A Little Nostalgia...

...carefully disguised as rebasing! On my 'old' Freewebs site, which is long gone now, I had a gallery entitled 1066 Year of Destiny where I pictured my Wargames Foundry Saxons/Anglo Danes of the 1066 period. The figures, along with their Norman counterparts, had been sculpted by my son Matthew for them. I've done nothing with the army since I last rebased it on 40mm square MDF bases a while back; mainly because I never got around to buying the Normans! If you don't recall the figures, or are new to this Blog, here are a few of the pictures I took back in the day; at the time they were based mostly on 20mm square bases ~

Harold Triumphant

Mounted Saxons and Abbot

The Shieldwall!

Hearth Guards

Warriors

A sense of the look of the army

After several 'happy hours' spent soaking the figures off their bases and further hours expended cheerfully on sticking them back onto mostly 30mm round MDF bases they are now ready to be textured ~ Oh Joy! {Not to mention the bases then being washed in Country Maple, grassed and tufted!} So far I've textured the archers and the Edric the Wild set, but I've just run out of PVA!!! Now, gentle reader, you are quite entitled to wonder why I am bothering. Well, you see, last year I bought some Normans on a whim while over at the Foundry in East Stoke and last month I bought a few more.  The first cohort have been over at Phil's being painted for me these last months and the new ones are based and ready to go over next week, so I thought I needed to get started on rebasing the Saxons now! I am planning to get into playing Saga later in the year; firstly with the Norman invaders of Guy de Bykleigh, Lord of the Manor of Worzul, and his Saxon nemesis Bicca and latterly with the newly settled Normans and the Saxon resistance of Philla, formerly Lord of Rawnslea. I'm not so sharp at learning new rules now a days, a bit lazy even if I'm truthful, but it will be a nice little filler game on full gaming days in the summer I hope.
To conclude, if any have wondered why I've nothing newly painted to show off: well, having completed my Hompesch Mounted Rifles, from Trent Miniatures, and a 'Small' unit of Hanoverian infantry {from Trent and Front Rank} for the FRW project I started on a unit of British Guards by Reiver Castings and it is proving a very slow job as the 'style' does n't really suit my prefered approach to painting. I've finished the four Centre Companies and started on the Grenadier Company, just leaving the Light Company to do. I hope to get them all finished by the weekend as I've also started on three sets from Eureka ~ two French limber sets in walking pose and a caisson set in similar pose. There is a bit of pressure here now to complete these, and the two British limber sets from Front Rank for late March when Dan is coming to photograph the collection to illustrate two articles I've written for Wargames Illustrated. So I hope you'll not think me brusque if I skip off back to the painting desk now!