Battle of Trimos: Part 1

It has been a while since I have done a large scale wargame with my wooden warriors.  I have clearly moved into doing these more detailed figures that I've been using for rpgs and skirmish games, like the Conan series.  I still want to do a game of the raid on the tower where the trio gets the big ruby and kills the huge snake, but the challenge has been in finding something big enough but round enough that I can use for the tower (or I should say the various levels of the tower).  Still working on that, the forms used to pour concrete pillars look promising, but they are really hard to cut.  But enough of that, I did want to also do a larger scale wargame again using my "new" more detailed figures.

I of course tried this with the Dark Ages guys I did years ago, but it was just too hard to paint them already attached to the base, and how they were attached altered their appearance significantly, causing them to lose a lot of height.  I was never satisfied with them.  And, I'm just going to be honest, I've never been able to bring myself to base the larger scale figures as multiples on a base.  I just prefer them to be individually based.

I also know that I probably don't want, or even need, to do a project that is historical, unless it is in a new area that I don't have the older figures already done for.  There is just little reason to do Biblicals, or frankly anything up to about 100 BC because I for the most part already have those guys done in the older format.  Why do Macedonians and Persians again in these larger, more detailed figures?  I've already got a ton of the older ones done and they work just fine.

I've always been enthralled with Don Featherstone's book "War Games".  I love the rules, I love the pictures, I love the philosophy of gaming, and most of all, I love the Battle of Trimsos from Tony Bath's Hyboria campaign that is detailed in the book, pitting the Hyperboreans against the Hyrkanians.  And hey, isn't this just an extension of the Conan games I'm already doing, just larger scale battles instead of skirmishes?  Sure it is!  

So that is the next project, doing my version of the Battle of Trimsos, using my more recent versions of the wooden warriors mounted individually.  This also obviously lets me use these figures in skirmish games, and they are based in a way that is consistent with these older rules that while they may not be the most historically accurate rules in the world, they are certainly fun and great for convention games which is what I am after.

Rather than using the rules as they are presented in "War Games", as they are a bit confusing in places (the morale rules are frankly a hot mess), I went even further back and used Featherstone's "Lost Tales" book and the Ancients rules from it as a starting point, added in a simple command and control mechanism, but kept the movement, combat, and other core elements of the game.  The rules are done, I obviously need to playtest them, but I can't do that before I have figures to use.  So off to the crafting/painting table!

There are a total of 17 units in Tony's game, but I never liked that the Hyperboreans had one more war engine unit, so I decided to go with 8 units a side.  The first unit I decided to do was the Hyperborean Thurn Archers unit.  After doing a little reserach, the more contemporary way of looking at the Hyperboreans in the Hyboria world is as a mixture of primarily Russian/Slavic medieval units with a little Viking flavor added in.  This is nice because at the level of detail that I do my figures, they could be used for Medieval/Late Dark Ages Russians as well.  The archer figures tend to be a little more tricky than the heavy infantry guys, and since I am "fresh" in terms of my motivation to do this project, I thought it would be good to start with them.

 In the game the infantry units are 20 figures in size with usually a leader figure and a standard bearer.  These are really "place holder" figures in the game as they are there just to signify whether or not the command and control elements of the unit are still alive.  So this unit is 20 actual archers plus the leader and standard bearer figure.

Here are the Hyperborean Thurn Archers!

There is not a whole lot new construction wise except that I decided to do the heads differently in yet another attempt to do the mail coif.  The helmet is a larger split bead, head is a smaller split bead, and the mail coif is paper.  I am really happy with the way they turned out, and they were not difficult to do!

Off to a good start!  Onto the next unit, which will by the Hyrkanian 1st Imperial Foot Guards!

Back to Basics!

 First off, Happy New Year everyone!  Sorry it has been so long since my last post to this blog, but working my job in a COVID environment has turned out to be very challenging and has been extreme time consuming.

That said, I wanted to continue on with some of my wooden fellows and I have several constructions done for the more detailed figures (let's just say I have done some "caped crusader" figures).  But if I am honest with myself, these more detailed figures while I do enjoy them, are not really what prompted me to make wooden miniatures for wargaming out of spools, toothpicks, and such.  What I have always wanted to do was create miniatures that anyone could make and paint to a standard that they would be happy putting on the table top.

