RP 136 More Vikings and a gift for me!!!

The last of my Viking stands for Saga or whatever you want. Once again they're all Gripping Beast plastic figures with my banners attached, you can find all the banners and some others here.
Get your butts over to Seb's Back to the Minis, he got more giveaways  todays is No 6, some painted Dark age figures, 2 packs of Old Glory ECW/30YW or several packs from Venexia's Renaissance range!!! I'm not sure what's going on?? Seb's either gone completely round the twist or he's under orders from the mrs to get rid of some figures, or he's not allowed anymore!!!
Also I've got to say thanks to Andrew form Loki's Great Hall as I won 1st prize in his givaway. I've not yet sent him any figures, as I'm not 100% sure what delights I can send him and also as Fran won as well, we're gonna send all our figures together. Cheers Loki and we'll be in touch!
Lastly prompted by Clint's post today, I also received a parcel in the post from the Gentleman and Scholar better known as Dave Crook, the owner of A Wargaming Odyssey. In this said parcel was a tiny red book, Marmion, A Tale of Flodden Field, by Sir Walter Scott 1890. Dave had been looking at my Flodden figures and thought I'd enjoy the book. And how right was he!!!. The only condition was when the Rejects actually get to play a Flodden game I have to read some of the poem to them. So thanks go to Dave and here's a few lines from the poem.

                                                638  With kindling brow Lord Marmion said,--

                                                639  "This instant be our band array'd;

                                                640  The river must be quickly cross'd,

                                                641  That we may join Lord Surrey's host.

                                                642  If fight King James,--as well I trust,

                                                643  That fight he will, and fight he must,--

                                                644  The Lady Clare behind our lines

                                                645  Shall tarry, while the battle joins."

RP No 135 25mm GB Viking Command, Blog Givaway's & A New Range!

Bloody hell that's some title!!!!!
Anyway firstly, more of my plastic Gripping Beast command stands. I like the first one the best, I've always liked this flag, perhaps because it reminds me of bacon???

Seb over at Back to the Minis is having a massive blog giveaway this week, he's already announced two lots of prizes, so get on over to his blog and sign up for some free goodies. Here Seb 1 and here Seb 2.
The second blog givaway is over on Burkhard's blog, dhcwargamesblog. Burkhard's also celebrating a blog birthday and other blog milestones as well. Check out his blog, you may win yourself a book. I'm after the 1815 Waterloo book....fingers crossed!!!!

Lastly fellow blogger Mark, better known as The Wilde Goose, is releasing a new range of figures over on his new blog Orinoco Miniatures. He showed me a few pics when we met up at Salute in April and now they're up on his site. He's releasing figures for Wars of the South American Liberation, his first release will be the British Legion, followed by Spanish Regulars and Gran Columbian/Patriot Infantry. Check out the figures, they're very nice!!!

RP No 134 25mm Gripping Beast Viking Saga Command bases

Now I can't say I enjoyed sticking these Gripping Beast plastic Vikings together, because I didn't. In fact I hated it. Now you may think hate is a strong word, but it isn't I think I aged around 3 years trying to glue the buggers together. I'm surprised they made it really, they nearly ended up in the bin on several occasions, it got so bad, I gave them to Postie to glue together. Posties got the patience of a saint, (unlike me?????)
I did plan to keep them for my collection, but I think they may end up on ebay, you never know??
Unlike the gluing, I'm very pleased at how they turned out, the flags are all by my good self, while most of the shields are from LBMS and some are hand painted. I'll post a few more pics of some of the others next week.

RP No 104 28mm Gripping Beast Viking & Jomviking Warlords - For sale

Another two items up for sale on ebay at the moment, these figures are from Gripping Beast from their Saga range. Both these figures nearly ended thrown out of the window, in a tantrum  I was not a happy chappie. I'll start he first figure, the Viking Warlord, the base of the figure was quite distorted and the figure wouldn't stand up, so out came the knife and the pliers. As a very carefully started to bend the base straight, plop! the figure broke off at the ankle! Queue lots of swearing and ranting and lots of superglue.
So I moved onto the next figure the Jomviking Warlord, I took it out of the box and started to clean the tiny bits of flash off the base....hang on a minute? where's his sword? The quick answer was still in the damned blister pack, well half of it anyway!!! Queue more ranting and raving and laughter from the Irish git in the corner.
So the next day I shoved the figure on figure fixer extraordinaire  Posties lap with an in-ordable grunt, the next day he gave the figure back the broken sword had been replaced with a fine looking axe, very nice!
So you'd think that was the end of the story but no! I'd just finished painting the Jomviking up. all he needed was a couple of coats of varnish, I picked him up to varnish him and he fell out of my hand and landed on the other axe bending it right over, I cannot repeat what I said, but I bet you can guess? I gingerly bent the axe back over, the paint cracked all over the handle then snapped off...........
Anyway, he's all fixed now.
They're both up for sale on ebay,  superglue and new weapons an' all!!!
Here's the links.

Viking Warlord link
Jomviking Warlord link

Viking Warlord

Jomviking Warlord

My Salute Loot! - Salute 2012

Just a quick post today, I thought I'd share my Salute Loot, (the title was pinched from BigLee's blog).
As you can tell by the pic, most of my money was spent on the Gripping Beast stand, I finally bought the Saga ruleset and two packs of dice, the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, unfortunately they'd sold out of the Viking set, so I'll make my own, hence the blank dice. I also bought the new Muskets and Tomahawks set of rules, which flicking through are remarkably similar to the set I've been writing myself!! Lastly I bought a pack of LBMS shields for the Gripping Beast plastic Vikings I bought at Cavalier in February.

Away from the Beast I picked up my order from Essex Minis, several packs of NYW 15mm figures to add to my ever expanding army, after examination I found they'd given me two packs I hadn't ordered instead of the ones I wanted, it was an easy mistake, not sure if it was mine or Essex's, but a quick phone call sorted the problem out, and a couple of days later I had the packs I wanted.

I also picked up two books from Osprey I'd been after for a while, even better I got one, Tomahawk and Musket for a fiver!!!

My last purchase were two sets the rulers and counters for Saga sold by Warbases, just gotta read the rules now!!!!

Lastly I met Honoury Reject Seb and he handed me my prize "Starlingrad" by Antony Beever,  that I won from his online competition a couple of weeks ago, so that's another book I've got to add to my reading pile, cheers for the prize Seb!!!!