New Project: Icelanders Sagas

 A few days ago I started a new project. Small skirmish combat set in Iceland during the "Viking Age", how is that for niche!

After looking at some rules reviews, I decided to go with "Battle Troll", a little known set of rules but exactly what I was looking for, the subtitle is "Man-to-Man Combat as depicted in the Icelandic Sagas".

The rules are quite simple, and if they do have a theme and inspiration in the Icelandic Sagas, most of the rules can be applied to any period and place where warfare was carried out with sword, spear, axe and shield.

This new project comes with many challenges. For once, my terrain is all intended to represent WW2 France, not even remotely like Iceland! After a google search I found some reference photos to work with.

This one is my main reference and portrays most of the elements I want for my table. Basically a bunch of rocks. 

And here are the first two pieces of terrain I have in progress. A turf house and a rock template.

The house is intended to represent a farm and is inspired by Eiríksstaðir, Erik the Red house in Iceland. I made an error while building it so it's not exactly identical to Eiríksstaðir, can you spot the mistake? I believe this is an average size house for the period and could represent a small or medium farm. It's still a work in progress. I still need to add more grass to the walls and some to the outside floor.

The roof can be removed to play inside. The Sagas mention some instances where owners had to defend the door from invaders or had to make their way out from a burning building while aggressors are waiting outside. Many interesting possibilities I tend to play out on the table.

Iceland has many different terrains, I choose to represent an area of volcanic ground, like the one in my first picture. The colour palette is really simple and quite subtle and hard to pick up with my cellphone camera. Base colour is graphite and it has a dark grey drybrush.

I have started working on some more rocks, a stream and roads. Icelandic roads in this time where for the most part simple tracks made by horses or livestock so quite narrow and winding.

As for miniatures, I decided to go, as usual, with 15mm. I could have gone with 28mm and that looks like it would have been cheaper since the price of metal is going up and the price of plastic is going down. Warlord Games Viking Bondi pack looks like a great alternative. Nevertheless I wanted to play on a small surface of 2" by 2" and 28mm would have crowded that space with a small amount of miniatures.

The main thing I was looking for is that the minis where not armoured. Most miniatures out there have at least a helmet, but I was looking to represent some angry Icelandic farmers that where going to settle an argument by force and not a Viking raiding party attacking a Monastery. With this in mind I was looking for spears and axes instead of swords since swords where a symbol of status and probably not something the guy who looks after the sheep would have. In the end I decided to go with some packs from Splintered Light Miniatures.

The main pack for my force is the Viking Bondi, with 12 individual poses, most of them with no armour. This was supplemented with their Viking Personalities pack for the Heroes. Most of the personalities come with armour, but this will be useful for more prepared battles instead of opportunity skirmishes. I also got Pack 1 of Early Saxons. They are armed and dressed quite similarly to Vikings so they will mix great. Out of the 34 miniatures, I selected the 12 that best represented what I was looking for to get stated with some quick games. I will paint the rest later.

Plans for the future are to work on some more terrain and expand my forces with Khurasan's Viking Bondi pack that has a lot of individual poses in the kit I'm looking for. I have been looking at Khurasan's Norse-Irish packs too, and even if some of them are not wearing pants, they might mix well with the vikings.