book has the Amazons as horse-riding warrior-archers and Alan Lee shows them as a mix of Scythian and Greek. Lucid Eye’s Steve Saleh has chosen a more overall Mycenean look and organisation for his Ziggurat range; his vision has warriors and archers on foot, combined with noble warriors in chariots with some light horse archers alongside. I like both but don’t have any of the horse archers yet, so that’s probably my next purchase.

Anyway, on with the Amazons themselves. I’ve already covered the initial painting and assembly in my previous blog article so I won’t go into too much detail here, but suffice to say my base colours are nearly all GW Contrast paints. Metallics have been added after varnishing to get that shine that I like!

And now, Ethiopians. I’ve got a very large collection of Ethiopians for the late 19th and early 20th century already, but these chaps are something different. As has been pointed out, many Greeks probably had little idea who Ethiopians were apart from their dark skin, so I had pretty much free rein here. I’ve gone for a rather fantastical mash-up of different plastic kit components. The main ingredient is bodies from the Perry Miniatures Ansar boxed set; this has been combined with some of the Beja Perry heads alongside crested helmets which were made from Victrix Iberian warrior heads with crests taken from Victrix Greeks. I fancied using green to tie all the models together and helmet crests were an ideal way to do this.

Some (admittedly North European) Bronze Age elements were added from the Oathmark Revenants and Skeleton sprues using the shields, swords and axes. Additional spear arms came from the Perry Ansar set and also the Wargames Atlantic Irish, which is rather handy for bare muscled arms. The large ‘cut out’ shields were robbed from the Wargames Atlantic Skeletons sprue (only fair, since those skellies have taken a lot of my Greek shields in the past.) It’s been said many times, but the availability of plastic sprues on eBay is a huge boost to this kind of kit bashing project.

With all this done, I green’stuffed a few gaps, gave the Ethiopians a quick coat of Halfords white primer and got to work with the GW Contrast paints. I played around with using different mixes of Cygor Brown, Wyldwood and Black Templar, and eventually settled on a roughly 50/50 mix of Cygor and Wyldwood. When dry, this got a lightly-applied highlight of Foundry Dusky Flesh 6A to pick out faces and raised muscles.

Clothing was Skeleton Horde or thinned-down Wyldwood (both highlighted with Vallejo Off-White acrylic when dry) or Aggaros Dunes (highlighted with Vallejo Dark Sand). The green helmet crests and the green tunic were a mix of Contrast Warp Lightning and Dark Angels Green.

The backs of the shields and the weapon hafts were painted with Wyldwood. The weapon hafts then had a coat of Miniatures Paints Chestnut Brown followed by streaks of Foundry Butter Fudge 55A to create a woodgrain effect.

The cow-hide shields were painted in a similar method to the Amazons with a base coat of black followed by Miniature Paints 84 Umber and 83 Chocolate Brown for the dark areas, Miniature Paints Mid-Grey + highlights of Vallejo Off-White for the light ones.

A very light dry brush of Vallejo Iraqi Sand was applied to bring out the details on some parts of the figures, e.g. over the hair (base coated in black) and the edges of tunics.

As with the Amazons, the bronze areas were base-coated with either black or GW Contrast Wyldwood, then painted and highlighted after varnishing to preserve the high shine that you can see in the photos. Colours used were Vallejo Brass with a wash of Winsor & Newton Nut Brown ink and a highlight of Vallejo Gold.

I’m pretty pleased with the Ethiopians as a fantasy/ Bronze Age mash-up – next step needs to be finding a chariot and miniature for Memnon himself, plus adding a few extra warriors.

In a break from Midgard and everything else, I took a trip down to Bristol to celebrate my old chum Rob’s birthday. As part of the festivities, Rob had laid on a day of gaming at his club venue (Bristol Big ‘Uns at Iron Acton Village Hall) where I was due to participate in a large Battle of Hastings game using his own War and Conquest rules.

Now, two confessions: despite being a huge fan of the Early Medieval period, I’d never refought Hastings; and, despite having owned a copy since its release, I’d never actually played War and Conquest! I was hopeful that my knowledge of Warhammer Ancient Battles and a quick flick through the rule book would see me through.  Fortunately, all my companions for the game had all played before – and the author of the rules was on hand. As it was, it was a pretty straightforward task and great fun. 

I was joined by Jordan with his two boys on the Saxon side; we faced off against the very genial duo of Simon and Dave with their immaculately painted Normans.  Although Rob had written the scenario and provided the Godwinsson brothers from his collection, we unfortunately had a last-minute drop out so had to cobble together the rest of the Saxons from Rob’s nearly-finished Vikings.  This wasn’t too much of a problem but we lost track of the points values! In the end, we put the units out, the game looked right, and we got down to starting the battle.

It kicked off, as you’d imagine, with the Normans sending their archers and crossbowmen out to launch a hail of missiles against the Saxon line. We forgot about the shield wall rule for a couple of turns before Harold and his boys decided to form up to deflect the enemy arrows!

We had just three units of 12 skirmishers each, and the Normans had at least double that in archers and crossbowmen. After a few rounds of missile fire, the Saxons had lost the shooting match and a couple of the units in the shield wall were beginning to look very battered. However, there was nothing to be gained by moving off the hill – yet.

