After running a Midgard Heroic Battles game of Stamford Bridge 1066 for Peter Dennis and friends in June 2025, Mirko Bruner wondered if I’d like to be involved in a huge project to recreate the Battle of Hastings. This one wasn’t a hard decision!
The vision was to create the battle using 18mm tall Peter’s Paperboys soldiers (the brainchild of artist Peter Dennis), but using 1 figure for every man who fought in the battle! With estimated forces of around 7,000 – 8,000 a side, this would give us 14,000 – 16,000 miniatures on the table and a reasonable idea of what the battle might actually have looked like.
Peter already has a wonderful set of 28mm paper models for 1066, so it was down to Mirko to re-size and reorganise them into groups suitable for the huge units that he was planning. For Midgard Heroic Battles, we agreed on units with a 24 cm frontage with 230-350 models in each. Peter drew a schematic of the battlefield showing around 30 units a side, which was what I worked to while sorting out the forces for the game.
The construction was carried out by a host of Paperboys volunteers from around the world, who downloaded the files, printed them out and then glued and snipped the ranks of Normans and Saxons.
The battlefield was composed as of much paper as Peter could get in there! Using a method similar to building wings for a First World War plane, he created a cross-supported structure from cardboard for Senlac Hill.
This was then covered with a layer of paper and cloth before adding the scenic element, a 15 x 6′ custom-printed Cigar Box Mat from Cory Ring in the USA.
The backdrop is also paper on an MDF board, unsurprisingly, and really gives the impression of that autumn day in 1066.
You can see a short video of the initial assembly of the entire game here.
With the layout almost complete, I set to work on the Norman and English Force lists required for the day. Remembering the experiences of the huge Battle of Five Armies game that we ran in 2024/25, I opted for a programmed scenario where some of the turns have specific events. After about five different variants, we ran some test games to get the balance right for a decent game of Midgard. With Forces of around 700-900 points, it’s about three times the size of a standard game but should be completely playable during The Other Partizan show, where it’s making its debut on October 11th 2026 (as near to the 960th anniversary as we could manage).
Here’s the lists that we’re using at the show. I decided against using units armed with javelins for such a big game (avoiding the need to use Shot markers), and instead plumped for a new Throwing Spears Trait, where certain Units get a one-shot round of shooting. This has been given to the entire English front line so that they can emulate the hail of thrown missiles and stones that greeted the initial Norman attacks, but the one-shot use means that it won’t last for the whole battle, which feels right.
I went through multiple options on how to grade the Norman, Breton, French and Flemish cavalry, eventually deciding on a split between the Normans and the rest. They all ended up being rated as Heavy Riders (Medium Cavalry) in Midgard parlance, all with the Throwing Spears Trait. However, I gave the Normans an additional new Trait ‘God Wills It’ to reflect their stubborness and battle-winning role in the final stages of Hastings.
All of the cavalry and spearmen have the Replacements Trait to allow William to use his mounted milites as a third line when the infantry start to struggle.
Both Harold and William have been rated as Level 4 Legendary Heroes for this battle which is possibly generous but felt correct for a game of this magnitude!
If you want to see more of the project, check out Mirko’s Hastings 960 site here.
Battle reports will follow…
