Saxon Warband? What Saxon Warband?

Yes indeed, I have a Saxon warband. How did this happen? 

Let's just step back a few months. Regular readers may recall that earlier this year I added Victrix Germanic tribes heads to six figures from a Gripping Beast set of Dark Age Warriors to make up a group of slingers for my Infamy, Infamy! project.

Those Gripping Beast figures were bought at the same time as a box of their Vikings and Saxon Thegns. This was a few years ago, when we first heard about the Saga rules from Studio Tomahawk. It turned out those rules were not my cup of tea and so the figures were consigned to the stash. In fact, I sold the Vikings and Saxon Thegns at a Bring & Buy a few years later, as I had no apparent need for them. I hung on to the Dark Age Warriors, imagining they might be useful to make up groups of warrior infantry for Lion Rampant. Not that I did much about it, they lingered in storage for some time.

Putting together the slingers was the motivation I needed to do something with the remaining figures. I had a few sets of Little Big Men shield transfers for the Saxons and so I used those as part of the project. My initial impression of the Gripping Beast figures was not great, especially when compared with the lovely Victrix figures I had just been working on. As a result, I decided I wouldn't base them individually, they would look better packed tighter together using multi-basing instead of sabot bases.

While multi-basing can be restrictive, I tried to think about making the figures as versatile as possible for different rule sets. A group of warrior infantry/light infantry in Lion Rampant is twelve figures, a group of warriors for Dux Britanniarum is six figures, and, a base width for Midgard is 120mm. These were all rules that I might consider using. So, the solution was six figures to a 60mmx60mm base. Two bases would give me the right width for Midgard or a group of twelve for Lion Rampant. As both Lion Rampant and Dux Britanniarum require casualty removal, I would include a mini-dice frame on each base to record losses.

That gave me enough figures for six bases, with a couple of figures to spare.

I wasn't happy with the original slingers and ended up converting Victrix figures to make these for the German tribe. At the same time, I added a group of archers to the tribe using Victrix's Dark Age Archers set. It occurred to me that their clothing closely resembled the Gripping Beast figures. 

As these were for my Infamy, Infamy! project, they were based individually. It then occurred to me that, four archers or slingers are part of a warband in Dux Britanniarum. I could make up 60mmx60mm sabot bases for Midgard to accomodate two figures each for skirmishers. Six archers/slingers or a mix of these would work as skirmishers/archers for Lion Rampant. Just to be safe I thought I should add another half dozen archers from the Gripping Beast set.

Suddenly, I had the makings of an early medieval warband. Not Dark Age note, I'm hip to the new terminology. So, with archers, slingers and warriors carrying Saxon shields, it would make sense to add groups of Thegns. Before I knew it, three frames of Gipping Beast Saxon Thegns were in the cart (yeah, I know, I know, I sold the original set I had).

That gave me more than enough to make up three groups of warriors and two of hearthguard for a Saxon warband for Dux Britanniarum.

I had the warriors, I had the archers, all that was missing were suitable figures for the nobles. That was an easy enough fix. I tracked down a single frame of the Gripping Beast Saxon Thegn command and a similar single frame of Victrix Saxon command. The Gripping Beast figures (below) obviously fit in well with the existing warrior figures.

I like the Victrix figures, but was a little concerned at first, as they were noticeably bigger than those from Gripping Beast. That said, they are lovely figures. They gave me an impressive warlord and his champion.

The starting warband for Dux Britanniarum requires a Warlord, his champion and two nobles. The Victrix figures gave me those.

My initial concerns on figure sizes didn't appear so bad once they were painted and based. Here below, the Gripping Beast commander (second from right) is not too obviously smaller.

Generally, the larger size is not noticeable, even when they are with the groups of warriors.

Although, it does depend on the angle. In the pictures below, it is more obvious.

So, there you go, suddenly, hey presto, there's a warband for Dux Britanniarum.

With thirty six based warriors that also gives me three units of warrior infantry for Lion Rampant.

When added to two units of Elite Infantry that then gives me an early Anglo-Saxon warband for that rule set.

Now, it gets worse. Making up the GB Dark Age Warriors gave me more figures than I would need for a Saxon warband for Dux Britanniarum, in fact, I've worked out that if I were to buy another twenty or so figures of Romano-British or Arthurian types, that would give me enough figures for both opposing warbands for Dux Britanniarum. Hmmm, twenty figures, that's not a lot now, is it......

Of course, all of this makes little sense. Dave and I have been playing a Dux Britanniarum campaign quite happily using his figures. While I do have other gaming opponents, I'm not at all certain I need all these. But hey, who am I kidding, this is an illness, as much as it is a hobby. I need them.