The Normans then started advancing across the line, sending several units of knights and cavalry up the hill to mount speculative ‘hit and run’ attacks against the Saxons. There is a rule in WAC called ‘Glancing Attack’ that is a special ability for troops in skirmish order, and it was absolutely tailor made for this situation. A Glancing Attack allows the skirmish unit to run in, attack with every model within 6″ (while only suffering half return attacks) and then scamper off d6″ (or 3d6″ in the case of this scenario).

Units suffering a Glancing Attack do not usually pursue, but we decided that it would be right for them to do so in this particular scenario (one of the commonly-held theories of the Battle of Hastings is, of course, that the Saxons broke ranks to pursue fleeing Normans in either a real or feigned flight). However, the discipline held until near the end of the game when one of Gyrth Godwinsson’s units on the left flank eventually chased les Normands down the hill.

In what was, appropriately, a day-long game, the combination of Norman missiles and hit and run cavalry attacks seriously weakened some of the Saxon units. Worse, the Saxon left flank was in danger of being outflanked by speculative Norman advances. To counter this, I decided to send Leofwine and the units on the Saxon right in a slow advance down the slope to put some pressure on the invaders. In WAC, shieldwalls can advance 2″ per turn, so it was a slow crawl forwards, but it had the desired effect of disrupting the Norman archers and giving the cavalry less space in which to operate.

When we got within 8″, the Saxons were able to return fire with javelins, which proved devastating. Like Warhammer Ancient Battles, javelins in WAC do not suffer a move and shoot penalty, and my dice were rolling hot for once! Little by little, the Saxons ground down the Norman left. Bishop Odo was busily running up and down the line, keeping the troops going, but his soldiers were gradually running out of space, and the cavalry units mounting the Glancing Attacks were losing men. A unit of Norman milites managed to flank charge a large body of Saxons, but the plucky English held on until help arrived.

Although much of its Warhammer heritage is clear, WAC has a number of differences. We had a number of SIPS (Strategic Initiative Points, I think) that we could spend to influence the course of the battle. This is a lovely mechanic, but I don’t feel I can comment further as every attempted use of SIPs by the Saxons went heavily ‘Pete Tong’! On critical turns of the game, where we wanted to move first, we would throw in 2 SIPs in order to add +2 to the d6 roll-off for initiative. Of course, when you roll three consecutive ones, what can you do? 🙂

Anyway, back to the battle. On the Saxon left, Jordan had managed to fend off the Normans with a combination of refusing the flank and chucking javelins. When Gyrth’s unit broke its discipline and charged off into what should have been the jaws of death, it got lucky and put a Norman unit to flight.

By 4:00 pm, the Normans were struggling to make a sustained impact anywhere along the line. William threw in a final attack all along the front with his remaining spear and cavalry units, but the Saxons soaked up the charges with a combination of thrusting spears, numbers and – surprisingly good dice rolling. Now Harold’s unit of 48 Huscarls marched down the hill and created a pile of bodies as they took vengeance on the weakened Norman units. Duke William was busy trying to rally his troops, but in this case, even the Bastard had to concede it was time to head back to the ships. Bishop Odo was last seen waving his club and cursing Leofwine in French!

It was a brilliant day out and I cannot speak highly enough of the friendliness of the chaps playing our game; if that’s any indicator of the club, it may well be worth an occasional two-and-a-half hour drive to visit the Bristol Big ‘Uns. I also enjoyed War & Conquest – enough of a WAB vibe but with many neat features and modifications that made for an enjoyable game. Some of the fiddliness of WAB is still there (individual figure removal leading to a large ‘dead pile’ to sort out at the end of the game, counting up exact figures in combat and calculating casualties from mixed units), but if you can cope with that, I can thoroughly recommend WAC.

There were numerous requests after the recent Partizan show for a ‘how to’ on the terrain cloth that we used for our Battle of Degsastan game, so I’ve hauled out the photos from when I made it and written a short piece.

I spent years as a child gaming over a plain green table tennis table, which was just fine, but I distinctly remember every time I went for a walk in the countryside thinking ‘my terrain looks nothing like this.’ And it doesn’t really matter, does it? Gaming terrain has to be practical: you have to be able to pack it away easily; miniatures need to be able to stand on it; and it needs to be portable. [Points 1 and 3 can, of course, be solved if you have a large wargames room and plenty of storage for your collection of sculpted terrain boards – but I’ve never lived like that and am unlikely to do so. ]

But, y’know, to me it does matter. Gaming with miniatures is a visual hobby – we try to create our own little worlds to create an illusion where our heroes and monsters battle it out with each other for a evening. We often spend hours on individual models, swapping tips over social media about the best ways to paint mail armour, eyes or bronze helmets. When you look at a game, however, the biggest visual impact is the terrain, so I think it’s always been worth investing some time in that.

After the ubiquitous TSS expanded polystyrene terrain tiles of the 1980s and 90s, printed terrain cloths have been one of the huge breakthroughs of recent gaming history. Cigar Box Mats and Geek Villain (to name but two) now provide highly portable and visually stunning cloth mats. Unfortunately for me, I like making stuff, which is what led me to the sherpa fleece solution.

