Gustav Vasa och hans folk

During the Easter-holidays I visited family in Jönköping and I borrowed a book from my grandmother. She said that It was okay for me to forget return it. Its nice to have a history interested grandmother, she and grandpa used to visit old places and brought me along on several trips as young.
At the moment she is reading about medieval church buildings in Västergötland.


Gustav Vasa och hans folk, Gustav Vasa and his people.
It was printed in 1984 and I think its only released in Swedish.

For this post I checked out the book on the net and it seems that the book is made by Göte Göransson and he has also done two extraordinary book in my bookshelf, Karoliner and Gustav II Adolf och and folk .
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6te_G%C3%B6ransson

Its sad that I also learned that he past away this march.

This book is a real treasure tome... Its packed with information and pictures all 267 pages of it.
The books main character is Gustav Vasa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_I_of_Sweden and in the book we can follow him, the ordinary people and the the country of Sweden somewhere between 1500 and 1560. I havn´t read the book yet so we will see exactly what it holds.



Gustav Vasa is one of the most important persons in the forming of Sweden and many of his reforms would change the Swedish country forever. He did many things that would be good for Sweden in the long run but many of his reforms where not that liked by people under him or other powers and countries. But make no mistake he was a total bastard and much of his rule was almost tyrannical.

For his interest in details and recording much of this time in history is known today and for a person with historical interest this is good.

The day he was elected King is now the Swedish National day, so that tells you something about his importance. And it is the date we use as ending of the medieval and the beginning of the renaissance here in Sweden.






I have much to read in this book Im sure, but I have no idea when if ever I will have the time to read this book and start a miniature project around it...

For miniatures I have thought about using the plastic Landsknecht to be released in the future by Warlord Games, that they got when they bought Pro Gloria.

I have no release date on these yet but I havn´t read this book ether so Im in no hurry.
The plan was to combine them with Perrys plastic War of the Roses boxes and combining these with greenstuff and bits from other makers and miniatures I think you could get a descent collection of miniatures.

We will see if this turns out to be a future project or if the book just will have a nice spot in my bookshelf.

Unboxing - Fireforge Games Mongols

I just bought two plastic boxes from Fireforge Games.

And no, I dont plan to start a Mongol army but rather use bits from here and try to create some Turcomans as mercenaries to my Ayyubid army, but more on that later. What Im here to post now is what's inside the boxes.

The contents of the sprues are rather similar as you can see here. The infantry box got more shields then the cavalry one, but one of the infantry sprues had the same middle section as the cavalry to act as a sort of command.

Im really fine with this and think its a smart move to produce more plastic kits in a simple way but I think it should be known to you.

In the cavalry box you also get 12 horses, one to each rider.
The horses faces looks a little strange to my eyes but its still ok.

So there you go, a small box opening on Fireforge Mongol/ Steppe tribe boxes.
I liked the boxes but think they could have had more variations on the parts. For example all the arrow quivers are identical with the same detail with the deer motif on all of them. The arrows in the quivers looks a little to computer rended with their perfectly same length and straitness.
I have started to glue some of the miniatures together now and will be kitbashing these to get a better Turcoman feeling to them but I think these will be a nice base for convertions.


Edit:
Here you can see the converted and paited results.

Turcoman horsearchers
http://kampgruppe-engel.blogspot.se/2015/03/turkoman-horse-archers-converted.html

Turcoman light infantry archers
http://kampgruppe-engel.blogspot.se/2015/02/turcoman-archers.html

Hope this can help and inspire.

Fyra nyanser av brunt

I have painted this nice chap. It was a gift from my friend Daniel and I thought It was only fitting to paint him up now that I just got the rules “Tooth and Claw” a game about  prehistoric animal hunting.

And here is his hunter to acompany mine: http://das-ultra-kaninchen.blogspot.se/2013/11/hunter.html

I wanted to keep the miniature brown in a sort of autumn hunting fashion.
Damn, I really needs to get me a new tweed hat now…

I got the rules “Tooth and Claw” by Chris Peers.

