Vikings, Fjórtán!

Wargames Foundry Viking Berserkers

So it has been a little while since I last wrote up a post – even though the most recent post just went up a couple of days ago I had actually written up a batch of posts last weekend and queued them up so that they would publish throughout the week using the WordPress scheduler. I haven’t done very much painting in the last week either, as I am a little bit burnt-out with the whole painting and blogging thing at the moment. I don’t think the August Challenge has worked for me all that well either unfortunately due to a combination of tiredness, work(ing late every night) and annoying weather. Usually around this time of year – September-November-ish, I’ve gotten the painting doldrums as well, so I guess that’s on cue as well.

Anyway enough of my bitching. Today I have a few more Viking models to share.
Wargames Foundry Viking Berserkers
Wargames Foundry Viking Berserkers
These models have been on my desk for a while now – basically since I completed the last completed Vikings that were shown awhile back. The way I’ve worked on my Vikings for the past 2 or 3 years is that there’s always a half-dozen to twenty of them on my painting desk, and as I complete the final models in one batch, I choose, clean up, base and start on the next ones – so there’s always some Vikings there to pick away at. Now, all 5 of these Vikings are berserkers – 3 male and 2 female from the various pre-set blisters available from Wargames Foundry.
Wargames Foundry Viking Berserkers
Wargames Foundry Viking Berserkers
While painting these models I wanted to go for a slightly more desaturated palette than usual and tone down on the amount of rich dyes that the figures were using – figuring that berserkers would be a little bit less concerned with looking Viking Fabulous and more concerned with practicality or looking a bit more workmanlike. For the same reason, their Shields are a bit duller and attempt to show some off the wood grain underneath the paint. They are also not so clean and pristine like the Shields on the rest of my Vikings, and the free hand designs are both simpler and a little rougher.
Wargames Foundry Viking Berserkers
Wargames Foundry Viking Berserkers
Naturally in Saga these figures would all be armed with daneaxes and none with shields or dual weilding, but these are the figures that I have – so what are you going to do? They will be able to work as a unit in quite a few games, I’m sure and I don’t think anybody that I’m likely to play in SAGA is really going to bitch about them all that much.
One thing that’s probably worthy of note is that these berserkers are all wearing wolf pelts rather than bear pelts. A couple of the other Foundry models are clearly wearing bear pelts, but surprisingly few of them! I will show those ones off once I get them painted. Eventually. Anyway that’s enough of my rambling for today – hope you enjoyed the figures and hopefully I will have another post sorted for tomorrow!
Edit September 13: IRO posted a comment about the skin tones I’d gotten on these guys. I noticed when I saw his comment that the twitter sidebar had an image of Kota Ibushi from something I’d retweeted from New Japan Pro Wrestling. I’ve reposted the image above, because it really stuck and surprised me in terms of the skintones when I saw this pic on the sidebar next to the models – and stuck with me .

FRAG! “Space Marine” Kitbash.

For those who aren’t aware, FRAG! is a multiplayer PVP boardgame based on old-school FPS (First Person Shooter) games like multiplayer DOOM, Quake, Unreal Tournament and so on. When I first got this game, many years ago, I decided to build a couple of models especially for it – so this guy is OLD. I’m not sure where the others are, but I found this guy recently, and updated him to 2018 spec with a new base, so here he is! I could update him further, but (with the exception of the new base) he’s a bit of a time traveller from a certain time in my life, so I don’t want to mess with him any further. Basically, I’d rather just build a new, better one rather than fuck with this model.

Basically, he’s made from plastic Catachan Guardsman parts with a non-aquila Space Marine Torso and a weapon from the WarZone spare weapons set, painted in homage to the sorts of muscle-bound badass “Space Marine” types that game developers gave us to play as back in the day. Yes, his shoulders and their proportions (especially in light of his neck) appear egregiously bad, but that’s part of the charm of this figure to me (and they don’t look quite so bad in hand, somehow). And shit, look at the two models his parts come from! The idea for this guy came about based on the detailing on the backs of those original 40k 3rd edition boxed set torsos (that is no longer on the newer ones) and the particular head (I think it’s from a Sentinel crewman) with shades, chewing on a cigar. He’s on a Sedition Wars base, painted with a touch of Necromunda Blue, so he can always have a secondary position as Hive Scum or a mercenary or some such…