The Fabulous Art of Trudvang

The Fabulous Art of Trudvang

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1256540796/the-fabulous-art-of-trudvang


Dammit... I got really tempted to join in on this Kickstarter, a book with the collection of arts from the world of Trudvang.

Mamluk heavy horsearchers

Freshly painted, small unit of Mamluk Heavy horsearchers for my Ayyubid Egyptians.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayyubid_dynasty )

The miniatures are from Gripping Beast and is a combination of their plastic and their metal miniatures. The standardbearers arm is from Fireforge Games plastic Mongols archers, some of the shields are from another maker and so on. Always nice to ad that extra level on variation.


I wanted to add more details then I normally do on gaming miniatures and the fabrics and textures of the clothings of a Saracen Mamluks really lend itself for this.

The banner is again a paper banner that "Eric the Shed" put together. http://shedwars.blogspot.se/2015/03/saracen-pennants-flags-and-banners.html that I printed on regular paper and curled it around a brush handle when the woodglue was still wet. I used my regular paint to shade some part of the banner to give it a little more life.
Big thanks for that Eric, real nice work.

This is actually the second part of a unit, combining this small unit with a previously painted small unit I get a standard sized unit in Hail Caesar.

Im not that fond of the plastic horses, they look wrong. The heads and especially the nostrills are wrong. The legs are wrong, something strange with the positions of the legs that dont look natural and lenght of some of the bent legs looks longer then the straith ones that tuch the ground. The tails look wrong to, all to big or long. If they had done the horses right it could have been a great kit.


It is not good to take this sort of close up pictures of miniatures, they are ment to be viewed from on the gaming table and not as close as these pictures are taken.

When I look at these pictures I see lots of mistakes and things I could have done differently. It seems that you could always add more details but I have to tell myself that these are gaming miniatures and not display pieces and that you have to draw the line somewhere.
But I am happy with these, its fun to paint Mamluks in expensive garment and equipment.
 

German knights

Latest unit finished. A small unit of German knights. I wanted to use lots of yellow, red and black on these knights. The only regrets I feel with the colouration I went with is that I should have had more eagle motifs and heraldry.
If I paint another unit of German Knights I must remember that.

The miniatures are from Fireforge Games ( http://fireforge-games.com/) and I really like them.

The Knight with the blue and white checker markings are inspired from the blue and white of the Bavarian flag.

These were actually the other half of a unit I have painted previously, and here are the complete unit in all its glory.

I am sure this unit will look killer on the tabletop.

More pictures of the other half can be found here:  http://kampgruppe-engel.blogspot.se/2015/05/german-knights.html

Kronobergs Slottsruin

A cold rainy day a couple of weekends ago I pressganged my own daughter to accompany me to the Kronobergs Slottsruin, just north of Växjö where I live. I needed some company and a model for scale...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronoberg_Castle

http://www.slottsguiden.info/slottdetalj.asp?id=161


Usually on Saturdays during this summer Växjö HEMA sällskap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_European_martial_arts) are having practising/ showing their hobby but I guess the bad weather meant they had cancelled that day.

Lets just say it wasn´t crowded... It was me and my daughter and a family of German tourist.




In this post you will see some of the picture  I took from the visit. Some pictures are named with a number indicating which room they were taken from/ in.

The ruin had some small informative  pictures with some information in Swedish, English and German.

Picture from within room 5,  round tower if I remember correctly.

 19, Southwest staircase

They had a small display of an dinner with handmade dolls. It was nice to have atleast little colours to display besides all the bare rocks from the ruined castle.
I tried to take lots of pictures here for future references....

 Some pictures from the western side.

This could have been 14, the  kitchen tower. I dont remember exactly.

 Pictures from room 15, see the orientation picture later

Different stages of the castle

I really like this last picture of the castle. If I ever make a miniature castle Im sure it would look splendid.

Pictures of the main gate to the south from within the castle.

Guard room, the entry can be seen in the picture above.

Inside the guard room, room 2.

Picture on the Stallholmen, just south of the ruined castle.

Stallholmen, its a small island just south of the main castle, used for workers and cattle.

Just south of Stallholmen is a small restaurant and café as well as the harbour place for
Ångaren Thor
http://www.kulturparkensmaland.se/1.0.1.0/67/1/
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/S_Thor

And luckily they had some candy, a well deserved moral boost for being forced on daddy's little visit. 

And here is a small paper from the visit. That gives a picture of what each room was used for.

This could be a nice project to build and game in the future.
Its a rather small castle which make it so much easier to build and game on. And as it really have been involved in war with actual attack you don´t need to invent a sort of "what if" scenario to represent it. Its a period in time that I havn´t gamed that much yet and that makes it even more interesting in a miniature game oriented game.