A few years ago, inspired by some of the stunning tables on the internet, I’d been toying around with various types of teddy bear fur fabric, trimming and painting away, but hadn’t quite found the right solution for what I had in mind. Teddy bear fur actually requires quite a lot of work to create the illusion of grass, and also, for me, conjures up a great impression of the Russian steppe or African savannah, but wasn’t quite right for the moors and valleys of the British Isles (mythical or otherwise) where my games were taking place. Eventually, a trip to Northern Ireland – surrounded by the most beautiful scenery – pushed me over the edge, and I decided to go looking for something else.

I’d always purchased any fabric for terrain projects direct from a market where I could physically see and feel what I was buying, but this is becoming harder to do and there’s actually a wider selection of fabrics out there online. Fortunately, many ebay sellers provide a posted sample for a nominal fee, so I decided to invest in a whole variety of these and see what came through the door. I have fond memories of the fleece that would have been ideal for making a Kermit the Frog puppet but was somewhat out of kilter for a Dark Age moorland!

When the sherpa fleece sample turned up, I nearly discounted it immediately: it didn’t look like what I was after. However, once I’d started giving it a brush-through with a wire brush, it started to transform into a more grass-like texture. I experimented with all kinds of different techniques

NB: before you rush out and buy some, you need to know that sherpa fleece is quite a ‘bouncy’ material; it has a fair bit of depth to it and is not ideal for single-figure based skirmish gaming. It can be shaved, trimmed and melted down to a lower level, but it is best suited for gaming using figures on large bases. (My games generally involve units on 120 x 60 mm bases and heroes on 40, 50 and 60mm round bases.) Dice trays are also useful to avoid cocked dice!

After a load of experimentation with my sample pieces, I decided to go for broke, working on a 12′ x 5′ cloth and recording my progress as I went along, so this is what follows.

STEP 1: Wire-brush the whole fleece to remove fluff and create texture

STEP 2: use scissors to trim down areas of the fleece and then a heat gun to flatten areas

STEP 3: using the heat gun to create roads. I decided that I wanted a trackway crossing my mat at an angle, so I carefully melted this in with very gentle blasts of the heat gun, flattening down each area with the sandpaper/ wooden spoon combo as I went.

STEP 4: initial painting. Using a house decorating brush, I dry-brushed the cloth in various different shades of green. All the paints were bottles of acrylic craft paint.

STEP 5a: creating some longer ‘grass’. To get the mix of grass lengths that I was after, I’d decided to combine some patches of longer pile fabric made from teddy bear fur. This was prepped by wire-brushing and trimming as usual.

STEP 5b: painting the teddy bear fur. This was a seriously messy process involving a 3″ fence brush and some green fence paint – basically slapping it on both sides of the fabric before combing it through to involve clumping.

STEP 5c: drying the teddy bear fur. Best done outside if you value your marriage/ significant relationship/ pets!

When it’s dry, sometimes it needs a bit more wire brushing to bring it back to life.

STEP 6: adding the ‘longer grass’ to the cloth. I cut irregular sections of the teddy bear fur and used them as a template to cut out slightly smaller sections of the sherpa fleece cloth. The teddy bear fur was then hot-glued into its place and very firmly pressed down.

STEP 7: adding heather. I invested in a pricey (£20) but lovely sheet of fake heather from Model Scene, cut it up into small irregular patches and then stuck these on to the base cloth (again with hot glue) in strategic places. This kind of fine detail, while expensive, lifts the visual impact of the whole cloth.

STEP 8: the road. A bigger road would probably have been better created as a separate ‘drop on’ piece of scenery, but in this case I wanted a winding track crossing the moor. I reckoned that I could get away with flexible frame sealant as long as it wasn’t too thick or wide, and I was right. This is cheap brown frame sealant spread thinly over the (heavily flattened) track area, which I then pressed sand into while it was still set for added texture.

STEP 9: earth patches. These were created by applying patches of PVA wood glue (good quality thick stuff from a DIY shop, not the thinned down ‘craft PVA’) with sand scattered on to them.

STEP 10: selected painting and staining. Burnt Umber craft acrylic was used to wash over the road and sandy patches to create a uniform base colour.

STEP 11: when dry, the road and soil patches were dry brushed with a light brown to bring up the detail and create contrast

STEP 12: scatter material was glued on with more PVA glue at the side of the roads and around the exposed soil patches. Various tufts and flowers were also added (these are from Gamers Grass) to create interest and variety around the cloth.

At this point, the cloth was pretty much finished. It was difficult laying the whole thing out at once on my kitchen table so I worked on sections at a time, adding tufts and scatter here and there until I was happy with it.

I rebased my Last Valley trees to fit with the table, adding matching tufts and cloth to the new bases, as well as some weighting underneath the base to help counteract the ‘bounciness’ of the sherpa fleece.

Sunday 22nd May saw an early start for the group as we all made our respective ways to the Newark Showground for the greatly-anticipated Partizan Show. I was reflecting that my first visit to Partizan was pretty much exactly 29 years ago; in 1993, my chum Jon and I caught a train to Newark Castle Station, followed by a leisurely two mile walk across the fields to get to Kelham Hall (the venue for much of Partizan’s history).

This day in ’93 was formative for me in many ways, but one memory sticks out: the Late Romans vs Picts affair being run on some of the Perry Twins’ stunning terrain boards by Jervis Johnson & co using a version of Warhammer rules – that later ended up in print as the much-loved Warhammer Ancient Battles. I remember being awed by the superbly-painted minis, the rocky crags and the ruined broch, thinking: “This is what I want to do!” (Being a skint student at the time, I bought three (individual) Foundry Picts from Dave Thomas, and that was it.)