I am not sure if this is present on this blog or not, I don't think it is, but way back, about a decade ago to the day honestly (I can't believe it has been that long!), my original intention was not to create miniatures for wargaming.  What I wanted to do was to make playing pieces for the game of Chinese Chess.  Those of you who are not familiar with the game, it is a wonderful type of chess that is related to the game that we all call "chess" currently but has some important differences.  First, it is less abstracted in its pieces.  The pieces are more consistent with the types of troops used in actual ancient warfare.  For example, there are elephants, cannons, and chariots as pieces in Chinese Chess.  Second, the board is slightly different in that there is a "river" in the middle and at least the soldiers ("pawns") behave differently when they are on their side of the river compared to the enemy side.  In summary, the game really is more akin IMHO to ancient warfare than is what we call today "chess," at least in terms of its pieces.

The problem I encountered was, however, significant in that the game is played with flat discs (similar to checkers) as playing pieces and on these discs is written using a single Chinese character the name of the piece.  First challenge I encountered was, you guessed it, I don't read Chinese.  Second, the same characters are not always used for the same pieces in the two armies.  For example, the "elephant" character in the red army is a different character than the one used in the blue army for the "elephant" piece.  Yikes!  This proved to be a very difficult challenge for me to overcome.  Not only would I have to learn the characters for the pieces, I would in many cases have to learn two sets of characters for each piece depending on the army.

The good news for me, however, was that there were some 3D Chinese Chess sets available with pieces that were shaped like the troop type.  For example, the cannons looked like cannons, the elephants looked like elephants, etc.  Great!  I was in business!  But the issue was that these sets were a bit on the pricey side (for me anyway).  So after looking at these pieces, I thought, "I bet I can make a serviceable set of pieces out of wood craft parts that would allow me to play Chinese Chess.  I can use these spools with these mushroom caps to make 'pawns', and I can use these candle cups tipped at a 45 degree angle with these little discs on the side as wheels to make cannons," etc.  

But then once I did that it dawned on my that I could make huge armies for ancients wargames for very little money using these inexpensive craft parts and, equally importantly, with a simple paint scheme I could put hundreds of figures on the table top in not a lot of time.  And so that's what I did.  And since then, because of seeing the great work of all the folks out there that do more detailed figures, I started to do more detailed once myself.

I have decided, for a little while anyway, to return to my roots ... get back to basics ... to return to doing the simpler figures of a decade ago.  And further, to make pieces for board games that I really like.

Chess was an obvious choice, and I will do pieces for traditional chess eventually, but before that I have always wanted to do a homemade version of the old Parker Brothers' game "All the King's Men."  There are several variants out there, but this one is my favorite and it has a medieval theme.  Here is a picture of the game:

It is not the most popular of games, it is often seen as too simple and not challenging enough, but I have loved this game since my youth.  There are only three types of pieces, the King, four Knights, and seven Archers.  The King and the Archers each move one square.  The Knights can move any number of squares.  Fair enough, it is a very simple chess-like game, no doubt.  But the one thing that this game has that no other game at that time did (this was the late 70's) is that the board squares determine the direction the piece could move.  The distance in squares moved was established by the type of piece.  But the direction was dependent upon the arrows on the square the piece currently occupied.  It has been proposed by those who studied the game that this was done to simplify the movement of the pieces for beginners and make the game easier for even younger plays to enjoy.  Fair enough, I do think this is true.  But the wargamer in me saw something else, and it is what I have always loved about this game.  The squares effectively serve like terrain in a wargame.  If the square does not have a "forward" facing arrow in it, the piece cannot move in that direction.  This really is an abstraction of terrain in a wargame!

So, in an effort to return to my roots with crafting figures, I decided to make my own pieces for the game "All the King's Men."  The board?  I will try, but I know it is going to be difficult.  But I will try.

