Vikings Set Sail ..

Sven Eriksen and his warbands set off on a new voyage .....

Thorin halftooths scouts have been active in the area, and have already noted these obstructions in the area, not previously recorded on the map they have. His newly raised band is only awaiting a favourable wind to fall on the defenceless saxons.

Some new hills for the Scenics ...

A couple of new hills to add to my scenics, in the foreground a Gale Force 9 rocky outcrop and in the background a Citadel hill - they will provide a little more variety on the table and a couple of obstacles for they darn maraudin vikings.

Saxon camp ...

Having done tents for the Vikings I thought the Saxons should also have some, so I bought some of the nice Saxon tents from Renedra

A small Saxon encampment ....

A little tinkering with the rules ...

After the last few games, there's been some markups on the rules we use, so I've updated them and version 5 is now ready for the next lot of markups :); the rules are not that complicated and we find they give us a nice fast play game.

Feel free to download and use etc - from here

Battle at Hokksund

Sven Erikson had completed the journey home across the north sea; on his arrival he learned his territories were under attack by the warlord Agnar Torfuson. Sven hastily organised his forces and sent word to the surrounding areas to muster at Hokksund. Sven's intention was to block Agnar's advance along the coast.

---oXo---

Sven Erikson has arrived at Hokksund, as his men leave the long ship other bands of warriors are arriving..

Along the coastal plain, small groups of Sven's men are scouting and keeping a look out for Agnar's army.

Sven leads the main body of his forces out of  Nestorp..

Sven's scouts encounter some of Agnar's men ....

Sven has formed his men into two battle lines and is advancing along the coast ...

Agnar's army marches relentlessy on pushing back Sven's scouts ...

Both sides apprach a small hamlet,  skirmishing starts in earnest ...

Shieldwalls form up ...

Agnar's first line surges forward and hits the opposition's shieldwall, the fighting soons descends into a disorganised melee..

Sven's first line break contact and run having got the worst of the fighting ....

Agnar's army now advance towards Sven's second line (as Sven's first line rally further back) ...

Agnar's men attack Sven's shieldwall, fighting is hard ....

This time Agnar's men get the worst of it and break ...

Agnar tries to rally his men on a line formed by his housecarls...

His efforts are to no avail and his men keep on running; Agnar starts to fall back - he cannot face all of Sven's forces with just his housecarls.

Sven Erikson and his men hold their ground and are content with letting Agnar Torfuson and his warriors leave of their own accord.

Viking Camp ..

For some time I have been considering adding some tents to form part of a camp. I recently purchased 'Construye Este Poblado Vikingo' (picture of booklet shown here ), which is really 1:87 but has some great content - one of which is a small plain coloured tent. So a quick scan in and magnification by approx 1.5 gave me a base template to work from. Instead of keeping the tent plain I changed it to stripes, printing it out on 210gm white card - I printed 5 with different coloured stripes.

Picture below shows one tent assembled and stuck onto a base, with the next template ready to cut out; the end frames have been positioned ready to be stuck onto some 2mm thick card.

After sticking the end supports onto thin card and cutting them out I painted the edges with a light brown colour - then stuck onto the tent ends.  A wash of light brown was applied to the tent to tone down the colours. Then the base was painted and some static grass applied. I made up a total of 5 tents and made a fire up from some small stones and spare bits of plastic. 

The viking camp ....

the tents are probably not 100% historically correct (would probably have had the tent material over the wooden A frame ends) but they look OK to me ..