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Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

With the demise of Warhammer Fantasy battles, I've started refocusing my efforts on my Historicals. I have a number of armies built already and planning to expand them out in the future.

I've really been enjoying reading Saxon and Viking history and historical fiction for the last few years, so I was really quite happy putting these together. There are many subtle conversions, especially of the plastics.

The hersir unit is set up for WAB with the beserker being the second guy from the left above. The Jarl being the third guy in. The berserker is a converted Warlord Games barbarian.

Another closer shot of the front rank. Another berserker alongside a dane axe wielder. The two models on the right are both conversions of Warlord Games barbarians with Gripping Beast plastic viking heads and shields. I think they make good vikings.

The other thing I tried to do with this army is make all of the movement trays sort of tell a story, instead of being an eyesore geometric shape or hunk of metal or plastic. Views from the rear, the rear most ranks are painted to same detail as the characters and front rank. On the shields I managed to combine Little Big Men Studios transfers with my own hand-painted shields as a time saver. The other thing the LBMS transfers did was inspire me to put in much more detail, such as weathering and battle damage.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
And recently I wrote an article on my Romans for Warlord Games: http://www.warlordgames.com/showcase-imperial-romes-finest/

This is some older shots of the army, many of the units I have sold, so I'm in the process of rebuilding it:

The display is one that I use to use with my Warriors of Chaos army. Not really suited to Romans.



Some shots of the various units, archers, scorpions, cav. Definitely, not my best army, but I'm still happy with it.




This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/04/03 22:58:18


   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

Great looking units. The Vikings are very convincing! It really shows off what you can do with 28mm figures.

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in de
Battlefield Tourist






Nuremberg

Lovely work there, very inspiring! That unit of vikings is really showing the best side of mutlibasing.

I love the weathering on your shields - any tips on how to achieve that effect?

   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

 Da Boss wrote:
Lovely work there, very inspiring! That unit of vikings is really showing the best side of mutlibasing.

I love the weathering on your shields - any tips on how to achieve that effect?


Thanks. For the shields in the front rank I use Little Big Men transfers, they do it for you. Several of their transfers are just halves and quarters, and are fairly easy to match in style and detail. I start out just doing some general easy designs with the paint and then when I get done I go back and do the weathering. I paint the scars/marks first, using very fine lines and dots of a very dark almost black, brown and then highlight that with a very light brown. After I do the scars and marks, I drybrush lightly the bottoms of the shields with a very light brown.

As to the multibasing, I typically will do the front ranks and characters/commands on individual bases. The second rank usually is where I will multi-base quite a bit. The third rank will be a mix. This is the fourth unit of Hirdman along with its movement tray and the casaulties that I then made a mold of them to vary the poses. This unit I wanted to do some modeling that gave them more of a shieldwall appearance. The pic below shows the one model that I converted crouching down a bit, with a normal model, and then one with a shield over the face. I also added one of my cast dead in the midst of the unit.


I converted a couple of the shieldwall models crouching and banging their shields. The one with the shield over his head is a converted Wargames Factory viking, but most of the models are Gripping Beasts.

Good shot of the crouching model and the spear over the top of him. Also a shot of the backs of the units. I added quite a git of hair, similar to some of the metal GB models. Relatively easy conversions.


I'll add the shields later after painting them and the models separately.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A slightly exaggerated example of my painted shields, an idea that I blatantly stole from my good buddy Mike Butcher, these are my shieldwall or Skjaldborg markers for my Vikings in the WAB format.



It was also a good way to practice painting shields, again I was looking to match my rank & file that have some with the Little Big Men transfers. Based much like my army.



This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/03 14:01:13


   
Made in de
Battlefield Tourist






Nuremberg

Lovely stuff. Great to see the WIP for your units too. The shields are one of the most intimidating things for me about painting my vikings (they've been sitting waiting for paint for a couple of years now). Maybe I should look into transfers as a simple solution.

   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

 Da Boss wrote:
Lovely stuff. Great to see the WIP for your units too. The shields are one of the most intimidating things for me about painting my vikings (they've been sitting waiting for paint for a couple of years now). Maybe I should look into transfers as a simple solution.


The Little Big Men transfers are kind of like stickers. Paint the shield white, apply the transfer, paint the boss black, then paint the boss with your metallic colors.

