Cut And Thrust And Bleed And Ack-

A melee of Norse versus KievRus versus Saxons at the back

Warbands now look the part, with each individual faction having it's own style and shield markings, because in the middle of a disorganized melee it's not always easy to tell who the hell is who.

So, without further ado, let's have a quick rundown.

 

Avar Warband

The Lombards - could have been the Franks but France features more later on

The Saxons, featuring the cool Sutton Hoo helm

The Norse, not a horned helmet in sight thankfully

KievRus

The Magyars, pre-paprika

The Normans (boo!)

 And so we have our initial warbands, and I am only up to the 11th Century. Whilst shields and helmets tend to be unique to each faction, the lower ranking peasant levies do tend to rather look the same, so I might have to add warband specific patches. Back in the days of the Anglo-Scot Border Reivers warriors would wear the cross or saltaire on cloth pinned to their armour ... usually with the other flag on the back incase they wanted to swap sides mid-battle ...

With all the warbands now equipped - at least except for bows as I haven't out the code needed for archery just yet, but it is coming - I needed to bring home the awesomeness of hitting someone with a poleaxe. For this I hunted around for some of the old death animations which I had got for Airship Dragoon and modified them for the new rigging system which my current models use.

 And so the whole thing comes together with slashing sounds, the ring of parried metal, fountains of blood and the screams of the mortally wounded!

Pumpkin!

And of course it has been All Hallows Eve. Can you believe that there are some folks who carve a pumpkin but don't scoop all the food out? That was 1.5kg of seasonal veg going waste! I bag it up into portions and stick it in the spare freezer ... which turned out to still have last year's pumpkin in it because I'd forgotten all about it. More pumpkin on the menu now!

Next up for Untitled Medieval Warband Game - a land fit for heroes! Time to make an actual level with terrain and points of interest for looting, to give raiding parties something to raid.