Land Wasters and Raven Feeders

Tried Dan Mersey's own Arthurian/Dark Age Britain variant of Lion Rampant.  Same rules, just some units renamed, some not available.  We set up 24 points per side, "Britons" (a mix of Welsh and Romano-British figs) vs. Saxons.  Each side has 2 units foot Companions ("men-at-arms" in Lion Rampant) , 2 units Warriors ("fierce foot" from LR), and 2 units of skirmishers ("Bidowers").  Scenario was "Hold on Tight" from LR, which I assumed would move us to a quick conclusion.

The central piece of terrain each side was trying to hold was the rock-strewn ford of the river.

I was playing the Saxon dogs and was perhaps to hesitant.  I could have easily dropped a unit of companions on the crossing early on but instead tried to set up a situation where my warriors could stream across either on their own or via wild charges.

Instead what happened is the Briton companions got there first. And then the Saxon warriors who were all in position to attack those British companions got shot to pieces by British skirmishers and broke and ran.

On the other flank British and Saxon warrior wild charged each other in the river and both units broke and limped off home to lick their wounds.

The British Companions, meanwhile, were racking up the five points necessary to win the scenario by just always starting their turn at the crossing.  The Saxon warlord and his personal bodyguard (the other unit of companions) risked an assault, and were repelled, the fifth and final point went to the Britons.

This game was ridiculously fast.  Somewhere between and hour and 90 minutes long.  Recommend!

Beowulf and Retinue Action Poses

Here are the 13 figures from Eureka Miniatures' Beowulf & Retinue Set #2 Action Poses (100DAK04).  These are cast in pewter, I think.  You get Beowulf (up front on the bigger base, 'course), his two bodyguards (the fellas just behind Beowulf. in full head-to-toe chainmail), a "Germanic" companion with a fearsome double-handed axe (far left), a shirtless "strongman" companinion (far right), a "Moorish" spearman companion, a "shield maiden" with sword, and so forth and so on – basically every figure is sculpted to be a "character" figure of some sort. A decent number of them rank up very nicely as a shieldwall. These also rank up nicely with other Dark Age figures so you can blend a lot of them into other units.  The Beowulf figure makes a great warlord figure for pretty much any SAGA faction, and the strongman and Germanic companion could easily be champions in an Irish SAGA warband.

 

These were pretty easy to paint given that almost everyone is wearing chainmail.  I painted these simultaneously with my Old Glory Arthurian Saxons, and it was interesting to compare the pewter versus the lead figures by Old Glory. I assume it is the lead which allows the Old Glory figures to have much deeper cuts in their sculpts – especially with faces and hair.

The Moorish companion is in the back on the above photo. The "shield maiden" is in front of him.