I painted up these two guys as special characters that I will use for my early Dark Age skirmishes, Hengist and Horsa were a couple of Legendary Saxon figures, it is said that these two guys originally served as mercenaries to the then High King of the Romano - British, Vortigern, they were hired to help stem the incursions of the Picts in the north who were sailing down the east coast and raiding the british from the south, and the Irish in the west, who were sailing across and raiding the north western british coast, in return, the british payed the Saxons and allowed the Saxon / Jutish forces to settle the Isle of Thanet and what is now known as the area of Kent.
It was not long before trouble broke out between the Brits and the Saxons, the Saxons claiming that the Brits were not keeping to the original deal, and the Brits claiming the Saxons wanted to much of their land, in an effort to keep the Peace Hengist offered his daughter in marriage to the High king of the British, but during a peace meeting (everyone was meant to be unarmed) the Saxons butchered most of the British cheiftains, these events are now seen as marking the start of the Anglo Saxon invasion of Britian.
Miniatures are 15mm SLM Anglo Saxon cavalry and the shields are 15mm LBMS shield transfers.
I watched this movie the other night, '1066' dubbed the most famous date in English history, for those that have not seen this movie here is a quick summary, this movie plays out from the perspective of a couple of Saxon Ceorls who are called up for service in the Fyrd (local militia force), they get marched up north to tackle the threat of the Vikings in two decisive encounters, the Battle of Fulford and the Battle of Stamford Bridge and then they are marched south again with whatever troops they have left to face the menacing Normans in the Battle of Hastings.
The movie is no 'Braveheart' and the acting is OK, but still convincing enough to enjoy, it has a basic plot with a couple of likable characters as leads, costume wise the uniforms are faithful as is the armour and weapons, but everything is to clean and shiny, in fact the documentary style in which it is portrayed almost leaves you thinking that this is a high budget reenactment ! but don't let that scare you off, if your into the Dark Ages, then get your hands on this movie, bang it on and enjoy what it has to offer..... 6.5 /10
Well, the last three weeks have been a bit of a challenge, I started painting a couple of items for two potential posts and only got half way through both before I picked up a nasty Man Flu Bug, this thing laid me out for a good couple of weeks, missing many days from work, and not being able to get even close to a computer, here I am three weeks later, and the mojo is starting to come back again.
Easing back into things, I started working on a Dark Age rules set, not that there is a lack of rule sets or anything, and not that I wouldn't try any other sets, of course I would, but I wanted to create a skirmish rule set that mimicked reality as much as possible, a rule set that encompasses everthing Dark Age combat stood for with lots of detail, I want the individual combat to be quick and bloody, and the realism as accurate as possible without ruining the Fun factor, the weapons must be reflected faithfully and they must function like there real life counter parts.
So much realism only means one thing, lots and lots of research, I wanted to run a quick test game this weekend gone by, but quickly realised that there were so many aspects of the rule set I had not resolved yet, this will need to be done as soon as I can, so far I have nutted out the game structure or sequence, I also have resolved all movement and have made my way through most of the projectile fire side of things, once I sort out projectile fire I still have to work out hand to hand combat and combat damage, once I am sorted on these issues I can run a test combat encounter to see how balanced things are, still lots of work and research to be done, I shall post more on this as progress is made.
