Saxon Reinforcements Complete - Pattus Magnus’ Early Medieval Miniatures

[Pattus Magnus]

I’ve been puttering along on some early medieval projects for a long time and decided to put some pictures in a thread. Some of them overlap with my fantasy projects as well. This thread will be for the more historical figures and my fantasy thread will be where the less historical ones go.

The first pictures are of some old 15mm figures I rebased from a DBA Irish army. The banner was originally painted by Neldoreth as part of a Barker Marker he gave me when I was in a DBA campaign he organized. It must have been about 12 years ago! My recollection is that my Irish army didn’t do very well, but we had fun.

The mounted figure will be a warlord or captain when I use the figures for Fantastic Battles.

[LouieN]

Wonderful figures

[Atheling]

Very nice work on those wee chaps 

[Pattus Magnus]

Thanks LouieN and Aetheling, I’m glad you enjoy them! When I painted these guys I found them fairly easy to do - I mostly followed the colours in the old Irish laws governing social classes and consumption, which set the palette. The basing technique I used at the time didn’t flatter them, though, so the renovation over the weekend definitely was an improvement!

I’ll post more pics soon!

[macsen wledig]

brilliant work and right up my street

[Pattus Magnus]

A bit of thread necromancy here! I got distracted after I refurbished my 15mm Irish figures and wandered away onto other projects for the past year. Due to an opportunity to play a game, I am working on early medieval figures again, but this time with 28mm!

I’ll be taking part in a 4-player game of Midgard on Sunday. The theme is “Anarchy in the UK, 900AD) and I offered to bring some figures for a player who doesn’t have a collection for the period. So, that necessitated rummaging through the pile of shame and digging out some reinforcements.

The pic shows the figures I aim to paint over the next 2.5 days. They’re mostly Gripping Beast dark age infantry with helmeted heads from other sets, and Conquest Games Norman infantry. It should be achievable, as long as I don’t get too picky. I’ll post a picture of the completed figs when they’re done.

[Rick]

I liked your earlier figures and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with these.
As a nitpicky aside, 900 wasn't an anarchic sort of time - the death of one strong ruler and the accession of another strong ruler. You'd be better off setting it a few years after Athelstan became king in 924, when he found himself at war with the Welsh, Norse-Irish, Scots, Danes and Norwegians all at the same time! 

[Pattus Magnus]

924AD works! To be honest, I picked 900AD out of the air, as it will be a bit of a mixed bag on the table. My own Normans are a little out of period and I know other fellows will be fielding at least a few figures with heater shields and a few Frostgrave figures to make up the numbers.

I expect it will be kind of a Battle of Brunanburh, as produced by Ridley Scott!

[Rick]

Brunanburh was about 937 but this was after a long series of clashes between the Anglo Saxons and just about everyone else. The Normans are a little bit premature - they don't really get a good foothold until Edward (about 100 years later) but some French/Norman nobles are on good terms with Athelstan and some are on good terms with his enemies so not beyond the realms of possibility - if Athelstan can have a bad-tempered Icelandic Skald/pirate (Egil Skallagrimson) on his side then why not? 

[Pattus Magnus]

I figure if it gets me painting some figures and I get to have a great day with my friends, then I’m willing to rationalize the hell out of what is in the figure mix! 

[batu]

Good luck with the project!

[Pattus Magnus]

Thanks Batu, I plan to post some progress pics tomorrow. These won’t be eye catching paint jobs, but the finished models will fill out enough units for the game and will look decent on the table.

[Pattus Magnus]

Just finished the 15 Saxon reinforcements I need for tomorrow’s game. I painted them quickly, mainly contrast or Speedpaints over a warm white primer coat. Overall, not too bad!

[Pattus Magnus]

The newly painted figures saw action on Sunday in a game of Midgard. The game was a variation on the river crossing scenario, but with the stream easily forded (treated as rough terrain) along its length. Both sides had two players, which generated a certain amount of fog of war.

The figures I brought made up most of one of the armies - in the pictures they’re the ones with the tan and green basing scheme. The opposing army was “southern Saxons”, and they were represented by a truly bizarre mix of models - some were early medieval models from a range of manufacturers, while the bulk were Rackham and older GW dark elf figures equipped with a disturbing proportion of g-strings,  mail bikinis, and weapons of improbable size.

The odd assortment of opponents didn’t hinder the performance of my dour northerners, who lined up on the nearest bridge, jogged across and set about carving into the effete southerners. When my warlord issued a challenge to the enemy, it turned out that their commander, who carried a truly enormous sword, was in fact a non-combatant accountant in a ceremonial role. He (they?) declined the challenge and hid behind their followers for the remainder of the combat. I lost track of the details of what was going on in my co-commander’s part of the battlefield, but it was pretty clear the the enemy over there was falling back as well.

In the end, the southern rabble lost so much reputation that they were forced off the battlefield in disarray.

All in all, it was a great time!

(Apologies for the blurry photos, older phone cameras suck for this kind of thing.)