Early Medieval / Late Iron Age North-European Swords and Their Use

As I've mentioned repeatedly on my blog, Warhammer 40k is not and does not aspire to be realistic. However, I still find that studying how weapons have been used and designed historically and how they are used and designed now gives me new insight to posing and sculpting my miniatures. Since my main army is inspired by historical (and fictional) Vikings, early Scandinavian sword is a good starting point for this topic for my blog.
I should point out that I'm by no means an expert on this topic, but I have done some reading.

Typically, the Scandinavians used very similar swords to rest of Northern Europe. Most often, they were double-edged, about one meter long cutting weapons with wide blades and a single fuller (also sometimes erroneously called a blood groove). They were nearly always used in conjunction with a fairly large, round and flat centre-gripped shield. The swords and shields changed with time, with Vikings in the late 11th century often using kite shields similar to those made famous by the Normans through the Bayeux tapestry, but for now, I'll focus on one of the more archetypical sword styles (and not on the shields much at all).

 This is a (somewhat crude -- it was drawn quickly, and I haven't drawn anything for quite a while) sketch of a fairly typical Scandinavian or Frankish sword hilt with a five-lobed pommel, widely used for a couple of centuries, up to the 10 century. The grip is characteristically very short, so that an ungloved hand just fits in (as a sidenote, complex metal gauntlets didn't appear until several centuries later). If I imagine Space Wolves using similar weapons, it stands to reason that they would factor in the extra room taken by Power Armour's gauntlets (or even Terminator Armour's, though that would mean warriors in Terminator Armour couldn't use the same swords as they did in Power Armour, unless they had them modified).

There are no known surviving swordfighting treatises from this period in history, but it has been suggested through experimental research that these swords were used by holding the little finger in contact with the pommel. This contact point would then function as a fulcrum point when the blade was swung forward in a relaxed grip. Instead of muscular strength, the power of the sword swing would come from blade acceleration.
Obviously, this would take a lot of training to get the blade alignment right (ie. hitting the target straight on with the edge), but at the time, a sword was a fairly large piece of steel, and the warrior wishing to purchase one would often be a nobleman, who could dedicate his time to practicing fighting instead of doing manual labour.

There were other hilt designs, and some Vikings also used single-edged swords, though, as I understand it, those were always in the minority compared with the double-edged design. Anglo-Saxons also had similar, but still distinct hilt designs on their swords. Also, by the end of 11th century, the typical sword had a small disc pommel that would not facilitate this kind of attack, and there are pommel types that could be considered transitionary between these types, so there were probably many different swordfighting techniques in use by the Vikings.

Cathedral Wall Backdrop, main structure

Foamboard may be one of the easiest terrain building materials, but it still certainly takes some time to learn to make anything out of it. I have been building this terrain piece occasionally, but the progress has been fairly slow. Fortunately, I have enough material and it's cheap enough to waste some of it on some occasional mistakes.

After the previous post, I tried to make the previous flying buttresses a little thicker, but just couldn't get them to look right. Eventually, I decided they just needed to be remade. The new ones are somewhat more elaborate, constructed in two pieces each.
I also added a windowsill and some pieces of wood to frame the window.

 The windowsill came from GW's Cities of Death Floor Pack, which I intend to use some more on this project, too. The flying buttresses are still uneven, as can be seen on the right.

After fixing a few minor issues, the next step will be to work on the decoration. I have some plans regarding that, but I'll leave that information to myself for now.

Cathedral Wall Backdrop, basic frame

So my Imperial Chapel build is currently on hiatus, probably until I figure out a good way to either make the corner pillars a lot sturdier or something suitable to replace them with. I still have a big pile of foamcore around, so I decided to start on another, more limited project.
What I'm building is pretty much just one wall with a window and possibly some small doors, and intended to be used as a backdrop for my miniature photos. I'm planning to add a faint lightsource behind the window, so in addition to adding to the background, it should also improve the lighting a bit, too.

Here's the basic frame of the wall, approximately where it'll be once it's finished. I had to take the picture from further away to get the whole wall in frame, and a little from the side to show the flying buttresses.
I'm keeping it simple for now, with just a couple of small buttresses and one large window frame. I intend to add a small section of wall under the window, to make it look less like a glass door.
Once the basic architecture is done, I'm going to start adding decorative elements. I won't spoil what sort of decoration I'll add, in part because I'm not completely sure myself yet, but it will take a lot of pomp to make the building fit with the general theme of 40k Imperial architecture.

Why and How to Make a Wet Palette

Acrylic paints, espcially thick kinds, such as the Citadel colours, dry very quickly. This isn't news to anyone who's done any significant amount of painting, but if you use a normal dry palette, you soon stop thinking about how much paint you end up wasting on the palette. The hobby is costly enough if as much as half of your paint ends up drying on a piece of cardboard/plastic/whatever without ever actually contributing to the paintjob.
I must have known about wet palettes longer, but hadn't really thought to make one until recently, and I have to say I feel silly for not having done it earlier.

