Sunday 3 March 2013

Hastings: Saxon Command Bases

Three bases for the good guys at Hastings, each representing one of the Godwinson brothers along with a few friends:
First up is a standard square base with three figures.
Men by Gripping Beast, transfers and banners by Little Big Men Studios, as always...
The second base has four figures, along with a larger banner.  The guy on the left has been eating all the pies!
The two banners in these groups have white stripes in between the coloured ones.  I think the white ones are meant to be cut out, but I left them the way they are.  My figures see quite a lot of travel and rough handling, so making too many tiny streamers would be tempting fate,
The grassy stuff is by Faller, intended for model railway layouts.
Finally, we have the man himself, with a Wessex Dragon standard and his personal banner.  I decided to make Harold's group really stand out by giving him two flags - nice and colourful that way.
The Harold figure is quite large, but he seems larger here than he is in fact, because the base is leaning slightly forward.  Anyway, the King should tower over everyone else.
I gave Harold a shield transfer from the Breton set, because he has a kite shield.
This one and the previous base are shaped slightly differently from my usual square or round ones.  Basically, I've based each of the larger groups on half of a large hexagon as a bit of an experiment.  I hope the top-down shot shows what I mean.
There is method in my madness, as I hope you can see from the above.  The half hexagon has a 12cm long side, which is exactly the same width as an infantry unit in column.  I wanted a base that would fit the rear of a unit, but which would still be visually identifiable as a command stand.
This is the same unit viewed from the front: Huscarls with Harold in personal attendance.

10 comments:

  1. Nice work. Flags and the base are lovely too.

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  2. Nice looking minatures and really nice bases.

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  3. Some great looking stands there. Nice.

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  4. Cheers everyone, and thanks for looking. I've made a start on their Norman counterparts. I had forgotten how easily the paint goes on these guys - all that chain armour! Certainly easier than their classical forebears...

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  5. These are very nice figures but the bases really grabbed my attention.

    I am not a fan of 'building site' bases - lots of bare earth with tufts of grass. Except for desert style armies of course.

    Your bases really do look like uncropped grassland. At the risk of being nosy I wuldlove tolearn more about how you do them.

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  6. Hi Jonathan, the grassy stuff is a model railroad product I came across by chance. You can get it in the UK from Osborn's Models in England:

    http://www.osbornsmodels.com/faller-180465--premium-landscape-wild-grass-meadow-16648-p.asp

    I'm pretty sure you should be able to source it from a decent model railway supplier if you live, say, in the US. It's different from the usual tuft-style product in that it comes as a mat, which means you can tear different shapes and sizes to suit. It is more expensive than tufts, but because it's a mat it actually works out more cost effective for the amount you get. I have another blog post that explains it a little better here:

    http://caliban-somewhen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/basing-experiment-huscarls-for-hastings.html

    Hope this is making sense!

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  7. Thanks for that, I apologise for making you repeat yourself.

    I have read both posts now and indeed it is very helpful. I am in the UK so I will get one of these mats and start experimenting with my ECW figures.

    thanks again.
    John

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  8. No worries, John, you wouldn't necessarily have seen the earlier post anyway. Do let us know how you get on with it, though; it could work really well with the English Civil War...

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