Consistent with the original, I am going to make a brown colored army and a cream colored army.  I am also sticking with the medieval theme of archers, knights, and a royal (I am going to do one King and one Queen however just for fun and also as a shout-out to the new Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit").  I am just going to use peg people and paint the designs on them to indicate the different playing pieces.  Keep it Simple Stupid approach here.  I am going to base coat all of the peg people in black and then paint the colors on top of this black base coat, being careful to use the "negative space" (in other words leave black showing throw) to create definition and a break between the different parts of the piece.  I am not shooting for something "realistic" or even necessarily proportional here.  In fact, I am only doing the figures from the waist up.  Instead, I am aiming for interesting looking playing pieces for a board game.  Also, I know that pieces of the same type will differ slightly from each other.  I'm okay with that.  This is supposed to be a "handmade" game, not a manufactured one.

 

Here are some photos of the brown colored army.

The King is about 3" tall, the Knights are about 2.5" tall and the Archers are 1.75" tall.  I did nothing to these pawns other than paint them.  The armor and weapons are somewhat abstracted, and I purposefully did not paint facial features on them.  This, along with their size difference, gives them more of a board game "playing piece" feel than a historical miniature wargame feel, which is what I was going for.

Here are the two "Royals" side by side, King on the left, Queen on the right.  Obviously I chose to use base colors for their outfits consistent with their army (brown and cream).

The Knights might be my favorite pieces.  I wanted them to have some plate armor on but also holding swords in their right hand and shields over their left arm.  So really, the plate armor is really only visible when looking at their helmet and their right arm holding the sword.  Again, I used the brown or cream colors to paint their surcoats as well as their shield front to make it easier to see in which army they serve.

Here is a better shot of the sword.  Super easy to do and I like the way they came out.

 

 

Here is a better shot of the right arm holding the sword.  Again, my goal was to create a "plate armor" look.

 

The archers were the first figures I did.  I couldn't decide whether to paint their mail head and shoulder covering as mail or just leave it gray.  I went with the more simple option of not painting the mail and just leaving it gray.  The bows they hold in hindsight I should have put in their other hand, but that's okay.  I used different colors for the bows to give more visual distinctiveness to these pieces as they are the smallest on the board.

The board will be tricky.  I have some ideas but even if I can't pull it off, I am happy with these playing pieces.

Another Unit of Fyrd

It's been a while since I posted, but I have been busy doing some projects, I just need to take some pictures.  Here is the newest unit of Fyrd I did, no different than the first unit.  Here they are by themselves.

And here they are side by side with the other unit.  Once again, these figures look the most impressive when in massed numbers I think.

For wargaming units, the next on my painting table is to finish the unit of Norman cavalry.  I did the test base a while ago, I just need to finish up three other bases and then present them as a whole unit.  That might not be for a little while, though.  I've been working on some figures for Thom over at Throwigames to use in his B/X game at North Texas RPG Con coming up early next month.  I've almost got all the monsters done (next post, probably this weekend).  Then I need to get 12 player character figures finished.  I've got six of them built, they just need paint, then I need to do six more.  It's going to be tight, I might not finish them, but honestly I have enough player character figures already done that I could make do with what I had.  I just wanted to do some special for this game given his needs.  So the monsters should be posted pretty soon, within a few days I would guess.  I've only got one more of them to paint.



Norman Cavalry Test Base

Finished painting the Norman Cavalry test base I put together about a couple of weeks ago.  I was worried if three on a base would be too many, and also I was worried that I wouldn't be able to paint them because they were too close together.  Both concerns ended up being "challenges" but not anything that would change my mind in basing them this way.  That said, with the four base unit, the two in the front are going to be three figures, but the two in the back are only going to be two figures.  My main concern is that the bases are not deep enough to allow two bases with three figures each being able to line up back to front without the horses hitting each other before the bases are flush.  Not only does that not look that great (too close together front to back) but I also want the bases to be flush if I can.  I ran into this problem with my old cavalry figures like the Macedonians and Romans as well but because the unit was several individual figures on a tray I could space them out so that they didn't bump or look funny.  With these, because the number of figures on the base is less important to me or the rules I will likely use with these figures, it is fine if the two rear bases have fewer horses.  Probably more accurate in how the unit would look en mass while moving about the battlefield anyway.  Anyway, here they are.

