2386

Stayed home today as my kid has a fever and can’t go to school.  I’m really glad I can use sick time like this.  She’s watching a Wallace & Gromit video so I took a few minutes away from tending to her and chores to count my painted 1/72 minis.  This time I distinguished among infantry, cavalry, chariotry, and elephants.  A few camp followers and litter bearers got stuck in with the infantry.

Anyway:

Elephants: 8

Chariots: 43

Cavalry: 309

Infantry: 2026

Grand total: 2386.

This includes six Ral Partha Iroquois, three RP gendarmes, and three Minifigs Mamluks, all “true” 25mm and very close to 1/72 scale.  I did not count a few static diorama “camps” and some artillery and war wagons, but there is less than a dozen of those.

These guys range from Sumerians to Conquistadors, the bulk being Medieval (Europe, Crusades, Mongols, and Japanese), Classical (Greco-Roman-Celtic), and Biblicals (Egypt, Hebrew, Philistine, Lybian, Nubian, etc.).  I have a lot that are still unpainted, but will probably begin to cull them soon.

Anybody interested in 100  or so 1/72 scale Vikings?

Some time I’ll figure out exactly how many different DBA armies this represents.   Going by the rule of thumb that you need about 50 figures per army, that’s 47 armies.  But of course I make a lot of my chariots do double duty in various armies so I don’t think I could really field that many “legal” armies at once.  Still, sounds like I could run a tourney if I had enough table space and terrain.

my dark ages project

Just a quick post to tie together the three “1066“ armies and a static page with more information on how I assembled the armies.

Anglo-Saxons

The death of Harold Godwinson

Granted, the Vikings are more popular, and the Normans were the final victors, but the English army of 1066 had heart.   Harold and his men raced north to repel a massive Viking invasion, catching the enemy by surprise and massacring them.  Then they raced south to Hastings, shedding most of their (horseless) light troops and levies along the way.  There Normans won the day, but only after taking shocking casualties from the Huscarl’s axes.   The dismounted huscarls of Harold’s army turned back repeated charges by the Norman knights, which is pretty incredible really.

Norman, is that you?

The Normans, as you may know, were descendants of Vikings (Northmen =>Norman) in France.  They spoke French but were basically vikings of big ass horses with state of the art arms and armor.  One charming account of their diplomacy is mentioned by John Julius Norwich:

Calling a halt, [the Byzantine Catapan] sent a messenger across to them, offering the choice: either they could leave Byzantine territory peaceably and at once, or they must face his own army in battle on the morrow.

The Normans had heard communications of that sort before, and knew how to deal with them.  During the harangue one of the twelve chiefs, Hugh Tuboeuf, had approached the messenger’s horse, and had been stroking it approvingly; now, as the man finished, he suddenly turned and struck it one mighty blow between the eyes with his bare fist, laying the luckless animal unconscious on the ground.  At this, according to Malaterra, the messenger in a paroxysm of fear fainted dead away, but the Normans, having with some difficulty restored him to his senses, gave him a new horse, better than the first, on which they sent him back to the Catapan with the message that they were ready.
–-Source

“Deliver us, oh Lord, from the fury of the Northmen”

Hide the gold and silver, and lock up your able-bodied youths (who will be enslaved) and maidens (who will be… well you know), here come the Vikings with their Land-waster banner. My banner is based on a sail design from a second-hand souvenir dragon ship , which was made in Norway or Denmark.

The Aztec army

I had some details about this army on the static page for my conversions but I finally got around to photographing the whole army! This is basically two boxes of Revell’s Aztecs.

Army of the orcs

Man, I loves me some orcs.  The army below takes up  two tackle boxes, and I have about three more tackle boxes of loose orcs based for RPGs, including cavalry (but not counting goblins and half-orcs!)

This army can field everything in the Mordor and Misty Mountains lists for DBA, with many extras (Shooters, chariots, etc.).  About half the pictures didn’t come out so well, so there are not a lot of closeups, but you can always click to embiggen.  See the army of Robilar for some pics of the orc infantry.

The army of the apes

I have slightly mixed feelings about MageKnight, the WizKids collectible miniatures game. On the one hand they had some terrible sculpts and spawned the “random figure” packs; but on the other they were the first really widely distributed, cheap, prepainted line of minis and they put a number of Ral Patha sculpts back in print. This army of apes is mostly based on a single Ral Partha gorillaman (which originally came in a set with a caged woman). Shortly before MageKnight completely crashed, you could get MageKnight figures for 25 cents or so at conventions and gaming stores, and I bought up tons of figures from a bin at Origins one year, including all these apes. The rest of the army is filled out with some metal figures, including some really old Minifigs flying apemen from their S&S line of the 1970s — scored at an auction at a BASHCon for $2, some fifteen years ago…

Army of the dwarfs

My brother has always loved dwarves, and built up quite an army. He was never as patient at painting as I am, and ultimately I finished a lot of these, or painted them start to finish in some cases, although back when we were building Warhammer armies there was a certain rivalry and I hated to waste time when I could be painting my own orcs…anyway since then I’ve rebased his dwarves for HOTT/DBx/etc.

The army of Elfland

Click to embiggen, as usual! This army is chiefly composed of figures I cast with Prince August molds, plus a few Ral Partha elves and a couple of Grenadier figures. One stand of Citadel plastic elves can also be seen in the rear left above.