A few years ago at the St. Helens Phalanx wargame show, Liverpool Wargames Association put on a demo table that left me totally inspired.

They had used 28mm on 100mm bases, to give a game on what looked to be a 4’ x 3’ table, using a variation of DBA, so there were probably only around 12 units per side.

This seems the perfect route into building a couple of Pocket Armies for the ‘small game’.

The figures will be sourced as Conquest Games for Normans, Gripping Beast for General Fyrd and Victrix for Housecarls.

It will all have to go onto the back burner, while other ‘front of queue’ projects get advanced a little. (Photo - 88 piece jigsaw from the Hero’s and Heroines series by the Lagoon Group).

The project had an absence of army commanders, an omission sorted when one of the kids kindly gifted me a pair of command packs from Gripping Beast.

The first is William, a mounted figure that has him leaning down to one side, with his command baton outstretched, about to strike a poor unfortunate. It is not obvious in this photograph, but the rearing pose of the horse means that for casting purposes, both front legs have metal connectors between the hoof and the base.

These are obviously meant to be detached, but for a weighty figure like this, I prefer the security of one of the connectors being left in place for stability and preventing any future snapping of the rear legs. I will simply get some tall grasses to cover most of it.

The second pack contains three foot figures, King Harold and his two sons (present at Hastings). Each figure is wielding the double handed long axe.

The three axes come as separate items (as do two sheathed swords), with hands attached. The rider and horse are also separate. In each case, the parts were fitted together using super glued with a very small bead of Green Stuff sandwiched between the joints to bed them in.

These are the bases supplied with the packs, but I will likely go to bigger bases and try to make something more of them, perhaps with a couple of extra figures added to the Harold and William bases.

EDIT - see the painted versions below.

Well, it is a crusades base really, formed from the Perry religious command pack.

There is a write-up about this and other 106 commanders on the blog. LINK

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2022/06/1066-pocket-armies-green-shoots.html

This is a pairing picked up from Colonel Bills, but I am pretty sure that they are originally from Gripping Beast.

The commander pose and facial expression is very good, he is deep in thought …… no doubt about to order a feigned retreat!

The misted look on the base is the effect of dried glue. I am using ‘No More Nails’, which seems very strong, while being at the non-toxic end of the glue spectrum.

I came across this in a tobacconist / toy shop in a UK town. It is by Mister Craft, made for Olymo Aircraft, which is a Polish company.

It is a fast build kit, with just 16 pieces, plus a decal for the sail and shields. It is scaled at 1:180.

I am not 100% sure what to do with it, but bought because I might never see one again and thinking even if out of scale for my plans, it would make for a useful visual prop.

Saw this today in Hobby Craft (UK store). I had no idea that Revell did this, so even though I don’t need it yet, I thought I would snaffle it.

Scaled at 1:50, it should add an interesting photo element to my 28mm 1066 armies when they start - though a Viking army is some way off.

There looks to be some nice detail in it, with decals provided and rope for the rigging!

The only downside (for me) is that it comes on a small stand for display, but I need a wargaming model that has a flat bottom (keel?), so a bit of craft working might be needed to make that happen.

As an aside, I do have a boxed (unmade) fast built model of a viking boat by Mister Hobby Crafts, scaled at 1:180, which is much smaller, but I bought it so that it could sit in the background and being so much smaller than the 28mm figures, would look like it was some way off in the distance …. I think I like the 1:50 better.

Either way, it is nice to walk out of shop with a ‘big’ model to build, it is a long time since I last did that.

From Osprey’s Men-at-Arms series (number 85) and authored by Terence Wise, the text explores the history, organisation, clothing, equipment and weapons of the three protagonists.

The colour plates are helpful as painting guides, but it was for the organisation and Arms & Armour sections that I picked this up.