From 2024 into 2025

Well, this should have been a review of my achievements in 2024 and a list of my plans for 2025. However, as regular readers will know, I suffered as huge flare-up of arthritis in both hands last year, which pretty much threw all of my plans way off course. When I was able to paint again, I concentrated on some quick wins by painting stuff that I wanted to paint and not things that were long-term projects. So, really, my 2025 plans are pretty much based around a few of the things I was supposed to do in 2024 plus a couple of new ideas. I'm not going to bother listing anything. Just getting various stuff done will be a win as far as I'm concerned.

I will be trying to focus on Midgard, though. This is because I already have two or three armies that might easily be repurposed for Midgard without much effort. These are Principate Roman auxiliaries, a force that is almost complete but just needs some archers, a Dominate period Roman army that really just needs a couple of mounted leaders and maybe some skirmishing light cavalry and, thirdly, a fantasy Norse army based around my Bad Squiddo shieldmaidens and some jötnar and other mythical beings. 

I do have a fourth fantasy Midgard project, which will be a Warhammer Old World Empire army with human foot and horse and some ogres, all based around the Wargames Atlantic conquistador sets of foot and mounted troops plus the Landsknecht ogres. I think I'll need to find a suitable Battle Wizard from somewhere, too. 

I do have one small urgent addition to my 18th century Syldavian and Bordurian imagi-nations, too. I won't say what it is, because it will be required for Winter Wonderlard V at the beginning of February.

So, that is pretty much all I have to say about future plans. 

A few Bad Squiddo odds 'n' ends

 I've been trying to paint up a few odds and ends of things I've had in my "To Do" box for a while.

These are all from Bad Squiddo and have been patiently awaiting the brush for a long time now.

First are two violent little girls with swords. They were part of the Freyja's Wrath Kickstarter that I somehow forgot to paint at the time. I suppose that they ought to be wooden practice swords, really, but I went for real ones.

I am not sure what I will use them for, but there is bound to be something in the future.

Next are three figures who were associated with the Amazons and Dwarves Kickstarter. I think that they will work nicely in mediaeval and fantasy settings, perhaps as non-player characters or as special figures in suitable scenarios.

First, a woman trying to get her basket of fresh fish past the local cats;

And finally, two women who look so alike to my eyes that I think of them as sisters;

Six more mounted Shieldmaidens

 This time unarmoured ones.

These are also Bad Squiddo minis, and they will be joining their armoured sisters as the cavalry arm of my Shieldmaiden army.

As I have said before, I'll be using these for troops in a number of different rulesets, particularly Saga Age of Magic, Lion and Dragon Rampant, and probably for other things that I haven't even thought of yet. I am very keen on having figures that can serve multiple purposes.

These were finished a few days ago, but I was waiting for the weather to become less wet to avoid fogged varnish. As you can see, they have come out fine.

The tufts on the bases are, once again by Gamer's Grass, available from Bad Squiddo.

Mounted Shieldmaiden Hearthguards

Having finished my mounted Lagertha figure, I decided to press on and paint up the five Bad Squiddo mounted armoured Shieldmaidens that I've had for a fair while as her Hearthguard.

Firstly, here are the five riders alone;

And here they are led by their chieftain;

These are clearly going to be useful for all manner of games, particularly Saga Age of Magic (I will probably use them as a Horde), Lion Rampant and, especially Dragon Rampant, where I think a Shieldmaiden army would be a more acceptable option to put on the table than in the historical version of the rules. 

The tufts on the bases are all Gamer's Grass, also available from Bad Squiddo.

I now have six unarmoured mounted Shieldmaidens to paint, to bulk out Lagertha's cavalry forces.

Finally ............. I have painted something; Lagertha and three shieldmaidens

I posted a couple of weeks ago about why I wasn't painting, but I am getting back on track again. 

This is the mounted Lagertha (also known as Lathgertha, Lagerða and Hlaðgerðr) by Bad Squiddo. I painted the foot version of her about a year ago. 

Here she is from the other side.

To add to my existing unarmoured Shieldmaidens, here are three more armed with spears. This gives me a total of 12 spear-carrying Shieldmaidens (if I add my single armoured one as a unit leader) who will make a nice single unit for Lion and Dragon Rampant.