The Normans themselves are the same heads as the infantry figures construction wise.  The bodies, however, are 1/2" x 1/2" spools (slightly shorter than the more common 1/2" x 5/8" ones you will find in a craft store, I had to order these from my online craft parts supplier).  You need this shorter spool so that the figure does't sit too high in the saddle.  Same arms, same spears, same shields, same paper chainmail skirt as the infantry.  You can't see it in this figure but I did do the legs differently than I normally do.  They use stirrups so I wanted the leg to be straight and extended (rather than bent and clinging to the side of the horse like the Macedonians or Persians or Romans would have ridden during that earlier time).  So I used a tile spacer for the leg (straight with the curved end glued up under the chainmail skirt so that I could pivot the leg to a desired angle easily) and on the flat end I glued a little "foot" also made out of tile spacer.  You can see this better in some of the other pictures.  Also, painting wise, I realized that although I like the larger, extended helmet look I have on the infantry figures personally better, historically that is not what they would have looked like most likely.  The helmet would have been more of a cap and the metal around the backs of their necks and around their face would have been chainmail, so I painted these that way.  I like the other look better from an artistic point of view (this is a LOT of chainmail to be looking at) but historically, this way of doing it is more correct so I am going to stick with this from now on, at least for the Normans.  For their allies, I will probably use the older way of doing the helmets just so we will be able to tell the allies apart from the Normans on the table top.

From the rear.  I paint the tail on the horses but the manes are what I've always used, this extra fluffy pipe cleaner I get at Michaels.

I debated on whether to have the shields at the ready, or slung on their backs.  I think for the rear ranked bases I might actually have one of the figures with the shield on his back.

You can see the rider's leg better in this image to see what I'm talking about with the tile spacer and foot.  In terms of the horses I altered my construction slightly.  I've always been a little disappointed that my horses, unlike Dale's for example, do not have visible "necks."  So for these, I used an axle cap to create the feeling of a neck on the horse.  It works better with these figures too than my old ones because the Normans due to their construction are taller anyway, so without a neck the horses' heads would be too low.  And also even though the horses have necks now and are taller, the Norman riders are still tall enough to be looking over the horse's head, which is obviously important.  I used the same small (the smallest I can find actually) split eggs for the head, and both sets of legs (front and back).  I used a different body for the horse than I usually use as well.  I used to use a 1/2" x 5/8" spool, but I found this "Barrel Bead" that is 5'8" wide 3/8" hole that is also about 5/8" in length.  Not only does it create a smoother and better (IMO) body profile for the horse, it is a bit "beefier" than the spool which again goes better with these Norman figures because they tend to be a bit bigger than my previous attempts at figures like the Macedonians and Persians.

Finally, here is the base in the same picture with an infantry base so that you get a sense for the scale with the infantry figures.

I think they look pretty good together and I'm happy with how they turned out and that even though it was a little more challenging to paint them than the infantry all on the base when I do it, they were still "doable" and I will continue to construct and glue everything first (except the shields) and then paint them (gluing the shields and the manes on as the last step in the process).

Saxon Fyrd!

Been very busy with work of late, haven't got to do much painting.  But I did finally get my first unit of Saxon Fyrd finished.  Here they are.

They are similar to the Normans, except that I wanted them to have beards and hair visible so I just used the rounded top as the helmet.  Also, obviously, they have round shields.  The shields are a little too big for my taste, but I'm going to stick with them.  The heads and shields are the most interesting part of these figures, so they should be the most prominent features when viewing them from on the table top.

From the side.

You can see the hair and beards a bit better here.  Also, few of them are wearing armor, but you can see that even better from the rear shot.

It takes a while longer to paint this many different colors on them, but it's worth it.  Let's be honest, guys with the same helmet wearing the same basic tunic need some help to look interesting and different from one another, and color of the tunic and hair color is the easiest way to do that.

I've got a unit of Saxon slingers, and another unit of Saxon Fyrd unpainted on my painting table, as well as a test Norman cavalry figure.  I need to make another Norman cavalry figure or two so I can put them on a base and do a whole base of test figures.  Not sure what I will do next, but probably not another unit of Fyrd.  I need to paint something different.

