A relatively new period for us has been dark ages 28mm. More than 50% of the collection came from Turbil Miniatures painting service doing a contract for Saxons and Vikings.  If you bounce to their blog or even better their YouTube channel, you can get tons of inspiration.  I think I credit them with introducing me to feasible basing of miniatures on clear bases – particularly for the plastic  28mm’s – I think it looks great.

As you may discern a pattern, the books which brought us along to this darker time are from Bernard Cornwell – The Saxon Tales Series:

These are magnificent books and cover a tremendous series of adventures for Uhtred of Bebbanburg (later Bamburgh I believe).  These are definitively the Sharpe novels of the Dark Ages struggle by Alfred to unite the English peoples.

At home we’ve outlined a narrative campaign that has each of the three of us ‘owning’ one Saxon lord or character, one Viking Warlord, and one Irish leader.  In pairing off against a narrative campaign we can switch sides and play confidently with some skin in the game.  No matter what the campaign moves are on the map, at least one player-leader will be at the scene of any battle or skirmish.

As the post title implies we are starting with Lions Rampant (actually a web-based variant called Shieldwall Rampant).   We aren’t stuck to it for all actions, but are for now. We may eventually incorporate Saga for small skirmishes, Hail Caesar for larger battles etc.

Dark ages terrain collection being somewhat immature, I have gotten a start.  I have four pieces from 4Ground to put together.  These three pieces of scatter will definitely see some use and were brushed up this week.  The gentleman on the left will occasionally be St. Cuthbert – whose remains Uhtred is capable of finding when needed (brilliant).

The second campaign game is set up on the table now – my Viking warlord Olaf Olafson is returning to the river to get his longship and flee after a tough campaign.  The wily Lord Shieldstone’s Saxon forces have interposed themselves between Olaf’s army and the river and will try to burn his ships (15 turns).

Olaf’s army includes two units of cavalry and six of infantry.  This will be the largest Lions Rampant game we’ve tried so far.

Shieldstone’s men arrayed along a stream includes only a single mounted unit of redlords and some five infantry including one of archers (relatively new painting – all metal because the dark age archer set from GBP came out only after I started these guys!)

Cornwell does a great job of portraying the importance of religion to the era and so every army has to deploy a Bishop or some other inspirational leader type.

Olaf in his war glory- ready to test the shieldwall!

I’ll update when we get to roll the dice!