I’ve just read the rules and I am a little disappointed, by reading it alone I got the picture it will be more of an animal killing spree then an actual hunt. The game looks like its more of an “shoot all things” then to track and hunt down a specific animal type.
The rules include throwing spears, bows, muskets and more modern Elephant guns so It could be played as a stone age hunting group against Mammoths and such.
But I think its lacking in that it haven’t included anything like wind directions if the hunters want to sneak closer without being noticed, including rules for hunting dogs that could help anyone from an stone age group to a more modern hunt.

 

I think I will have to try it out before I can pass a final judgment on it but by reading it alone It does seems to miss a few things of the stuff I thought would be included.

Im sure its still a blast to play, not just as I had imagined it to be.

Tiny Terrain

I just got these beauties from Tiny Terrain.

My friend Jonathan has taken the step of open up a terrain making company and I thought I should test what he could make and made an order.

I wanted some bases for DBA, some multibases for Hail Caesar or Black Powder as well as some movement trays.

As this is a new company he don’t got that many different products yet but are working hard to expand this.

He was more than willing to make some special items in mdf for me according to my special wishes. As he told me, every item he had made drawing or prints he could make many more later on.

One of the special items was these movement trays for an 16man unit for Hail Caesar and the interior space could be made into 80x40mm and two 40x40mm bases.
And I wanted a smaller variant for a “small unit” of 8man giving a movement tray and two 40x40mm bases to fit there in.

Im really impressed by these and got more ideas I think Jonathan will have to construct for me later on…

So please visit his newly started terrain blog http://tinyterrain.blogspot.se/
 

and the company page http://tinyterrain.com/Tiny_Terrain/TinyTerrain_-_Home.html

And If you want to buy some things or got product ideas do contact him on   “Info(at)tinyterrain(dot)com”
Im sure he is more then happy to help you out.

Support the little Swedish guy and help him expand and supply us with nice terrain. :)

Vikingar i krig

Vikingar i krig - Vikings at war.

I managed to lay my hands on this book. And what a nice book it is.

Its written in Swedish but as the authors are Norwegians I guess it could be obtained in other languishes.

I haven’t had time to read it all yet but by first impression alone I am really impressed. Well written and full of nice pictures. This is a treasure tome.

This will in no doubt give me a further push of inspiration to my Viking project.

Pictures from

http://www.smb.nu/index.php/component/content/article/18/2035-vad-vet-du-om-vikingar

 

 Vegard Vike and Kim Hjardar the authors of the book.

 

Vallejo Wash

Im down on my last bottle of Devlar Mud and now when GW has pulled the plug on the best thing they done since getting me into miniature gaming I started to look elsewhere.

I just bought this Vallejo wash and well… its quite big…
http://www.maelstromgames.co.uk/index.php?act=pro&pre=val_hob_wsh_wsh_200_000

Fit for life on washes?

Edit: Having now tested the washes on some diffrent models I can say that its no replacement for Devlar mud but I can see it have some uses non the less. I just need to use it diffrently then I usualy does with the Devlar mud. More experimenting is needed.

Review - Miniature Design Studio

I just got these miniatures from Miniature Design Studio and wanted to show them. I haven’t seen much about them before so I thought I could share these pictures with you.

The miniatures looked nice on their homepage and its always fun to add some new models or sculpts that you don’t see every day.

One small little thing that really was nice, a small thing that shows that they care that little extra was a handwritten Thank you on the order

I placed the order late a Friday night (yeah I know… party party, but as a father of a baby daughter I find it somewhat wrong to have hangover the day after…) and on Monday morning when I checked my mail I had received a mail about my ordered already been sent. So they are quick. 

The sculpts are clean and nice and not that much in the way of cleaning is required.

I thought these miniatures could be a nice addition to my slowly growing Viking collection.

These Pict javelinmen will be perfect for using as Viking thralls. I only need do skip some of the more special shields.

http://www.miniaturedesignstudio.co.uk/pict-javelinmen-330-c.asp

These Saxon Ceorls will be nice as Viking Bondi.

http://www.miniaturedesignstudio.co.uk/saxon-ceorls-325-c.asp

And here is a small size comparison with a plastic Viking from Gripping beast. And by this comparison I think they will be a nice addition to my collection.

Here are a painted example of the Saxons from the MDS homepage.

Oh yeah the price… with a price of £1.00 per model these are cheap.

I cannot recommend them enough.

This is how they look now all painted up.
Viking Bondi
Viking Thralls