Fast-forward to a slightly older me with a slightly bigger figure collection, and that’s exactly what we were up to at Partizan 2022 – and literally next door to the Perrys running their Battle of Dorking game. As we were setting up, Michael Perry wandered in with a characteristic handshake and friendly greeting before we got on with the business of the day: toy soldiers!

While I co-ordinate the games we run and usually sort the terrain, the actual running and set-up on a show day is most definitely a team effort. All five of us present – Paul, Chris, Pete, Martin and myself – had been busy re-organising and pooling our various Saxon and Celtic miniatures to create a spectacle involving around 1,000 figures on the table. (Not forgetting Tom, who put his lovely Footsore Saxon army into the pool despite getting double-booked and missing the show.) You can also read Martin’s blog on the game and the show here.

In addition, Martin did the graphics for the t-shirts and designed and printed the rather natty Midgard sticks that measure ‘Spear Throws’ in the game. But most importantly, everyone mucked in, talked to folk and kept the game running – unquestionably one of the hardest things to do at an incredibly busy show.

We were asked a few times about how we did the hills so here’s a few photos of the table set-up in progress. The cloth is home-made from a material called Sherpa Fleece – I may well do a blog article about this sometime if people would like to read it.

I’ve already written about the Degsastan scenario that we were playing and the forces used (see here if you want to know more), so I’ll cut to the action – as best as I can remember it! The very genial Alex from Storm of Steel dropped by and filmed a short interview about the Midgard rules, which you can see (about 3 minutes in) along with a full video report of the show – watch this here.

With both armies deployed for battle, the commanders carried out sacrifices in return for the favour of the gods (this is a special trait within Midgard that allows an ‘Omens’ roll at the start of the game with a random – hopefully favourable – result.) There were jeers as the Northumbrians’ sacrifed horse came up with a bunch of stinking entrails (rolling a one); across the dale, the Gaels cheered when a six was rolled and the goat sacrifice dictated a bonus of three Reputation tokens in Aedan’s goblet. Unfortunately, the priests also foretold that one of the Heroes would become Fated (this unfortunate trait means that a character is more likely to die, although hopefully in a heroic manner) – and that Fated hero was none other than Aedan himself, the King of Dal Riada.

With both forces deployed for battle across the Dawston Burn, Niall of the Swift Blade, champion of Dal Riada, was sent out to challenge the Northumbrians to single combat. Unwilling to lose any more face after the disastrous horse-sacrifice incident, Aethelfrith delegated Osric, one of his renowned thegns, to get out there and win some glory for Northumbria.

However, the Saxons ended up wincing as Niall lived up to his name and sliced a chunk out of Osric’s leg to the cheers of the Gaels. Both warriors circled the other, sparks and splinters flying from board and blade as each tried to gain the decisive blow. In the end, Niall thrust his blade over Osric’s shield, but not before the Saxon landed a mortal wound on his opponent; both ended up as food for ravens!

Nonetheless, this heroic challenge had stirred the blood of the watching armies and both sides advanced, hammering spear butts and sword pommels on their shields as they did so. On the Dal Riadan right, Mael Uma, a famous warlord from Ulster, saw an opportunity to strike the first blows of the battle and surged downhill towards the Dawston Burn (in Midgard, there is a reputation bonus for leading the first charge of the game.) Unfortunately, Mael Uma’s men couldn’t quite follow at the same speed, and he ended up fighting a losing battle against Theobald’s Saxons, despite the Irish skirmishers driving off a good number of Saxon archers.

The Irish attack on the right prompted the Saxon horsemen on the left to put the various Pictish and British riders under pressure, which they did with some alacrity. (The Saxon cavalry drew some discussion, as expected. I believe that the warriors of this era did fight mounted sometimes, but probably not in full-scale battles like this one. My scenario excuse is that this contingent turned up late on their horses and just rode straight in; the truth is that we had some nice mounted units which looked good skirmishing on the end of the line, so on they went!)

I’ll confess that the course of the battle then flowed on in the background as I ended up chatting to many lovely folk who had come over to watch the game or ask about the rules. A bit like a bard with one horn of mead too many, I noted the key events but may have missed some of the details.

The Saxons pushed forwards all along the line; Mael Uma was wounded in a single combat and then killed along with most of his brave Ui Neill warriors. Hering, son of Hussa – Aethelfrith’s estranged cousin, exiled from Northumbria – died in the press of bodies in the centre. But the most dramatic event occurred when King Aedan led his household warriors in a savage charge against Aethelfrith himself.

Hoping to break the Saxons in the time-honoured way of killing their leader – as well as gaining Reputation for the heroic act of charging the enemy commander – the Dal Riadan king found himself facing a hail of javelins. Rolling dice with the aplomb of a 12-year old, Paul scored an outrageous seven hits (this is a lot in Midgard), resulting in a faltering unit of Gaels. Worse, the ‘Risk to Heroes’ roll that Aedan needed to make to avoid the javelins himself ended up with a classic double one – which he could do nothing about, being Fated! (It’s possible that it was entirely his own fault for being carried around the battlefield on a shield.) Crunch.