I am so glad to be painting again. I think that I needed to do this for my mental health, which has taken a big battering over the last couple of months.

I have eleven mounted Shieldmaidens prepped now, six unarmoured and five in mail. I will add the Lagertha figure to the latter to give me two groups of six riders, again primarily for Lion or Dragon Rampant, but they will also, together with my existing Shieldmaidens be perfect for Saga: Age of Magic.

A Big Angry Red Guy

 Well, he is a giant, after all.

I wanted a BIG giant for various reasons, and it took me ages to find one who looked like the sort of giant that would work for me, seeing as I wanted one who would fit into various rulesets. I found this giant on the Miniature Heroes website, where he is described as Fire Giant (huge), which seems a pretty reasonable summary, seeing as he is around 7.5 cm tall.

He is a Reaper Bones DHL range plastic figure, which means that he is both reasonably-priced and not too heavy. He is made from a softish plastic but despite that is fairly detailed. 

The body comes in two parts that have to be joined at the waist and his arms, the two morning stars and a small chest that goes on his belt at the back are also separate. They glue together easily enough. I used Gorilla gel superglue, which I think is pretty good stuff. I also stuck him to a 5 cm square MDF base, which I gave a coating of ballast.

On the packaging it states that he doesn't need priming but that if you do prime him, avoid spray primers. I ignored that and gave him a good undercoat of Halford's grey plastic primer, which went on well with no bad side effects.

In the last picture, I have posed him with a Bad Squiddo 28mm Amazon, to give you some idea of how big he actually is. Impressive, I think, even though we all know that size doesn't really matter, does it.

As he is a Fire Giant, I wanted to use a predominantly red, bronze and brass palette, and I also wanted him to have a very red complexion too, to signify all that pent-up fiery anger and power inside him. He even has dark red eyes, to make them look blood-filled.

 Similarly, I wanted the ground he strides across to look hot and burnt, so the ballast was painted black and dry-brushed with red, yellow and orange, with some very pale grey to look like hot ashes. I think it just about works, even though the yellow hardly shows up.

I am planning to use him as Surtr in my planned Norse force for Of Gods and Mortals, which will mainly consist of my Bad Squiddo Shieldmaidens, led by the goddess Freyja.

The red colour palette might also make him suitable for my Saga; Age of Magic Otherworld band too, and I am sure that he will work for other things too, maybe a AoM Shieldmaiden Horde, and definitely in a Dragon Rampant setting.

Not played Saga in a while, until Sunday ...............

................ so here is what happened.

I got totally annihilated.

So, I'll show you the pictures of my Bad Squiddo Shieldmaidens, acting as generic Vikings and then just chat about the game a bit.

OK, so what actually happened? Well, the simple answer is that I rolled rubbish dice over and over again. My Saga dice rolls only gave me the rare S-shaped Sol (Sun) rune once in the entire game and when I really needed to roll high in combat I invariably failed to do so, thus losing my Hearthguard and Warriors to little effect. I also failed to realise until it was too late that the brown felt square in the final photo represented an area of Hard Cover, which meant that my bow Thralls had difficulty in killing off any of their opponents, but the Anglo-Danish archers killed off my Shieldmaiden Legendary unit without any difficulties at all. Perhaps charging across the table with gay abandon wasn't a good idea in the first place. They disappeared almost as quickly as my Berserkers usually do.

It didn't help that my opponents were Anglo-Danes, who seem to always defeat my Vikings, even when I use the board to boost my attacks. It seems to be one of those cases where the two boards tend to cancel one another out, leaving the dice pixies to decide who wins.

Still, it was nice to see my Shieldmaidens on the table again, I really love these figures. I think I'll love them even more when I start using them in Saga: AoM, but I need to get my mounted Shieldmaidens painted first.

Lagertha, legendary Norse shieldmaiden

Lagertha's tale is recorded in passages in the 12th-century text, the Gesta Danorum, a work of Danish history by the Christian historian Saxo Grammaticus. 

He wrote that "Ladgerda, a skilled Amazon, who, though a maiden, had the courage of a man, and fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders. All marvelled at her matchless deeds, for her locks flying down her back betrayed that she was a woman."