Battle Flag also makes transfers, traditional water slides, and they are are also pretty good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
After I sold off some components including the Praetorian unit and some of the command models. Decided that I wanted a few more elements and better looking unit of veterans. While building my movement trays for my Vikings, I decided my Romans were, well quite boring. So new movement trays were in order also. This is the unit in WIP form that appeared in my article for Warlord Games.




I previously used the GW modular trays, while nice and easy to put together, they are rather uninspiring to look at. I need something that has more appeal, eyecandy. The models with the shields on them are just tacked on to see how they look. While Warlord's Legions kit is nice, it does rather lack variety in pose so I did a few different things, stuff that I did not take time to do on the previous Legions.

I also picked up some of their slinger Legion metals, for a bit more variety. I once again reminded myself of why I do not like metal, its the fixing and filing of the flash. Its much easier to remove flash from plastic.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/03 22:57:56


   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

More Vikings ready to pillage....Pics of Unit #2. Much like the first unit, this another big unit of Hersirs. Similar to the other unit, I made up a movement tray with a bunch of eye candy to show off the unit. This included various bits of armor, weapons, shields, bodies.

The second guy from the right with the dane axe is a converted War Factory Games model.


Cape on the one guy in the back rank is from the Fire Forge knight models.

With these Vikings, I wanted to step up my game a bit on the basing. Really liked using the various flowering weeds, grasses and tufts.



Yea that Gripping Beast berserker is really looking old, its a rough casting that I'm going to be replacing shortly with a different model.



   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





CL VI Store in at the Cyber Center of Excellence

Great looking units.

What rule set are you using (going to use) with these?


Every time a terrorist dies a Paratrooper gets his wings. 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Maryland

 CptJake wrote:
What rule set are you using (going to use) with these?


He did mention WAB (Warhammer Ancient Battle) in earlier posts.

   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





CL VI Store in at the Cyber Center of Excellence

 infinite_array wrote:
 CptJake wrote:
What rule set are you using (going to use) with these?


He did mention WAB (Warhammer Ancient Battle) in earlier posts.


Thanks. The stunning paint jobs and basing caused me to miss that bit in the text.


Every time a terrorist dies a Paratrooper gets his wings. 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Maryland

I had to go back and look myself. I was also too busy looking at the miniatures, especially the Romans!

   
Made in de
Battlefield Tourist






Nuremberg

There is just so much to take in in each picture.

   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

 infinite_array wrote:
 CptJake wrote:
What rule set are you using (going to use) with these?


He did mention WAB (Warhammer Ancient Battle) in earlier posts.


WAB 2.0 and I also play a little bit of Clash of Empires which is basically WAB like. With the Vikings, the single models are on 20s I'll use them in SAGA, as well as occassionally Lion/Dragon Rampant.

   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

My last Roman unit that I completed and that was used in my article that I wrote for Warlord Games. The article gives a bit of insight on colors and such.





Second rank is the more dynamic group of metal models:



Poor barbarians.....

   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

I also wanted to do a mid crusades WAB army for a long time, prior to Fireforge, so I started converting away, gradually. I converted a bunch of Perry Miniatures 1090's Normans to get them a little bit further into the crusades. Not really a fan of some of the other manufacturer's miniatures, these are different story. And of course I like to make things very different than your normal Perry Miniature Normans. I dare to be different.

The Perry's sculpt some beautiful looking miniatures, so I was a little concerned about converting them. Their Hospitallers are nice models, but not quite what I wanted to do for everything. I wanted some sleeveless tunics also. Trying to move these guys a bit further into the 1100s-1200s and get out of the 1090s.



Note the plastic shield is a GW High Elf shield. This is what I came up with after looking at reams of reference materials.



I do not however plan to put caripsons on every horse, just way too much work, but quite a few of them will have them.




The final army ended up being around the 1000 pt mark.

Now I have a bunch of Fireforge stuff to paint and not convert and some point to add to my Perry stuff as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And some of the colorful unit of knights.

Some of them are my converted Perry Miniatures knights mixed with the Perry’s Holy Order/Hospitaller Knights.


The ones without hoods and sleeve-less surcoats are my conversions. I think this unit of knights turned out pretty good.

I also played around a bit with color schemes, make some of them Knights of Jeruselem, some Ibelin color schemes, Franks, English, and Spaniard themes.