After this, it was all downhill for the Gaelic forces. The death of Aedan caused a major loss of Reputation from the goblet which was compounded by the Saxons rolling up the damaged Dal Riadan units in the centre. When the army finally broke – just twenty minutes before the end of the show – Aethelfrith had clearly won a great victory. Five of the six Gaelic commanders were dead and Aedan’s son Domingart sorely wounded.

It was a fitting result to what had been a glorious day out, albeit one that left all of the team with sore throats and aching arms and legs from reaching into the centre of the six foot table to move the minis! I’ll admit that I did consider running a skirmish game for the next show as I was repacking 19 boxes’ worth of figures and terrain, but I’ll probably forget that by October!

If you came along for a chat or to watch the game, thank you very much indeed.

And those three Foundry Picts that I bought from Dave Thomas at Kelham Hall in 1993? Well, they were on the table 29 years later.

A preview of our game for the Partizan Show on May 22nd 2022

‘At this time Aethelfrith, a very brave king and most eager for glory, was ruling over the kingdom of Northumbria. He ravaged the Britons more extensively than any other English king…to him…could fittingly be applied the words…”[he] shall ravin as a wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey and at night shall divide the spoil.” For this reason, Aedan, king of the Irish living in Britain…marched against him with an immensely strong army; but he was defeated and fled with few survivors.

‘Indeed, almost all his army was cut to pieces in a very famous place called Degsastan, that is the stone of Degsa. In this fight Theobald, Aethelfrith’s brother, was killed together with all his army. Aethelfrith brought this war to an end in the year of our Lord 603…From that time no Irish king in Britain has dared to make war on the English.’

So it was that the Venerable Bede recalled this battle, writing around 730 CE. Details are scanty but what is clear is that the force under Aedan Mac Gabhran, King of Dal Riada, was huge by the standards of the time: estimates run up to around 5,000 men, including Aedan’s allies from Ulster and Northern Britain. The force of Aethelfrith was smaller but highly motivated and led by a dynamic and successful warlord who had already shown his ruthlessness and leadership in battle.

The battle was fought at Degsastan, ‘Degsa’s Stone’, an unknown location in Northern Britain in 603 (or possibly 604). Peter Marren’s book Battles of the Dark Ages presents the evidence for the most likely site being Dawston Rigg at Liddersdale in the Scottish Borders (there are other options but for simplicity I just followed his lead.) Guy Halsall’s article for Miniature Wargames magazine in the 1980s included a suggested map of deployment (reproduced in Peter Marren’s book), with the two opposing forces facing off across Dawston Burn, so I took this as my blueprint for the game. Historically, the battle was a mighty victory for Aethelfrith of Bernicia and paved the way for the Saxon domination of the north of England.

Sunday’s game is a run-out for my own Midgard rules which are due to be published by Reisswitz Press (Too Fat Lardies) at some point in the future. Our standard unit sizes for the game are around 10-12 miniatures on a 12cm wide base, but for the sake of spectacle – and the fun of getting all the toys on the table – we’ll be playing with extra large units on Sunday. It means that we’ll be doubling all the usual measurements but hopefully we’ll be able to crack through the game during the day.

We’re hoping to have around 1,000 miniatures on the table, ranging from the earliest Gripping Beast releases to the latest plastics. Our various collections feature large numbers of Gripping Beast and Foundry metals, along with various castings from Footsore, Crusader, Black Tree and others. It’s been a great pleasure getting these out again and back into action.

Here’s our order of battle for the game – some commanders are historically-based, others are fictional. Each force includes six Heroes to give us plenty of opportunity for heroic deeds and single combats.

NORTHUMBRIAN FORCES

Aethelfrith, King of Northumbria (Legendary Hero)

Theobald, brother of Aethelfrith (Major Hero)

Eanfrith, brother of Aethelfrith (Major Hero) [NB: Eanfrith is mentioned in the Irish Annals but not in the Anglo-Saxon sources – this may be a confusion with Theobald, but I have used his name here for a possible Saxon commander and otherwise unknown brother of Aethelfrith]

Cerdic, thegn of Bernicia (Minor Hero)

Wiglaf, Northumbrian thegn (Champion)

Osric, Northumbrian thegn (Champion)

3 x Gedriht (Saxon hearthguard)

7 x Saxon warriors

3 x Saxon skirmishers with bows and slings

2 x Saxon mounted warriors

DAL RIADAN FORCES

Aedan mac Gabhrain, King of Dal Riada (Mighty Hero)

Mael Uma, Ui Neill warlord (Mighty Hero)

Hering, Son of Hussa – exiled thegn of Bernicia, cousin of Aethelfrith (Minor Hero)

Domingart mac Aedan (Minor Hero)

Niall of the Swift Blade (Champion)

Culach, British chieftain (Champion)

2 x Household Warriors (Aedan, Mael Uma)

2 x Saxon Spearmen (Hering, son of Hussa)

6 x Irish/ British / Pictish warriors

4 x Skirmishers with bows and slings

4 x Mounted Warriors

Hope to see some of you at the show! Cheers.

With two weeks to go to the Partizan show in Newark, Scrivs kindly hosted a warm-up game for us in his lovely sunny conservatory. It’s a variant of the Battle of Degsastan game that I first played with Matt M back in in December – you can read all about that here. Since then, I’ve been busy developing the Midgard rules and putting together an ambitious scenario for Partizan, where you’ll be able to find us just inside the main door on the right (Stand DG13, Morris & Chums).