Her name is variously written as Lathgertha, Ladgertha, Lathgerda and other forms, all  derived from the Old Norse original Hlaðgerðr, otherwise Hlathgerth.

There is no historical evidence for Lagertha, although Saxo records that she was married to the equally legendary Ragnarr Loðbrók, i.e. Ragnar Hairy Breeches, also written as Ragnar Lodbrok or Lothbrok. Saxo records that, ultimately, Lagertha slew her husband and ruled alone in his stead. However, Ragnar was also supposedly captured by King Ælla of Northumbria, who had him thrown into a pit of snakes, where he perished.

Ragnar had sons who are attested historically, but his own existence is rather debatable.

Anyway, on to Lagertha. This figure is from Bad Squiddo, and comes in a blister pack with a mounted Lagertha, who I will be using as the commander of my mounted shieldmaidens, when I get round to painting them.

So, here is the dismounted version. I have kept my palette quite simple here and it is not dissimilar to the way the figure is painted on the Bad Squiddo website.

Her shield design is a triquetra, somewhat similar to a pagan Norse valknut (which is more usually seen as three interlocking triangles). It is also similar to a simplified Thor's Hammer motif.

Lagertha is going to be part of my Shieldmaiden army, whether that is for Dragon Rampant, Saga or Saga: Age of Magic.

Big uglies!

These three Big Ugly Chaps with clubs are 28mm plastic figures by Reaper Bones, from their "Black" range. They are sold as Garghuk, Ogre Chieftain but I see them as a variety of jötnar, the plural of jötunn, the Norse name for a range of creatures that are often just called "giants", although in Norse mythology many jötnar appear to be human-sized, the goddess Skaði is a jötunn for example, as is Gerðr, the wife of the Vanir god, Freyr. Odin, the king of the gods is descended from the jötnar too.

Anyway, as well as jötnar being giants, they might also be what we call trolls or ogres too. These figures are pretty imposing, being around 6cm tall, but not really big enough to be a Behemoth.

I am going to use these three as bipedal Creatures in a Saga: Age of Magic Horde warband based around my Bad Squiddo shieldmaidens.

I want to use some mounted figures for my Horde, so I have bought a number of mounted shieldmaidens who I need to get painted, ideally before the end of the year.

If you want to see my shieldmaidens, they can be found in a series of posts, here.

Of course, these could also come in handy in a Dragon Rampant force, too.

Some more Bad Squiddo Shieldmaidens, plus something else

I've been slowly expanding my collection of Bad Squiddo Shieldmaidens, with a view to using them in Dragon Rampant and also Saga Age of Magic. To that end, I bough four more Berserkers and the older range of berserkers, now relabelled as Fanatics.

I really like these figures, because they are so different from the rest of the Shieldmaidens in the collection. I am planning to use these together with the Fanatics (below) and the Berserkers I painted last year as 12 Bellicose Foot for Dragon Rampant.

Here are the four Fanatics. First, from the front;

These were supposed to be used with slottabases (which I don't really like), so I trimmed off the tabs and superglued them to 2.5cm MDF round bases. The third figure had her foot raised up on a metal peg shaped like a tuft of grass for stability but I wanted something a bit more interesting, so I trimmed it away and replaced it with a plastic head from my spare bits box. Much more in keeping, I think. The figure on the left wears an apron, which I have chosen to paint as blood-stained.

Here is a view of the same figures from behind. There is some lovely detail on these, which cries out for subtle shading to bring out the folds in the fabric of their clothes.

Finally, here are the original four Berserkers which I painted last year. As you can see, I've tried to keep a fairly uniform appearance to these warriors.

Finally, here is the different thing I mentioned in the title of this post;

This is a Grim Reaper statue from Wargames Terrain Workshop, which I bought the year before last at the annual IPMS Show in Thornbury. The club has been involved with this show for a long time now, and we run a Bring and Buy table, as well as running a participation game. Last year we ran What A Tanker in 15mm and we will probably do this again in 2019.

Anyway, here are more views of the Grim Reaper, or "Dave Death" as I've taken to calling him.

I bought him for Frostgrave originally, but he will fit right in with anything with a creepy theme. There simply has to be a graveyard in a slightly odd village that needs a big old statue of Death in it, be it for 7TV, Call of Cthulhu or something else. It is a big piece, being 11cm tall on a 4cm square base.

