"Battle Troll"

Appendix 5: Figures, Books, and Scenery

by Howard Whitehouse

FIGURES:

I use 25mm figures for this game, as being a size large enough for big stubby fingers to move about singly, but small enough to feature longships, farmsteads, whole glaciers etc. Some manufacturers that I strongly approve of are as follows, in no special order.

OLD GLORY make a good line of Vikings, sold in bags of 30, with many different figures per bag. The ones listed as 'bondi'are largely unarmoured figures ideal for feuding farmer types. The company also makes an extensive range of other Dark Age types , from Saxons to Steppe warriors, for our lads to tangle with. Old Glory figures are good, and cheap in bulk, but available only in packs.

GRIPPING BEAST, a fairly new English company, have specialised in this period, making not only the standard types (mailed huskarls etc), but Viking merchants, women and children, buildings, ships etc, and specific figures (Olaf Tryggvesson, Egil Skallagrimsson etc). They also make Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Picts, Irish, and an 'El Cid' range. Figures are sold in packs of 4.

ESSEX have a handsome line in sturdy vikings, together with AngloSaxons, Franks and Normans, Rus and Byzantines.

REDOUBT makes a beautiful longship and rowing crew, together with a small range of about 16 Viking raiders.

WARGAMES FOUNDRY (now just known as THE FOUNDRY) make a range of vikings, together with Anglo-Saxons, Picts and Irish. These are excellent figures, though the vikings are in a very slightly 'fantastic' style.

IRREGULAR MINIATURES have a recent line in vikings that match the popular 'large 25mms', while many of their earlier figures (including a'mooning' viking chief) are rather smaller. But then, you'd expect those nimble Irishmen to be smaller than Norsemen, wouldn't you? Irregular also makes terrific livestock of all kinds, and a wide mix of unexpected items!

BRITTANNIA makes a range of obviously larger figures. I only have one, a hulking berserker somebody gave me, so I can't judge the rest of the line.

There are other manufacturers out there - I have an old (a veteran!) Minifig spearman in my box, and a few older Ral Partha figures that are notably small and slender by recent standards (take off the beards and call them youngsters). Hinchliffe figures made in the dark ages themselves (alright, the 1970s) are still available. If you have the chance to browse boxes of old figures needing new homes, there is often a likely lad; I have a few fantasy bandits, Crusading pilgrims and backdated medievals in my collection. Eastern woods Indians, minus muskets etc, might serve to fend off the Vinland settlers, but nobody makes Eskimos, do they?

SCENERY and SHIPS:

Rough country appears often in the sagas, and, unless you have a good custom terrain maker like, say, the famous Howard Whitehouse available, you'll have to make it yourself. Get some big chunks of styrofoam, some stones from the driveway, plaster and paint and get messy. Viking buidings are relatively easy on the whole, long halls with thatched roofs (fake fur matted down with thick coats of household paint), walls of foamcore or strip wood (I use the kind sold as 'lattice', for garden decoration). Icelandic Turf houses make involve more originality, and may also come out looking like grassy knolls. Gripping Beast make buildings for the period, and also several ship models.

Other ships in my collection are from the now defunct Greenfield Garrisons, from Merrimack Models (a superb resin longship) and a plastic kit from a Czech manufacturer whose name eludes me. There is a Revell longship available in ghostly glowing plastic, which I've not actually seen. I have made small boats from cheap plastic indian canoes, and used some metal lifeboats of the right shape from one of the companies that supplies items for the expensive wooden ship models.

SOURCES:

The following sagas are available in the popular Penguin series in good, modern translations; Njal's, Egil's, Laxdaela, Eybyggya ,Orkneyinga, Hrafnkel's and other stories, King Harald's, Seven Viking Romances, The Vinland Sagas .

The 'Everyman' series published by Dent includes - The Sagas of the Norse Kings (Heimskringla), The Olaf Sagas (2 vols), Grettir's Gisli's, The Fljotsdale Saga &- the Droplaugarsons.

Several other sagas have been translated in less easily available editions, while others are accessible only to those of us with a working knowledge of Icelandic and access to the best academic libraries, which excludes your humble scribe.

The list of secondary works in English on the Vikings is long. Some books that I find most useful include

Bertil Almgren: The Viking, Gothenburg 1975, 1991.
Jesse M. Byock: Feud in the Icelandic Saga, Berkeley 1982
Jesse M. Byock: Medieval Iceland, Berkeley 1988
P.G. Foote & D.M. Wilson, The Viking Achievement, London 1980
Paddy Griffith, The Viking Art of War, London 1995
Mark Harrison, Viking Hersir, London 1993 (Osprey series)
Gwyn Jones, A History of the Vikings, Oxford 1968
Jacqueline Simpson, Everyday Life in the Viking Age, London & New York 1967

Thanks to my wargaming friends who have helped in the design and playtesting of Battle-Troll, especially my partner in many wargaming enterprises, Tim Lee, John Shaw and the estimable Gary Peavyhouse, whose contribution deserves at least a bag of silver and some nice pieces of church plate. Not that he'll get it, of course. John Marron provided useful ideas for hero traits. Paddy Griffith for his ideas on the Vikings and on wargaming in general. Ian Greenwood for his "Guthrum's Army' study group. Especially to my wife Lori for putting up with, well, everything, lo these many years.

More Battle Troll

Back to MWAN #99 Table of Contents
Back to MWAN List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 1999 Hal Thinglum
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com