Germanic Warriors for Infamy, Infamy

This is my first foray into the ancient period and was inspired by the Infamy, Infamy! rules from Too Fat Lardies. Some of this journey I documented earlier, but I thought I'd wrap up the completed project in a single post. 

I've put together a German warband based on the plastic figure set from Victrix. The set comes with sixty plastic figures and almost gives enough for a complete warband for Infamy, Infamy! 'Almost' being the key word.

There is a good selection of figures. From those barely dressed...

To several equipped with stolen Roman armour and other hardware. These will make for good Foederati.

The Germanic warband is composed principally of groups of warriors, with ten figures per group. The only type of formation these groups can form, if it can indeed be termed a formation, is as a mob. For that reason I've resisted the temptation to use sabot basing for the groups, preferring instead to go for a more unstructured look, but one that still allows me to remove casualties. I've opted for basing with either three, two or one figure to a base.

This worked well for the Mahdists, when I put together my colonial project set in Sudan.

A group of ten is composed of two bases with three figures, one with two figures and two individually based.

The leader figures are based individually, but on bases the same length as the three figure bases. 

I've added rocks to help identify which leader corresponds to which card in Infamy, Infamy!

One reason I've based them like that is so they can sit in between two of the three figure bases and in so doing give each group the same frontage as the sabot bases I will use for the Romans (ah yes, I didn't mention that, did I? I've gone right down the rabbit hole.... ).

That allows the figures and bases to be staggered, to give a much more irregular appearance. One that should contrast nicely with the Romans and their more disciplined formations.

They've already featured in one game. I think this basing has worked well and creates a suitably impressive looking barbarian mob.

The warrior groups have three options for supporting missile units. Only one of these is possible to create from the base set of Victrix figures and that's a group of six armed with javelins.

The other two options are slingers and archers. Initially, I thought an easy solution for the slingers was to make use of a box of Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors that I had sitting around from a Viking project I'd abandoned (it was intended for playing Saga, but I lost complete interest after playing a few games with those rules and finding them not to my liking).

The Gripping Beast set includes hands with slings, so I thought I could use a few of the spare heads from the Victrix set with the GB bodies and that would help blend these in with my warband. Unfortunately, I found the Victrix heads did not sit well on the Gripping Beast bodies, they seem too large. To make matters worse, I wasn't convinced by the poses of the GB figures, they lacked any real dynamism. They would be passable in an emergency, but otherwise I didn't want to use them.

My solution was to buy an additional sprue of the Victrix figures and add the sling hands to some of those models. I was much, much happier with the result. Obviously, the figures blend in with the other warriors, but perhaps even more importantly, the poses are much more dynamic. Interestingly, I used a few of the GB heads to add variety and these sit much better on the Victrix bodies than the other way around.

I know plastic figures are not popular with all gamers, but this highlighted to me one of their advantages, which is their versatility when it comes to kit bashing or adding variation. Take the two figures below. Both are based on the exact same Victrix body. However, a simple conversion to add a sling hand and a head turned to the side (to alter the angle the body faces the enemy), had enabled me to have two quite different figures based on the same body.

That left a group of six archers. I looked at a sprue of Victrix Dark Age archers and realised these would work well enough for the Germans. The clothing was very similar and I had plenty of spare heads I could add. That was a straightforward enough project, made even simpler by the fact a single Victrix sprue contains exactly six figures.

One other support option, aside from obviously adding more groups of warriors to the warband, is a group of six fanatic warriors. I picked up one more sprue of the Victrix warriors and used this to add the extra javelin figures I needed. I used the additional figures to make up an extra six fanatics. They are no different to the warrior figures, but I just wanted to ensure I had enough on single bases to add the fanatics without taking figures from one of the warrior groups. That way I had sufficient to maximise the number I could deploy in a game.

I added to the support options by making up one of the Victrix figures as a horn blower, to use as a 'musician' to extend the command range of the warband leader.

Wargames Foundry do a lovely set of wailing women, which operate as a Rally Point support.

Finally, I've created markers to use to represent Ambush Points and Deployment Points. The stone cairns will be used to mark Ambush Points. The banner and the priestess will be used to mark regular Deployment Points.

That gives a reasonable force for a game. Naturally, it goes without saying, there is always more than can be added. No doubt it will be, at some stage. Their first outing in a game saw them roundly defeated by the Romans, hopefully they can lift their game in the future!

They fell back in chaos on the wailing women, but even their lamentations and chastisements were not enough to put them back in the fight. 

On the other hand the fanatics proved to be, well.....fanatical. That said, they tend to live fast and die young. It appears German force morale is barely impacted by their loss. After all, what should one expect from fanatics?