One of the key features of Midgard is that, as long as units have roughly the same frontage, you can play as big or as small a game as you like. One of our play testers is using 6mm models on 2.5cm unit bases, another is using 15mm WoFun flats on 4cm bases, and most of my games have been using 28mm miniatures on 12cm bases. However, the combined Dark Ages collections of our group are somewhat numerous so I came up with a plan: how about using double-sized units for Partizan? This would allow us to field an impressive display but still get the game finished in a few hours.

With units double the normal width and depth, we’ll be using quadruple the usual number of figures per unit (around 40 rather than 10). By my calculations, this will give us over a thousand figures on the table, and hopefully the game will crack along as well.

Anyway, Scrivs’ usual 6 x 5′ table didn’t allow for such extravagance, so we played with a simple layout using our usual 12cm units. We combined forces to field units from all four of the players’ collections and compared notes on manufacturers and figures we’d not seen before: Gripping Beast (metals and plastics) formed a large part of the collection, with more by Footsore, Warlord, Foundry and Black Tree amongst others. Terrain mat is by Geek Villain, with trees from Last Valley and a converted stream from S & A Scenics. We’ll run the Partizan layout on a slightly fancier set-up but this was fine for a run-through.

Scrivs and Chris (Winston ap Rees) took the role of Aethelfrith of Northumbria and his Saxons, trying to lay down the law with Aedan Mac Gabhran, King of Dal Riada (played by myself and Tom WD). The standard ‘charge them in the face’ tactic was slightly obstructed by having to cross the burn in the centre of the table, which resulted in some javelin-hurling across the water, causing some casualties amongst the Northumbrians. The Dal Riadans hurled themselves forwards with Saxon exile Hering, Son of Hussa* and his comitatus going straight for Aethelfrith himself.

[*We know that Hering was killed at Degsastan, but not which side he was fighting for! I have taken the line for this scenario that he had been exiled and was therefore fighting for Aedan Mac Gabhran – JM]

Despite his bold move, Hering was cut down by the warlord Aethelfrith in single combat. Battle was now raging all along the burn.

Over the course of the next two hours, the Northumbrians attacked all along the valley. Aethelfrith broke through the exiled Saxons, driving them back with his fearsome reputation and skill in sword-play.

However, the Dal Riadan army experienced success on both flanks, especially with Mael Uma’s Ulstermen. The shieldwall battle had broken down into a number of separate intense combats, with neither side able to gain the upper hand until Cerdic, thegn of Northumbria, took down Aedan Mac Gabhran – King of Dal Riada – in single combat. Aedan’s son Domingart followed soon after, and suddenly the Dal Riadans were almost leaderless. Only Mael Uma remained of the commanders.

Now the Northumbrians were able to push their advantage, driving back the demoralised Dal Riadans, Picts, Irish and Britons. Finally, Mael Uma himself fell fighting yet another single combat. The British horsemen pulled out a charge on the Saxons but it was too late – Aethelfrith was master of the field, having pulled off an even greater victory than the historical one.

An excellent fun game that could have gone either way! Look forward to playing it again at Partizan.

I’ve recently been looking to increase the quota of female warriors in my fantasy and mythological collection, so when Lucid Eye announced their Spring sale in March, I was straight over to their site. I think that their Amazons are the nicest on the market and had been also eyeing up some of the other minis in the fabulous Ziggurat range of fantasy ancients.

Rather like a visit to Ikea, I’d gone in with a list (maybe a couple of units of Amazon infantry and one or two heroes) but ended up leaving with rather more. The Amazon Battle Clan deal was too good to pass up – I mean, I like chariots, yeah, and there were a few new Red Book of the Elf King minis, and a rather cool centaur…

The order took a while to arrive (one month including having to email LE to check on progress), but last week a hefty box rolled up and I was able to unwrap the contents and sort the pieces. For me, Steve Saleh is one of the best sculptors out there – superb animation and detail – and I wasn’t disappointed with the sculpts.

Some of the Amazon characters, in particular, are stunning. However, a few of the castings – specifically the horses – had more flash than I was expecting. This is, of course, nothing that can’t be solved with a scalpel and file, and is pretty routine when you’ve been collecting metal models as long as I have. That said, LE minis have quite a high price point (normally £12 for 3 infantry or 2 cavalry in the Amazon range) and I guess I’d say that I felt that the overall quality control didn’t quite match the standards of the sculpting.

Anyway, I was left with a very exciting project in front of me. Unfortunately, I had some other minis higher up the priority list, but I couldn’t resist painting up a few trial Amazons. Selecting an archer, swordswoman and spear-armed warrior, I set to work assembling and undercoating.

The first two figures were simple to clean up and prepare; the spear-armed warrior was slightly more fiddly. Like some of the Red Book of the Elf King companions, the Amazons have been designed with a separate cast spear with the hand already moulded on. This fixes onto the (very slim) wrist, the idea being that you have a second point of contact where the spear rests on the shield. As others have mentioned in reviews of these minis, I would have preferred a solid fist that could be drilled out for a wire spear (as seen on Footsore Miniatures, among others). As it is, the separate hand is virtually impossible to drill out, so I settled for using the spear as is, accepting that every so often it may require bending back into shape. Once glued in position, however, the spear absolutely looks the part.