Austro-Prussian War 1866

So I was working on some Dark Ages troops – Sub-Roman Britons (Kingdom of Strathclyde) and Anglo-Saxons when I found a whole batch of painted 15mm Dark Ages troops that I had purchased just before I stopped miniatures gaming three years ago. I packed them away without a second glance.

After I found them again, I had mixed feelings. Great to have troops to use, but it put a damper on my Minimalist Medievals project. Why build a duplicate army?

If you have been reading my posts on my wargaming blog, then you know that I have started going through some of the rules that I have purchased over the years and started trying out the ones that I have never played. (And there are many!) I wanted to try Neil Thomas' Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe 1815–1878 rules, so I started looking for another period to try. I would build an army for that, because I was curious whether these bead armies would work for any period other than ancients and medievals. (Round beads work so well for heads with or without helmets on them.)

One of the periods that has picqued my interest is the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, but I have 6mm troops for that (although not enough painted to play an actual game). I finally struck upon doing the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, otherwise known as The Seven Weeks' War. Prussia was trying to unify Germany and wanted to hold more sway over Southern Germany (Bavaria, Hanover, Baden, etc.), but Austria opposed them.

What is interesting about the Age of Rifle wars is how unbalanced the two sides are. Prussian infantry were equipped with breechloading rifles while the Austrians were still using rifled muskets and still believed in going in with the bayonet. Basically Firepower versus Shock tactics. Because of the lack of balance, I would either need to learn to love the Austrians (I hate intentionally giving my opponent the underdog) or commit to playing these solo.

So my first unit was an Austrian infantry unit (one base per unit). It uses the plastic tube beads for the body that I used for horse legs in previous builds. The head on these guys are a round bead. It was really an experiment.

Could I make the round beads look anything at all like a shako? If not, would it at least look acceptable?

Honestly, I like these guys. It may look like they are wearing black fezes, but I still like the look. One thing to note: I painted all of the figures while they were on popsicle sticks, so there is a little more detail on the figures in the back rank. I decided not to paint the locks of hair like I did on my Saxons though.

After seeing Matt's ancients in his last post, I suddenly realized that there were 1/4" screwhole plugs. There were other shapes I could use other than spheres and round tubes! I quickly place an order for button plugs, flathead plugs, and roundhead plugs and started experimenting. (You saw in my last post one of those experiments: tricornes.)

The next unit I painted actually did not use any of these new parts. I realized that the pony beads sort of had a barrel shape. They make really good crusader knight heads with that barrel style closed helm. They also made a good shape for a Hussar busby.

Here is a stand of Austrian Hussars. By then the Hussar units had definitely lost their flair. Their dolmans, atillas (no more pelisses), and trousers were all the same color now, your choice of dark blue or light blue. The busby bags were different colors, but otherwise that was it.

Although I had not been painting saddle blankets or other horse furniture with my other cavalry figures, I thought I might with these, but this was the period where they stopped using them! So no nice, red saddle blankets like the Napoleonic period. I really like these guys though.

When painting the figures I am trying just for basic colors, plus those details that truly stand out. If something is "iconic", it gets painted. For the hussars, it is the busby bags, as they were a different color from the rest of the uniform. Also, because it is visible from above and behind, it will be highly visible to players when the unit is resting on the gaming table.

Finally, I just had to paint some Prussian infantry in their pickelhaube helmets. Again, the idea is to paint the basic colors and only pick out what is iconic. The grey trousers do not stand out, so I did not paint them, keeping the entire lower half of the body blue.

What does stand out on these troops is their white belts (high contrast to the blue coat) and the brass details on the pickelhaube itself. I also decided to paint the collar and cuffs red, and think it was a good choice, as these also really stand out.

The pickelhaube has a small dab of hot glue at the top. I pulled the glue gun away from the head (a button plug) and then blew on the glue to get it to cool and harden. That made the spiky point. I then used scissors to cut the spike down to a reasonable length.