I'm extremely happy with the way the horses turned out. I really wish that the Perry's someday convert some of their horses to give them caparisons, because its a lot of work to do. The musician horse is kind of a miscast, but it does have a very dynamic look to it.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
These are my Hospitallers. I’ve never been crazy about painting black and white, but I knew I wanted to do a Holy Order and this one of my favorite choices. Some of them are my converted Perry Miniatures knights mixed with the Perry’s Holy Order/Hospitaller Knights.

The ones without hoods and sleeve-less surcoats are my conversions, like the knight with the couched lance and standard bearer. The two horses with the caparisons are my conversions with GS and BS.




The basing is HO scale railroad ballast, with some gravel, Joefix grass tufts, and GW Straw. I'm happy with the basing, its a bit different from what I normally do.


The banner did not turn out great, but I will fix that at a later date. Its a painted paper banner with some foil in between the layers to keep the bend.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/04/08 12:13:42


   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

You don't need to put caparisons on all the horses, because Mediaeval equipment was never standardised. As long as enough of the figures have correct contemporary stuff, the others can have older stuff and they just represent mounted sergeants or poorer knights.

Armies and Enemies of the Crusades by Ian Heath is the classic book on equipment and battles of the period for wargamers.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Armies-Enemies-Crusades-1096-1291-Heath/dp/0904417085/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1460117838&sr=8-1&keywords=armies+and+enemies+of+the+crusades

I think your helmet look good for 1100s. By 1200s, the shield would be smaller, the chainmail would be full coverage, the helmets would normally be full coverage with a pointy top, for knights at any rate.

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in de
Battlefield Tourist






Nuremberg

Those Crusaders look lovely. I have plans to make some Templars and Hospitaliers myself, but was planning on using the Fireforge Plastics. The GS work you've done here is great.

   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

 Da Boss wrote:
Those Crusaders look lovely. I have plans to make some Templars and Hospitaliers myself, but was planning on using the Fireforge Plastics. The GS work you've done here is great.
Back when I did these, Fireforge did not exist. I'll be adding some of them also.

   
Made in gb
Fresh-Faced New User



England (North West)

Great looking figures. They work really well as complete units on the movement trays. Thanks for sharing.
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

Some of my medieval knights. These are converted Conquest Games plastic Normans.






   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

One of my Foundry Romans....





Automatically Appended Next Post:
And my finished Auxiliary cavalry unit.







This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/16 16:26:07


   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

Onward, the third unit of Hersirs and Jarl. Pretty much the same thing going on here as with the other units. Lots of candy and gripping Beast goodness. The two berserkers are the old casts, and are showing their age, I did a bit of smoothing and updating on them, and I already have models to replace them. Despite those, there are quite a few of my favorite figures in this unit.

I really like the main character below, the hornblower next to him is a cool figure also. The standard bearer turned out pretty cool, one of the plastic models converted up with a banner left over from the Fire Forge knights.




More pics of the back ranks. These are painted to the same quality as the front. I'll eventually shoot some pics of them, as they are pretty cool in their own right.


I really dig the GB plastics. They are very nicely detailed models with a lot of variety.

   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




Nottingham, UK

Dammit. You've made my wallet cry.

 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

winterdyne wrote:
Dammit. You've made my wallet cry.


I aim to please.....thanks for the kind words.

   
Made in gb
Joined the Military for Authentic Experience





On an Express Elevator to Hell!!

What a great thread, some absolutely cracking pieces of work here.

I love how you have given each unit its own character, and thought about how they would look good as a collective.

Look forward to seeing further updates, thanks for posting

Epic 30K&40K! A new players guide, contributors welcome https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/751316.page
Small but perfectly formed! A Great Crusade Epic 6mm project: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/694411.page

 
   
Made in nz
Regular Dakkanaut




NZ

Some really nice stuff here.
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

As I stated previously, I've had these done for quite sometime. I'm in the process of adding a bunch of stuff to them and also to crossover into the Saxon side as well. Much of that is on my paint desk currently which I often give peaks at the blog. There will be other conversions and I obtained a bunch of minis from Foundry and also from Saxon Miniatures. So there is much more to come along with a huge Viking Longship project and some terrain as well. And I'm now back at adding things and building some more stuff, getting some paint work in.

Anyways this is the 4th unit of Hirdmen that I have finished.








This message was edited 8 times. Last update was at 2017/03/26 16:09:13


   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




The Crosse, Wisc.

I updated the archer unit and have a second one to add to the army. The original unit was Gripping Beast metals, the additions are Conquest games to get me to two full units. Ignore the movement tray that is for the next unit of infantry.










   
 
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