Category Archives: Historical Gaming

Vikings, Fjórtán!

by

32

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 .

Cheeseburger the Bear (Reaper Bones 77494: Dire Bear)

by

22

Here’s a model that I randomly found in a baggie of Reaper Bones models from one of their Kickstarters. I believe I pulled it out at the same time I found the Carrion Worms, so it’s been sitting around for a couple of months now, having a little bit done to it every so often.

The fur had actually been done for some time, and the model just kept getting shoved out of the way from one spot on the desk to another, until I was doing the basing on another trio of models last weekend, so I grabbed the bear to do it’s base at the same time.

So a couple of days ago I saw it there, and decided to finish it off. A couple of hours later and the fur was finished, claws and muzzle and mouth and eyes painted, matt painted on and some tufts added. Anyone who has played Far Cry 5 will understand why I’ve called this bear Cheeseburger (though it also makes me think of the ROH/NJPW Wrestler).

I’m pretty happy with how Cheeseburger’s face turned out. It’s the first time I’ve painted a realistic Black Bear’s face (albeit on a simple Bones model), and it was quite a bit of fun.

In gaming terms, it’s a pretty flexible model. Obviously there’s a place for it in Roleplaying Games, but also anything scenario based, such as Historicals, Fantasy, even some sci-fi. There’s also potential for use in any army (again, especially Fantasy and Historical) that has animal or beast handlers – even 40k could work here – Dark Eldar/Drukhari Clawed Fiend, anyone?

I’ve only just considered that I could have made an awful pun and titled this post “Bear-ly Legal”, but on second thought while puns like Who Let the Dogs Out, etc are fin and fun, Bear-ly Legal might attract the wrong kind of crowd via searches. 😉

It does remind me of an amusing and wholly-unrelated anecdote that I’ll share here. Back in the mid-90’s when I used to play The Warhams with a regular and fluid group in a store in Melbourne’s CBD, there were a couple of other younger, 20’s guys who were also into wrestling, as I was. One evening we were talking about one particular guy lending me a pair of videotapes that he’d gotten hold of. One called Hardcore Heaven and the other called Barely Legal. We were discussing how good they were supposed to be (I’d heard of them, but not ever seen them). Another guy who overheard the discussion warned us that we needed to “be careful” with stuff like that. After a minute or so, we explained to him that we were talking about a different Hardcore Heaven and Barely Legal than what he thought we were on about. We were of course talking about Extreme Championship Wrestling’s first two PPV events. You’re welcome.

Oh, and here’s a size shot of the Big Guy. Pretty happy with how this one turned out, especially given that it’s a Bones model with soft detail and weird, difficult mould lines. The good news at least is that while both of those do stand out a bit in these oversized photos, they’re not really an issue for the model in hand.