Medievals and Dark Ages

Having returned home from visiting the kids, I have finally been able to finish painting a small Norman style church I constructed pre-Christmas to add to my medieval buildings. As with most of my terrain and buildings it is simply made with balsa wood and with most details painted on.

A small church either being defended or about to be looted

I will be able to use this type of building in a number of periods

I now need to complete a small bridge for my Hundred Years War games, as I cannot always rely upon fords for crossings.

My next project involves building some Saxon and Norman armies. A few months back I purchased one of the Battle or Britain series by artist Peter Dennis, which provides the source illustrations for printing paper soldiers and some rules. Many years ago I picked up Osprey's Campaign Series  "Hastings 1066 - The fall of Saxon England" and while I have no desire to invest in and paint up the forces, the opportunity to use paper soldiers seemed very intriguing.

The Battle of Britain - Wargame 1066 Saxons-Vikings-Normans

I have been to the local printing shop and had all the required source pages copied on the recommended weight paper. I am now trying to make up a few stands as a test to see how they look and handle. From a look point of view they copied well and I do like the style of the illustrations. Cutting out the blocks of figures is tricky, but not too time consuming. Once cut out they are quite flimsy which will present a future storage problem and questions on their longevity with handling and packing up. As I have a few spare sheets I am going to investigate some different options for constructing them to be more robust.

Trialling construction approaches

The figures themselves are 30mm and are designed for a stand of 40mm width and 30mm depth. My initial thoughts are to use two sets of figures per stand to create an 80mm by 30mm stand. I do like stands of 3 to 4 inches so they are easy to handle, but having small stands may be better for how they look laid out on the table. Anyway, I suspect there will be quite a bit of trial and error with this project.