Thinking About Vikings

I have recently become fired up about gaming in the Dark Ages. I've spent a lot of time looking through the various sets of rules that I've acquired (Field of Glory: Wolves from the Sea, Warhammer Ancient Battles: Shieldwall, and Terry Gore's Medieval Warfare).

In the back of the Gore book I found a brief order of battle for the battle of Stamford Bridge, pitting Vikings against Saxons just prior to the battle of Hastings. I've since read a few online accounts of the battle, which was a rather one-sided affair as the Vikings were caught off-guard by the appearance of a defending army and had sent their armor back to the ships while they goofed off in the river. I've also learned that Gore also published a campaign book featuring the battles of Fulford Gate, Stamford Bridge and Hastings as well as further books of army lists and scenarios for the period. Since I've already got some plastic Vikings I will probably start off with them and attempt to put together enough stuff to recreate these engagements.

The first order of business is to read some books on the topic. It's been a while since I've been excited to read anything so that's a step up for me. Second is to do some research on uniforms (or lack of) and the like. I've already got a few references assembled for that. Once I've got a fair understanding of how it all went down I can get my armies put together and hopefully pick up some of those other books, especially the campaign book. I had a heck of a time finding a U.S. distributor for them, but eventually stumbled on the website of Noble Knight Games, who have all of the books I was looking for at a reasonable cost. Now I just need to write my list up for Santa. Hopefully in the next few months I will have some concrete progess to show instead of mere scheming and dreaming.

I still have not been able to come up with a solid list from the Skaven army book. Part of my problem is that there are so many units in the Special choices section of the book that I can't choose everything I want to include. Something gets left out, especially if you consider that I need a large unit of Plague Monks to push a Plague Furnace about. You can take a special character to make Plague Monks into Core choices, but he is so expensive that I can't justify it.

So I've put the Skaven on a back burner for now. Once school ends in a couple of weeks I will probably try to get back on the wagon and see what I can come up with. But between work, school, and home I am so burned out right now that it's all I can do to be semi-functional from day to day.

I've been meaning to post some sort of review of the new Skaven book, but I haven't even found a spare hour or two to read through it and build an army list. I've even been too short on time to read through the latest White Dwarf, and that's mostly pictures.

Today was my birthday. I worked a couple extra hours trying to get a little closer to caught up. We usually get a big influx of work prior to holidays as the various unit clerks try to get their desks cleared off before the long weekends. Just kind of goes with the territory. Once I got home I had some schoolwork to do and now I've got about five hours before I get to wake up and do it again. Ah well, at least I am somewhat securely employed.

My dad took me out to lunch today, and the wife and I might go to dinner tomorrow. She cooked up a turkey today and we'll probably have to have another one by next week. If there's a cooked turkey around we won't leave it alone until it's all gone.

The kid is feeling much better, so hopefully no more trips to the doctor or the Emergency Room. Along with feeling better he's got his sense of humor back, so that's been fun. He's a total loony bin and he loves to goof off and make faces. He's been "cooking" a lot lately. He's got a bunch of pots and pans from the kitchen and he'll put his toys in them, mix them around, put the lids on and take them off, and transfer items from pan to pan.

A Realization

I think I figured out why the snake wasn't interested in eating. A couple of days ago I was looking at the burrows it lives in from the bottom of the aquarium and I saw some shed skin in one of them. It probably wasn't eating because it was in the middle of a molt.

In other news, this was a horrible weekend. The boy has been sick and is quite miserable, which means he's required a lot of attention and everyone else has been miserable along with him. Pretty much nothing that needed done got done and I'm going into next week feeling very far behind on everything.

Only one of the shops in town had the new Skaven Screaming Bell/Plague Furnace in stock today (today is the release date for it). I went in to have a look at it, but couldn't stomach the price tag for the kit. This particular shop caters only to gamers, unlike Hobbytown which covers all sorts of hobbies, and they charge full MSRP for their products. I will probably wait until Hobbytown gets it into stock or buy it online at a discount website. Although I tend to get the figures I like, I still have a little cheap gamer living inside of me.

It's About Time

I have been quite worried about the new snake, as it was not wanting to eat and it's been almost two weeks since it arrived in the mail. I tried just about everything I could to get it to eat, but it would run away from or just ignore the food. A few nights ago I even tried putting a live pinky in the cage to see if it would take that. No dice, so I wound up having to kill the pinky rather than let it die a slow death by starvation.

Tonight I saw the snake moving around a couple of times, which is supposedly a signal of hunger. So I got a mouse out of the freezer, thawed and warmed it, and presented it to the snake with some hopefully realistic wriggling motion. At first the snake started to pull back away from it, but when I began bumping the mouse's head against the snake's tail he grabbed onto it and coiled up around it. I wiggled the mouse a bit while the snake had it gripped and that seemed to trigger a little more aggression in the snake. Then I left the snake alone for a while so it wouldn't get spooked before it swallowed the food. I checked once as it was getting the mouse situated and the next time I checked it had burrowed back down into the substrate with a nice little bump in it's belly. So now I at least know the snake will feed.

Wishy-Washy

My cousin invited me to play Warhammer 40k with him today. I declined, citing a need to do schoolwork. I imagine I also had underlying reasons like unfamiliarity with the rules and lack of a full-sized army. I have spent the morning thinking I probably should have gone to play games and done my schoolwork tonight and on Monday.

More Wargames Factory

As I mentioned previously, I got my initial order of Wargames Factory Vikings in the mail. The boxed set isn't available yet, but the introductory sample pack is on the website. Each set contains 3 sprues with enough parts to make 8 figures. I wound up getting 40 Vikings for about $30. Also included in the box were a couple of sampler sprues for the company's Ancient German infantry and some Zulu warriors. It looks like I've got enough parts for 5 Zulus and 6 Germans. The free figures are nice, even though I don't really have a use for the Zulus.

Overall I am happy with the Vikings. It looks like you have to be careful which arms you put on each figure, as the figure I put together looked goofy with a sword and shield. I had to build him as an archer instead. Mold lines were pretty minimal, and much easier to take care of in plastic than in metal figures. Looking at it from the cheap wargamer perspective, the impression upon opening the box was that there was a lot of plastic in there for the money.

Viking Comparison

I got a few sprues of the Wargames Factory Vikings a few days ago. I put one of them together to see how it would look. I had originally intended to give him a sword and shield, but they looked goofy when I test-fitted them and I gave him a bow instead. The picture features the Wargames Factory archer on the left, a Foundry Viking in the middle, and a Gripping Beast Saxon on the right. I was going to have all three be Vikings, but I grabbed the wrong Gripping Beast box and was too lazy to go back upstairs.

To my eyes the Gripping Beast figure fits fairly well with the Wargames Factory sculpt, while the Foundry figures look a bit shorter and heftier than the others. The difference isn't enough that I would feel uncomfortable mixing all three on the table together. I'll probably mix and match what I've got and fill out the rest of my purchases with Wargames Factory.

New Skaven

The new Skaven army book is out. I haven't had a chance to really look at it yet, but it appears that not a lot has changed with the army I've got painted. It does add several new units that weren't available in the last edition. I'd like to get some of the new models, especially the Doomwheel and the Plague Furnace/Screaming Bell kit. Not much else to say as I'm off playing army for a couple of days and typing on my phone.