Norman Infantry Review and Conversions

I have had a box of Conquest Games' new Norman Infantry for about a week.  A quick review: if you have their cavalry, buy this box. You will have more than enough troops for a SAGA warband, and you're more than halfway there for a decent sized non-skirmish game. I am currently leaning towards Clash of Empires - haven't tried Hail Caesar, though.  For about $30 USD, you get eight sprues with five bodies. Three bodies are unarmored, one is in a gambeson and one is in knee length chain mail.  Two command sprues contain a leader in chain and an unarmored musician/standard bearer, and a dead knight.  The models are crisp and well molded with a minimal amount of flash.  The line of flash going up the leg wrappings can be difficult to smoothly remove.

I have two small criticisms with the set.  Overall, the sculpting is excellent, though I do not really care for unarmored fellow who is in an awkward half-run pose.  He doesn't make a good spearman and with a sword in his hand he looks like he is about to trip.  And while the set contains plenty of weapon options (spears, swords, two handed axes, kite shields and round shields), it contains no bows or crossbows.  As levies are the weakest SAGA troops, it can painful to pay metal prices for 12 archers when there are plastic options available for warriors and hearthguard.  It's a disincentive to adding levy units to your warband.

My solution was to add in arms and bows from some bits left over from a box of Wargames Factory Saxons. Here are four Conquest Games infantry converted into archers, and given a black wash to highlight details.

The posing is not ideal for archers, but they might fill out the ranks behind a good set of dedicated metal Norman archers. Neither of those critiques should bar one from buying a box or two if a Norman army is your desire.  

Woodland Indians update

The Gripping Beast Skraeling army is almost completed - only a unit of warriors and the War Chief remain.  They will propbably put on hold, a box of plastic Normans awaits.

Non-Fiction Reading Recommendations

For further research on the Indians of the southeast, the best survey is Charles Hudson's The Southeastern Indians (1976).  It is a comprehensive look at the peoples of the southeast from the Paleolithic Era to the Cherokees.  The wargamer and military historian might better enjoy that same author's Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun (1997).  It is a well researched scholarly work about DeSoto's journey through the southeast, but its also a gripping narrative of the encounter between the Old and New Worlds at the end of the Middle Ages.  Centuries before, the steel swords of the Vikings were not enough to make colonization of the Americas tenable; later the guns, germs and steel of the Europeans made conquest almost inevitable.  However, in this brief moment, both sides faced each other with an equal share of advantages and disadvantages.  As DeSoto and his band haphazardly wandered across the south, they were also torn apart by their lust for gold and internal jealousies.

Historical Fiction 

People of the Weeping Eye
People of the Masks 

The First American series of books by Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear can be an uneven lot.  Most books contain a liberal amount of New Age mysticism, but overall the authors avoid idealized depictions of harmonious first peoples.  They depict a complex, yet deeply tribal group of peoples, who build, destroy, scheme, love, fight, and trade.  It should also be noted that the authors engage in what fantasy writers would call world building.  No matter how archaeologically informed and researched, the authors do have to re-create the intricacies of social institutions without any documentation. In The People of the Weeping Eye warfare erupts as one tribe challenges the hegemony of another among the mound builders of Mississippi and Alabama.  For those interested in the Viking/Indian encounter, a more relevant book might be People of the Masks, about the early Iroquois, builders of the longhouses.

Dice Decal Giveaway

I have made a big pile of custom dice lately, and ended up with some extra sheets of decals.  Therefore, as a way of both saying thanks and avoiding waste, I am giving away six sets (three Byzantine, three Skraeling) on a first come, first serve basis.  Each sheet has enough decals to make 4 dice, blank dice not included.

Just be a subscriber to  my blog, and post a comment indicating which one you prefer.  I will respond back by email to get addresses.  I will probably be creating some new decals in a couple of months, so expect another giveaway of extras then.

Woodland Indians and Mound Builders

I've finally started painting my box set of Gripping Beast's Skraelings.  Here are the first eight.

Due to a strong local connection to the Etowah Mounds, I am depicting my figures as eastern Moundbuilders of the Mississippi period.  According to some sources, they developed and used many dyes on their fabrics, favoring reds, yellows and black.

While the time frame of the Viking settlement of Vinland does coincide with the Mississippi culture, it is very unlikely that they were the Skraelings so described.  Nonetheless, the trade networks established by the great moundbuilding cities like Cahokia, extended north to Canada and the Great Lakes region, south all the way to Meso-America and west to the Rocky Mountains.


Pictures from the Etowah Mounds in Cartersville, Georgia.