I painted his scythe blade in gunmetal and gave it a wash of rust paint and it seemed a good idea to make the goblet into something metallic too, rather than just leaving it as carved stone.

Saga Sunday; Shieldmaidens v Saxons

Well, Vikings v Saxons really, but using my Bad Squiddo Shieldmaidens as the Vikings.

Owen and I played a few games at the club on Sunday afternoon. He hadn't played Saga 2 before, but it didn't stop him using his battleboard to the full, with his army being made up entirely of Warriors, grouped into four 12-man units, giving them access to some annoyingly useful abilities.

I started off with an army containing Thrall archers, as well as the usual Hirdmen and Bondi units, switching things around to give me an actual Shieldmaiden unit (led by a Valkyrie) after the first game. This is a useful addition, with eight attacks, plus a War Banner which allows the unit to remove a point of fatigue for free.

We ended up playing three games, all of them incredibly bloody encounters. We pretty much fought ourselves to a standstill in the first, I lost the second and Owen lost the third one, losing his Warlord in the process.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and here are some pictures of the action;

The Shieldmaidens are in action. Two Saga AARs

On Sunday I finally got my Bad Squiddo Freyja's Wrath Shieldmaidens onto the table in an all-Scandi pair of battles against Clive's Anglo-Danes.

In the first game my force was as follows;

Freyja (War Leader)

One group of 4 Berserker Hearthguards

One group of 8 armoured Hearthguards

Two groups of Warriors

One group of Shieldmaidens (4 warriors led by a Valkyrie, plus a warrior with a War Banner)

My lack of ranged attacks left me at a clear disadvantage and my plans were massively disrupted by losing all my Berserkers to archery. From then on, I just had to attack, using Ullr and Thor abilities to maximise my hits. Unhappily, Clive was able to use the defensive abilities of the Anglo-Danes to pretty much negate my ability to score hits.

Net result: a win for the Anglo-Danes. Here are the pictures of the first battle. i think, from looking at these that my initial deployment was terrible.

Here are my short-lived and ineffective Berserkers.

Some spear-armed Warriors.

My main strike force. desperately trying to get into a better position.

With the Berserkers gone, Clive's defensive line starts to look like a problem.

My large Hearthguard unit gets ready to attack.

The Shieldmaidens led by the Valkyrie are completely useless here.

After two rounds of combat, my Hearthguards vanquish one of Clive's groups of 6 Hearthguards, but I am left in a weak condition in a dangerously exposed place.

Clive's bow-armed Levies and a group of Warriors combine to cause havoc to my spear-armed Warriors. After six rounds of play, I am defeated.

Here is the second game. I decided to replace the Berserkers with 12 Levies with bows.

I have retained the Shirldmaiden unit and have two groups of Hearthguards, one of 4 and the other of 8.

My other unit is one of 8 Warriors.

Things start off much more equally, with my archers targeting one of Clive's groups of Warriors.

I send my Warriors into melee with the archers. This is quite a success, forcing them to retreat.

Elsewhere, the two battle lines watch each other warily, no doubt exchanging insults and expletives.

My Warriors were attacked by Clive's Warriors. I use Ullr and am victorious. His Warriors are destroyed, but once again, I am left weakened and in range of the bow-armed Levies.

Battle is soon joined in the centre. My large group of Hearthguard charge in and destroy one group of Clive's Anglo-Danish Hearthguards, but are then themselves wiped out. 

I send in the Shieldmaidens, who are all killed except for the Valkyrie. However, they have weakened Clive's line. My smaller Hearthguard group charges, but is defeated. The battle is over. The Vikings have lost again.

I wasn't too upset at losing both games, because they were fun to play. The Vikings really do have to attack and try and cause maximum damage, which I generally managed to do quite regularly, but the real strength of the Anglo-Danes comes from their abilities to roll a lot of Save dice, which they also managed to do pretty regularly.

My main mistake was the way I used the Loki ability. I kept on forgetting to make it the first ability, but when I did, it really helped make a difference in melee.

These two armies are pretty much two sides of the same coin. One attacks ferociously and the other defends doggedly.