At first I painted a full-blown eagle, which is what the brass plate on the front of the helmet depicts. It was a pain, but I realized it would increase my painting time dramatically and in the end they would not be uniform. I decided to forego it and paint a simple oval. But something still did not look right. I painted the brass trim along the edge of the helmet. Again, time consuming and not very visible. So I painted over that too. Finally it struck me: the brass scales on the chin strap were often tied above the forward peak. By painting these not only would it show something you commonly see in the pictures, but it would emphasize the black area that represented the peak. It actually seemed to make it look like a helmet peak even though it was perfectly round like the rest of the plug's edges.

These guys, of course, took the most time of all, but I think it was worth the effort. Of course, having to paint the other four stands will tell me whether I think it is worth it in the end to paint all that detail.

I will go into the construction of these guys at another time. It may look like it is a button plug on top of a plastic tube bead, but there is more to it. The main difference with these figures is that I constructed and painted them on the base. I intentionally clustered the formation to minimize the amount of painting I would have to do, just as I did with the Saxon shieldwalls. This really does help reduce the time to paint and it forces you to focus on only those areas that can be seen from above and behind or above and in front.

Getting Medieval on the Road

I went to the local Michael's and found a cheap ($3) hot glue gun and said "Why not?" because my experiments with super glue had pretty much failed. Super glue just does not provide a strong enough hold when dealing with curved, plastic pony beads. Pony beads are basically 6 mm x 9 mm plastic beads with a large hole. I use two of these for horses, acting as the body.

To each of these I attach a 3 mm by 5 mm plastic, tubular bead.

Here is what it looks like attached.

I usually fill up the pony bead with hot glue first, then attach the "legs". When attaching  the front and back sets together I connect them with a spot of hot glue and then let the glue harden.

Although hot glue will typically set in 15 to 30 seconds, unless you are using cold water the glue generally takes a few minutes to harden. After it has hardened, I add more hot glue at the join point between the two pony beads, deliberately leaving a blob towards the bottom (above the horse's legs) as this gives the appearance of rider's legs.

As you can also see in the image above, I use a wooden, tubular bead for the horse's head (the light colored bead). All I can say about it is that it comes in a package of wooden beads with varied shapes and sizes that I buy at Hobby Lobby and it is the perfect size. Those five beads complete the horse for a 12 mm figure.

For the rider, I only need two more beads, one for the head and one for the body. Because these figures are sort of Chibi-style, with an oversized head compared to the body size, the rider's head is either an 8 mm round wooden bead or another 6 mm by 9 mm pony bead, depending upon which shape suits your subject better. (The pony bead provides more of a flat-topped barrel shape, while the wooden bead is a spherical shape.) The body is a small "seed" bead. It does not need to be as large as the body used for infantry as the rider's legs overlap the shape of the horse's body and is represented by hot glue.

Here are six cavalry, armed with swords and shields, shown at various angles.

Some cavalry with spears in upraised position.

Some cavalry with spears in lowered position (charging). All of these cavalry use pony beads for the heads, so will be better for medieval knights with barrel helmets, although the shields are not really the right shape for heater shields. But that is okay. I am trying to train myself that it will be the paint job and not the shape that will matter as much.

So far I have finished six sword-armed cavalry and 12 spear/lance-armed cavalry, plus 16 infantry in shield wall formation. So let's look at the infantry.

For these guys I used two beads, an 8 mm wooden sphere bead and a 6 mm wooden cube bead, hot glued one on top of the other. (The cube is the body.) To that I glue a piece of foam sheet cut out with a hole punch, which represents a shield and part of a wooden round toothpick to represent the spear. I only put the shield on the front row figures and the single back row figure where the shield would show.

As you can see in this image from above, adding shields to all of the figures in the back row is not necessary as they would never show, unless you created a sufficient gap between the two ranks. But if you did that, then you would be able to see the fronts of the second rank sufficiently that you would then have to paint it. That defeats the point of this minimalist style.

Once I paint these all up with black gesso a lot of the little holes and gaps will be filled up, in addition to acting as shadow for any area I cannot or do not paint.

I hope to have another three or four infantry shield wall units done in the upcoming week. I have to work on these at night, if only to stop me from buying more stuff at the local craft stores. I have no more room in my luggage! (Update: I got three infantry and five cavalry stands done.)