Defensive ditch surrounding the village

View of the second mound from atop the highest mound.
The Etowah  River is behind the stand of trees in the background.

View across the Plaza, where ceremonies and civic activities occurred

Bretons

I just finished a unit of eight Breton warriors from SAGA.  In the few games that I played as a Welsh, I don't really think I found the full potential of the "run and shoot" style of play.  The Bretons are a bit more flexible than the Welsh, so I may supplement these with some Normans for a Breton army.

All of the figures are Conquest Games plastic Normans with some minor modifications - spears were shortened to a throwing length and extra javelins were clutched under the shield.

Playing around with the photo editor on the pic above reminds me of a silent era costume drama with a "cast of thousands"

Normans without Horses

The traditional image of the Norman warrior is the mailed knight bearing a kite shield and couched spear astride a powerful destrier. These were the warriors who gave the Normans the reputation as the best heavy cavalry in the tenth and eleventh centuries, from Britain to Byzantium.  However, the mounted knight was hardly the only Norman warrior, and most certainly not even the most numerically predominant.  At the Battle of Hastings, most sources estimate that Duke William fielded one to two thousand cavalry out of a force of six to eight thousand.  Osprey's Campaign Series book Hastings 1066, citing Professor David Douglas, puts the cavalry numbers much more precisely at 1,070 Normans, 400 Franco-Flemish and 530 Bretons.  These estimates make the cavalry at most 25% of the Norman army.  What of the majority of the Norman army, the spearmen, archers and crossbowmen?  As low ranking sergeants or commoners, chroniclers showed little interest in recording their contributions to the battle.  Not surprisingly, The Bayeux Tapestry shows the Battle of Hastings opening with 12 horsemen and 4 archers, an inverse of the probable distribution.

Tactically, Norman infantry and archers initiated contact with the enemy, the cavalry holding back until the point of maximum impact.  The knights did not get all the glory, though.  The Bayeux Tapestry does depict England's King Harold's death by an arrow to the head.  

Gripping Beast Norman Spearmen

The three figures below are from Black Tree Designs.  I recently made my first purchase from the American distributor, and I am impressed.  The finish is a bit rough in some places, but the posing is unique and natural; the company's delivery was very fast.  

There is some debate about whether crossbow units were present at Hastings.  Nonetheless, they were an integral part of the Norman warmachine in Italy and undoubtedly accompanied Norman knights on the First Crusade.

Norman Crossbows, Crusader Miniatures and Black Tree Designs

For a challenge, I recommend playing SAGA as the Normans using the historical percentages from Hastings.  In other words, with a six point force, at most two units can be mounted.  

Gravett, Christopher. Hastings 1066 The Fall of Saxon England London: Osprey Publishing,  1992.

Battle of Hastings scene by scene: http://www.bayeuxtapestry.org.uk/BayeuxContents.htm

Printing and Finishing Custom Dice

My previous homebrew SAGA dice have been printed on decal paper or on regular paper and affixed with spray adhesive.  I am now working on something a little more professional looking, waterslide decals.  This paper can be obtained fairly reasonably from a variety of sources, I found mine on eBay years ago for a guitar related project. At any rate, I have about a dozen sheets left, great for a variety of uses.

I create my custom pictures using a freeware program calked PhotoFiltre, or use the image files on the Studio Tomahawk forum.  The SAGA community should be really thankful that the game designers have opened so much of the game up to fan experimentation.

I tried to put as many decals as I could on a page.  The decal paper is not very expensive, but I hate to waste space, and I could always make extra dice for friends I am trying to hook on SAGA.

Spray the printed sheet with a glossy sealer, let dry for several hours.

Carefully clip and dip your decals in a cup of water for about 30 seconds.  You want the decal to slide off the paper and onto the surface of the die. Too much submersion and most of the adhesive is leached away, too little and the decal will not come loose from the backing.

SAGA Dice for Woodland Indians or "Skraelings"

Finally, I sprayed the gloss sealer on the dice, a couple of coats to get all the sides.  All together, it is not terribly expensive to produce a set of dice this way, but it is time consuming.  Of course, one could always use regular d6, but without getting too pretentious, part of the appeal of rolling dice in general and SAGA dice in particular is its connection to ancient ritual behavior.  The earliest dice to prehistoric and ancient men were "knucklebones," or the anklebones of livestock or hoofed game like deer.  Symbols and runes were marked on the sides for use in shamanistic rituals...or mostly gambling.  Symbol dice seem to carry greater significance than just a number of dots.   

SAGA dice for the Scots faction