Assembly gripes over, it was on to painting, which was a complete joy. After a quick undercoat of Halfords white spray primer, I went in with what is becoming my standard technique at the moment: base layers of GW Contrast Paints followed by some selected highlights with various acrylics. As usual, it’s important to give Contrast Paints sufficient drying time to avoid neighbouring colours from bleeding into each other, so I alternated Amazons with a Frost Giant and cleaning up the new Footsore Welsh. I don’t try to painting to a competition-winning standard – I try to develop techniques that allow me to get a good-looking force onto the table – though occasionally I spend longer than I should on some little detail or other!

If you’re interested, colours used were:

Skin: GW Contrast Guilliman Flesh/ Gore Grunta Fur mix + a highlight of Flames of War Flat Flesh

Clothes & Helmet Crests:.

GW Contrast Skeleton Horde, Ultramarines Blue, Talassar Blue, thinned-down Wyldwood. These were highlighted in various acrylics.

Spear, Bow, Quiver, Shield Backs: Wyldwood

Hair: Wyldwood or Black Templar

Shield Fronts: Acrylic black + highlights of Miniature Paints 84 Umber and 83 Chocolate Brown; Vallejo Iraqi Sand + highlights of Vallejo Off-White

Metallic areas were base coated in black.

Following all these, I gave the models two light coats of matt spray varnish, and then set to on the metallics (I have taken to painting the metallics after varnishing to avoid killing the shine).

Bronze areas: Vallejo Brass with a wash of Winsor & Newton Nut Brown ink + a highlight of Vallejo Gold.

Iron areas: Army Painter Gun Metal with a wash of thinned down GW Contrast Black Templar + a highlight of Army Painter Shining Silver.

The sandy basing has set off the blue and white colour scheme a treat. I was contemplating trying some of these in red, but I think I like this one so much I’ll run with it.

When the current Dark Ages project is done, I’ll be delighted to return to these and get the whole force finished!

As a big 2000 AD fan in my teenage years, I got very excited when I heard that Warlord Games were producing a miniatures game based on the Slaine stories. Upon getting my grubby hands on some of the models ten days ago, I couldn’t wait to get them painted up for some Celtic gaming. This also turned out to be the catalyst that got two other Celtic beasties on my painting table finished off as well – Crom Cruach and a giant…

Having a birthday last week, I was fortunate enough to receive the Slaine boxed set, which contains a fair chunk of minis to get started with: Slaine, Warped Slaine, Ukko the Dwarf, Nest the Priestess, Slough Throt, a Drune priest, a Weirdstone and three Skull Swords. The figures are cast using Siocast (AKA ‘Warlord Resin’), a flexible and highly detailed plastic. It’s notoriously hard to clean up mould lines on Siocast figures – fortunately I was very pleasantly surprised with these, finding only a tiny amount of cleaning up was required – easily done with a fresh scalpel blade. Good job, Warlord!

The minis are on the tall side – as you can see from my pics below, they are around the 32-35mm mark. However, they are not unduly chunky and seem to fit well enough with my existing Celtic myth collection, which includes many metal Alternative Armies miniatures.

If you’ve not come across them, the AA Erin range includes over 85 different minis, including some Fomorians who are very much inspired by some of Simon Bisley’s art in Slaine: The Horned God (unlike the Warlord Fomorians, who are very much Glenn Fabry in style). Well worth a look!

All the figures are one-piece castings apart from Slaine, who required his arms to be superglued into position. This was much easier than expected thanks to the clean fit of the parts – unexpected but very welcome! I then glued them all to a strip of card for painting and gave them two light spray undercoats – firstly, Halfords Plastic Primer (my absolute go-to for any work on potentially flexible plastic) followed by Halfords Matt White.

These models are oozing with detail – ideal for any washes or, in my case, a base coat of GW Contrast paint. Basic colours used were:

Skin – Guilliman Flesh/ Gore-Grunta Fur (in various mixes)

Shield backs, weapon hafts, dark clothing, furs – Wyldwood

Boots, leatherwork, hair – Snakebite Leather/ Wyldwood/ Black Templar

Light clothing – Skeleton Horde

Slaine’s clothing – Dark Angels Green

Following these layers drying, I gave most parts of the models a top highlight of standard acrylic paint (various lighter shades that complemented the base Contrast layer). A very light drybrush of Vallejo Iraqi Sand was used to bring up the detail, especially on cloaks and hair. Metalwork was given a base of black acrylic before the whole model was sprayed with two light coats of matt varnish to protect the minis from handling (Contrast paint is particularly prone to rubbing off and needs sealing in).

Following this, it was time to do the metallics. I’ve taken to leaving these till after the matt varnish coat to avoid killing the shine. Over the black base, these were done as follows:

Iron – Army Painter Gunmetal with a wash of thinned down GW Contrast Black Templar (this has a blue-black hue and is perfect for this job); finished off with a painted highlight of Army Painter Shining Silver.

Bronze – Vallejo Brass with a was of Army Painter Strong Tone ink; finished off with a painted highlight of Vallejo Gold.

Bases were textured with my usual mix – a paste of burnt umber craft acrylic, filler and sand before drybrushing and decorating with a mix of static grass and tufts by Gamers Grass.