Here is the first infantry unit that I have finished. I have painted it all in black gesso in order to create shadows for wherever I cannot paint another color. I will only paint those areas of the figures that are easily seen. Hard to see places will be kept black. This unit will likely be an Anglo-Saxon fyrd unit. No armor, a couple of helmets (mostly caps), and lots of colors. In terms of Dux Bellorum, it will be an Ordinary Shieldwall unit.

As this unit is more orderly, it will be an Anglo-Saxon select fyrd unit. They will have body armor and metal helmets. In terms of Dux Bellorum they will be Noble Shieldwall units.



Here is another Anglo-Saxon fyrd units (Ordinary Shieldwall), painted up. As you can see in the images above, lots of color in the clothing (the square bead) and in the hair color, caps, and helmets.

The main point of emphasis to the eye, however, is the head from the back and the spear points, shields, and heads from the front. Lots of detail on the clothing or shield is wasted. I allowed myself some dots, stripes, and spirals for the shields, but I was not going to paint any animals or Celtic knots, that is for sure!

Opposing the Anglo-Saxons I wanted to use the Sub-Roman Britons. At first I thought about using the SRB in the Southwest of England, but later realized that the Kingdom of Strathclyde lasted much longer and had more enemies it could fight (lasting until the 10th century or so). Plus, they can be an all-cavalry force, if you want them to be! I thought that would be fun – cavalry and light, skirmishing infantry against a shieldwall – so I decided to make a few cavalry units.

This first one is sword-armed, just so it can be a little different from the rest. It will likely end up as the General's stand, or in Dux Bellorum, the Noble Companion Riders.

Here is a unit of Strathclyde cavalry. I will paint them with a few helmets and no body armor, making them Ordinary Riders for Dux Bellorum. They are armed with javelins and spears.



This Strathclyde unit has everyone wearing metal body armor and helmets, no count as Noble Riders. The weaponry are javelins and spears, so they will use their firepower to wear down the enemy before charging into them and breaking them. That is the plan at least.

As you can see, I really did not put a lot of effort into the shields. (I also forgot to paint the spear points!) The good thing is, I can always go back and paint a little more if the mood strikes me. The ones that have shields on the outer edge of the stand (the red one, in this case) and are easily accessible (the white one and possibly the orange one) would be the likeliest candidates. Maybe a simple two color scheme with painted halves, stripes, or dots. Plus iron shield bosses in the center.

So, all in all a pretty productive trip. I still have three more cavalry units to add weapons and shields to, but the horses and riders are all done. I stopped doing infantry because I was worried that they would not survive the trip. As all of the infantry in a unit were glued together in one big block, that made them less flexible. So I glued a couple of dozen heads to bodies and left it at that.

It is all coming together nicely. If the Dux Bellorum rules do not work out, there is always DBA (with 3" bases!) and several other rules I would like to try (like Conquerors and Kings).

Let's Get Minimal!

Have you ever purchased a new rule book for a new period that you have no figures for and then said: "Boy this is shiny and new. I wish I had two armie for this period so I could try these rules out!" Okay, I may not have said it that way, but I have said something like it. I think we have all thought it at one time.

If you follow my wargaming blog, daleswargames.blogspot.com, then you have probably seen a number of attempts on my part to solve that problem. In the past I have:

• Created paper armies where you print and cut out paper figures and mount them to bases. Generally the figures are all side-view, so you have to play from the side, rather than from behind your troops, otherwise it does not look very good.
• Created paper armies where you print groups of top-down figures and mount them to bases. These are essentially fancy boardgame counters. No reason not to use flat terrain too!
• Created elaborate drawings using computer programs like Battle Chronicler to register the moves of the electronic versions of the counters I used above.
• Bought and painted (or had painted) 6mm metal or plastic figures and mounted them to bases.

I was feeling a bit nostalgic last week and I created a few of the "Bead Knight" of my childhood. (See the post Let's Get Medieval and scroll down to the middle to see the results.) I brought back a lot of memories, but it also prompted a conversation with blog co-author Matt about how to solve the "ooh! New Shiny" problem by making your own armies. Yes, making miniatures takes time, but by making the figures a certain way, would it be possible to make the whole process, from start to finish (armies on the table), quicker?

