Dark Age Madness

Finally managed to finish off the cavalry I needed to field the 400 points force for Midgard.

These are Victrix Late Roman armoured cavalry but with a couple of head swaps using the Romano British heads from the Late Roman infantry set.

Now just need to finish off  some of the Warlord personality figures I got as a present and that’s the Romano British finished, but saying that I have already started on the Saxon forces.

Coming back to the thought on flexibility I did not want to rebase the current Saga forces just in case I wanted to play again so it was out with the sabot bases. These will form the units of “tribal warriors” and “skirmishers” I need to complete the army.

Finally there is also the option to potentially field the forces as small “Hail Caesar” for the use in the “Once and Future King” supplement that was recently published.

With the basing I have adopted this will allow me to use 3 bases of the Infantry to form a unit under “Hail Caesar” rules so everyone is a winner.

It was now time for the main men the “mighty heroes” that are key in the Midgard game.

First off when I found the cavalry seen previously I had also found a couple of “late roman” command figures that would fit into the role plus there were a couple of infantry spare from the Victix set that would make suitable foot commanders.

For the other commanders I would need I just rebased a couple of the older “warlord” figures I already had for my Saga forces.

It was now on to the Pedyt infantry (warriors) for these I would need 5 units for  a 400 point force but had enough troops to make up 6 units for Midgard.

These would be made up of a mix of armoured and unarmoured warriors with most carrying banners based on the various “badges” from the “Winter King” series of books also produced by LBMS.

First up I completed the foot Comitatus (Bodyguard) unit. For basing I have gone for 2 60×50 bases for flexibility (see later post) with 5 figures per base. The reason is that while I could have potentially wedged another figure per base I wanted a bit more dynamism to the unit without figures stabbing each other in the head.

This unit contains only armoured troops and is carrying a Draco standard.

For the armoured figures I started with the usual black undercoat and then a heavy drybrush of either gunmetal grey or true bronze.

Then it was time to experiment to see what effects I could get with using different washes (all from the Army Painter range).

These are shown in the picture below but unfortunately it doesn’t really show the actual differences that are there in real life.

I used Dark Tone, Blue, Purple on the Gunmetal and Red and Soft Tone on the Bronze scale armour.

Looking at the results I would go on to use the Dark Tone and Purple (which gave an oiled feel to the armour) on the rest of the chainmail figures but still keep the red and soft tone on the Bronze to provide a mix.

So what did I need to paint to make up the army based on the lists in Midgard. A quick look at the list I needed the following units.

• 1 Foot Comitatus (Bodyguard)
• 5 Pedyt (Spearmen)
• 3 Tribal Warriors
• 1 Unit of Skirmishers
• 3 Units of Mounted Comitatus

A quick count up of the existing Saga forces showed I had enough for 5 foot units and I decided that I would use them as the Tribal Warriors giving me a couple of extra units for bigger games.

That meant that I would need to complete 6 units, 1 of Comitatus and 5 of Pedyt. The Late Roman figures I was using gave me a total of 72 figures so plenty and time to decide later how many figures I would fit to a base.

The Comitatus unit was going to be made up of all armoured figures and the Pedyt units a mix of armoured and unarmoured figures so I could tell them apart on the table.

The downside to that was that I would need to complete all the figures first before basing could commence.

So the Victrix bingo begins.

First up are the Romano British (from the Late Roman Armoured Infantry) these troops with form the Comitatus Foot units.

I want to do the majority as spear armed and try to not to get many duplicates.

The way I have been doing this is noting what weapons have been used from sprue to sprue (the little dots on the instructions) so should give me a decent mix.

So the start of 2025 and the start of a new project that I didn’t intend to do at all. Then in December along came the release of Midgard from the Lardies and “Once and Future King” supplement from Warlord.

I have always loved the “Dark Ages” (or should it be early medieval – no I am to old it is the dark ages) and already have several “warbands” for Saga (Welsh, Saxon, Viking and Norman – plus unpainted Irish and a few Picts). So both these releases intrigued me.

One game of Midgard (using Ancient British and Romans) and I was hooked and the orders went  off just before Christmas (as a present from me to me) and they arrived within 3 days!

I also had a rummage and found my Welsh/Romano British Saga force and also some Romano British cavalry that has been loitering in the “pile of potential” for a few years.

So I now have to sort out the following:

1. How to base the forces so I can still use the Saga forces
2. Enable their use in all three rules sets.

For Midgard I will be using the standard 12cm frontage, for Hail Caesar unit frontage is between 15cm and 20cm.

For the existing troops this will probably be sorting out some sabot bases (not the greatest fan but already use in a couple of other armies to enable use in skirmish games).  For the others it will probably be on 60mm frontage bases but lets experiment and see.