While I was about it, I worked on a giant that I’d bought to fit in with my Celtic myth stuff. This huge fella is one of the ridiculously good value creatures from Reaper Bones – a 13cm tall, 5 part plastic kit that cost me a whole £8.49 including delivery! (Golan, Hill Giant is his official title). Preparation was much the same as the Slaine models apart from giving it a thorough wash before assembly.

The giant received a similar paint job – base coats of Contrasts followed by highlights and some swirly tattoos to make him feel a bit more Celtic. Doubtless he’ll get an arrow in the head in his first game this week but he’s a cool model.

Crom! I was kindly gifted a D&D Purple Worm mini by a friend at the club a couple of years back, intending to turn it into the mighty worm god Crom Cruach….and never finished it. Armed with Contrast Paints and a renewed sense of purpose, I set to.

After the Halfords White Primer, I simply gave it an overall heavy base coat of GW Contrast Guilliman Flesh. When this was dry, I thinned down some Creed Camo to get a putrid effect on the lower body. The mouth was neatly filled with Blood Angels Red. The effect of these three colours was impressive on such a highly detailed casting.

After that, it was a case of adding a few extra highlights, dotting on the teeth and then simply making a good job of the base.

In the midst of my current Dark Ages resurgence, I decided that I really wanted to get a couple of units of 28mm Pictish nobles together. I’ve been using my Scots-Irish nobles as stand-ins for games of Midgard, but there was a Pictish itch that I really needed to scratch.

I had some Picts that had been sitting in the bits box for 15 years and augmented these with some reinforcements from Gripping Beast and West Wind Productions. After cleaning up the figures and gluing on shields and spears (and separate heads in the case of the West Wind minis), I plumped for a white undercoat. All my previous Dark Ages minis had been done with a black undercoat, layer, wash and highlight, but this time out I wanted to see if I could achieve similar – and faster – effects with the GW Contrast Paints.

As it turned out, I was able to achieve a result that I was more than happy with. Most areas of the figures had a base coat of a Contrast paint followed by a highlight or light dry brush of another colour. Colours like Skeleton Horde and Aggaros Dunes made an excellent base for linen tunics and robes; Dark Angels Green, Wyldwood and Nazrdreg Yellow were also used as base colours.

Painting skin always used to be a time-consuming process with a base of chestnut brown, a brown ink wash and then a highlight or two of flesh colour; this time out I experimented with Contrast Guilliman Flesh and Gore Grunta Fur, using different mixes for different areas of the figure. These had a few selected highlights, but I reckon overall that this new technique produced very similar results in about half the time that I used to spend on painting flesh.

Here’s a short gallery showing the figures in progress on the painting table.

Tunics, robes and cloaks were given a highlight in an appropriate acrylic, mostly applied in horizontal lines to suggest coarsely-woven fabric. A few selected cloaks had a simple plaid pattern painted on with a light yellow-brown.

After painting all the matt colours, I gave the figures two coats of spray varnish (I’m still using Testor’s Dullcote as I have some in store, but I’m told that Windsor and Newton Professional Matt is just as good). Metal areas were painted AFTER the varnish for two reasons: (1) the varnish kills the shine and (2) my experience has been that metal areas are less likely to chip with handling, and if they do, it is less visible than when a chip appears on hair or clothing.

Whatever the case, a good varnish is essential when working with Contrast paints as they are very susceptible to rubbing off with handling.

At this point, I’m going to give a quick plug to Jon Hodgson Maps. Jon runs Handiwork Games but is also well-known for his artwork on games such as The One Ring, Dragon Warriors and Warhammer Ancient Battles. I often find photo backgrounds used with miniatures to be slightly jarring – I don’t really want my minis to inhabit a hyper-realistic world. To me, they are characters in a narrative; I want them to feel at home in the illustrations of Angus McBride, Johan Egerkrans or Arthur Rackham, and to that end, a painted background is a far more atmospheric solution for me.

Jon offers his miniature backgrounds as part of his Patreon site: for a few dollars a month, you can join up and download all the available backgrounds (25+ and counting at the time of writing) and then have them printed to the size of your choice. I simply get mine colour copied onto A3 paper at the local copy shop and then blu-tack them to some Really Useful Boxes behind my terrain board.

Anyway, on with more Pict pics…

The banners were made of standard 80 gsm printer paper. I measured out the dimensions, sketched out some designs taken from Pictish stones and them painted them in using a variety of acrylics. Of course, we have no idea if the Picts used these designs on banners – or indeed if they had banners at all – but I enjoy using them to identify my units.

I have many books on the Picts for reference, but one of my favorites is ‘Surviving in Symbols: a Visit to the Pictish Nation’ by renowned archaeologist Martin Carver and published by Historic Scotland.

This is a brilliant little Osprey-sized book full of information, evidence and reconstructions, thankfully devoid of the fantasy that inhabits some depictions of the Picts. (Note that the artist has even included trousers for these guys – a great discussion point). It also contains a very helpful guide to the Pictish symbols which I copied directly for the banners.

I like to have my minis in a mixture of single and multi-bases, organised into units of around 10-12 figures on a 120 x 60mm base. Each figure has a 20 x 25mm base with magnetic sheet underneath that sticks onto a movement tray topped with steel paper and embellished around the edges with tufts and flock.

It was, as ever, a great pleasure to get these finished off and onto bases. My full Pictish army should be making an appearance at the Partizan show in May – where I expect it will roll atrocious dice, being newly-painted! Hope to see some of you there.