The first part of our discussion centered around reducing the scale of the figure. By making the guys little:

The real beauty of these seems to me to be rapid construction and ease of construction, and the flat surfaces allow you to focus on what you want to paint for each figure and putting the signature detail there rather than worrying about all the little fiddly stuff on the smaller figures that no one sees on the gaming table even with highly detailed metal sculpts. You can see them when you hold them up 6 inches from your face, but on the table? All you really see is what you painted on your guy, which is the helmet, the covering for the horse, and the weapon/shield. The point of these wooden warriors in my view has always been less about making an equivalent wooden figure in detail compared to a metal sculpt, but instead to create a quicker to paint, lighter to carry figure that on the table in a gaming situation allows the person playing from 3+ feet away to say "those are knights" or "those are American WWII GIs" or "those are Macedonian skirmishers" or whatever.

The second part of that thought is that because the detail is not cast on the figure, there is a lot of incentive not to paint that detail. If you have ever painted old Scruby figures, you know what I mean. Scruby miniatures conveyed the shape, but rarely had cast details. So you could ignore the elements that would not normally be visible, like buttons. If the buttons are cast on, however, they will likely be wildly out of scale (in order to be visible) and will be noticed as not being painted when the figure is closely inspected as the detail casts a shadow.

Another issue with cast detail is that even when you want to paint that detail, say the shako cords or a metal device on a cartridge box, if you don't paint dead on "between the lines" you will notice it and try to correct. It is just human nature because when you are painting you are looking at the figure up close – probably closer than anyone else ever will – and these "flaws" leap out at you.

Without the detail cast on it is very easy to paint the detail where you want, how thick or thin you want, and how straight or rough you want. The non-uniformity of the figures then actually looks more realistic.

One set of rules that I wanted to try out, but had no armies for (despite having a number of DBA armies), is Dux Bellorum. They looked interesting, but later I heard that there was a flaw, but then others said that no, it was a great game. I wanted to find out myself. But how much time, effort, and money did I want to put into a period that I had no troops for, for a set of rules that may be flawed? Not much. So in comes the idea of making my own miniatures, using this minimalist approach.

First, I set off for the local Hobby Lobby and purchased several packs of beads. You can see the product of maybe an hour's worth of labor as I was still figuring out how I wanted to build these new figures. (I will do a construction article next time, after I return from my business trip.) Basically I have a Saxon shield wall on the left and a group of Norman Knights on the right. Each Saxon figure consisted of two beads, one-half of a round toothpick, and a sequin for the shield. The horses are actually made up using six beads, and with two beads, one-half of a round toothpick, and the top of a flat toothpick for each rider.

There are 16 infantry to a shieldwall base (12 for loose-order infantry and eight for skirmishing infantry), mounted on a 3" by 1 1/2" wooden base. There are six Knights to a base, but there will only be five for lighter cavalry and four for skirmishing cavalry.

Of course, the key to minimalism is to paint minimally! I could not resist painting the eyes. I can paint eyes pretty fast and I think it does matter, especially with the horses.

As Matt was saying, the principle items that you eye sees are the distinctive or "iconic" elements. For a Norman Knight that is the teardrop-shaped shield, the helmet, and the spear/lance. Everything else is essentially de-emphasized (surcoat is a simple blob of paint on the front and the back) or unpainted (using the black gesso primecoat to act as shadow).

There are so many details that could have been added on or painted, such as horse furniture and tack, swords, rider legs, horse's hooves and ears, etc. but even with these close-ups did you initially notice that they were missing? Does it really matter now that you have been alerted to take note?

To me the idea of minimalism is not minimizing the detail you do paint, but maximizing the number of details that you don't paint.

These guys took very little time to construct and paint up. The only thing I would change is that I would construct them with Gorilla Glue-brand super glue, rather than with hot glue. These figures are just too small for wielding a glue gun and the strings get to be a constant pain to remove. Where hot glue comes into its strength is to fill gaps between parts. These can be painted with black gesso and then they become shadow.

While I am away on my trip I will definitely be sitting in the hotel room with a few bags of beads and some super glue, making my Dux Bellorum army. Then I can start painting them when I return home.