 All it really is is a shallow plastic container or a tray, some paper towels and a piece of baker's parchment paper. Add water and you're done. I wanted to use a container with a lid, in case I make a larger project with which I have to use mixesd paints. If I stop painting for the night and close the lid, the paint will still be wet enough to paint with the next day, albeit thinned down. It would probably be even better if the container had some sort of seal around the edges when the lid is down, but this works well enough as it is.

The actual "assembly" involves placing the paper towels in the container, getting them wet and laying the parchment paper on top of them. The parchment paper is used as one would use a palette The paper towels will wick water through the parchment paper, keeping the paint from drying. The whole project costs around as much as one or two pots of Citadel's paints, depending on how fancy container you want to use.

Preparing and planning for the Wulfen

Since the Wulfen miniatures and rules are now out, and it's a pretty big thing for the Rout, I decided I should prepare to do something with them, too. Notice the word "prepare", as I haven't yet actually bought a kit, and it will probably take about a week for my copy of Warzone: Fenris to get here, as well. However, it's not too early to start planning.

My drawing skills are a little rusty, but I think this gets across my general idea of a Wulfen's face. It would be surprising if I didn't end up sculpting at least one Wulfen head, so I decided I should familiarise myself with their facial structure. The general expression is very ork-like, especially when you can't see their skin colour or (facial) hair (speaking of, it will be tricky to sculpt them a moustache that does not look like enormously long nose hair). The main difference is the subtly muzzle-like shape of their mouth and nose. The chin is conisderably smaller than that of an average Ork, and I may have drawn this one a little too tall. Also, the teeth are more regular and less hippopotamus-like than those of an Ork. Other than these, though, I will have to use hair, skin colour and possibly facial toattoos to make the Wulfen seem distinct from the greenskins, face-wise.

I find that imagining a creature's skull is helpful to get a clearer mental picture of what the facial structure is supposed to be like. Obviously, a Wulfen skull would look like it's somewhere between a canid and a human. Pictures of other primates' skulls would probably be useful references. I also used a troll skull from Skyrim for inspiration, obviously omitting the third eye socket on the forehead.

This little exercise thas led me to currently believe that the Wulfen heads would probably look pretty good if I simply sculpted a human head with a clearly distended jawline and a muzzle-like nose and mouth. The nose would have to be extra wide and flat, and luckily, at least at first, anything I'm not sure of can be covered with thick hair.

Obviously, though I've looked at pictures of the new models online, I won't really be sure of how they look until I have them in my hands. That's also when I'll be really sure about the scale of the models. The Wulfen models are probably going to be pretty significant for my army, and I'm pretty sure I won't be even remotely satisfied by just following the assembly instructions in the box. If nothing else, I'll at least repose the pack leader. The standard pose looks honestly pretty goofy to me, and I expect I'll be replacing it with something more threatening and savage looking, as opposed to the model straight from an all-yeti production of the West Side Story. And since I'm complaining, I'm pretty sure I won't be buying the new Ulrik the Slayer model, either. It just looks way too static for the warrior who earned the repepct of the Khornate Daemon Primarch Angron.

I'm also seriously considering making another model of the Redmaw, to visually tie the character in with the new models. I probably won't do that until I'll have at least one Wulfen pack ready and painted, and definitely not until I've had a chance to take a close look at the new models, so not before March, I'd guess.

Thoughts on Basing and Posing

Basing miniatures is often considered separate from posing them. It's often done as something like an afterthought, where you try to come up with something to avoid just having the base left blank. While I, too, often just base my models to tie them further in with the rest of my army, sometimes I take the base into account already at the posing stage.

 One of the more basic techniques is to simply put the model on uneven ground. This is a simple method of making the model seem more dynamic and realistic, since 41st millennium wars generally don't take place on golf courses. It also serves to make some of GW's standard leg poses seem more natural and give a reason to why the model's legs are in such an extreme position.

 This also works with less humanoid models, as can be seen with this WIP shot of Kataphron Destroyer. These models have very posable waists and left shoulders, and this pose takes advantage of this.

Another way to make the base and the model interact can be seen on this older shot of Thunderwolf Cavalry, where I added rough terrain and a corpse over it to the space the mount seems to be going around. Again, this makes the model seem a little more interesting.

Conveying movement is important in a combat pose, but that can sometimes be a little tricky, even with posable multipart miniatures. Here, I chose a wolf cloak from the older Space Wolf Accessories sprue that GW sold until fairly recently, because it's flaring to the appropriate direction relatively to the movement I'm trying to convey on this Wolf Guard. I imagined him dropping down to his left knee from the left, while simultaneously slashing with both of his Wolf Claws. His cloak would trail behind him while he twists to his right.

Green Stuff Essentials

Getting started with GS can be difficult. The stuff seems to stick to everything except where you want it to, and I like to say that it needs to be persuaded to take any given shape, rather than simply told to. I plan to add an actual tutorial here later on, where I show how to make a (preferably beginner-friendly) project, but I thought I'd start with a simple post about what you need to get started.

 

Let's start with the obvious, the material itself. There's a good chance you've previously bought some from Games Workshop, which comes in small blue and yellow strips. I don't do that anymore. It is a lot more expensive bought that way, but that's not the reason (truth be told, you'd have to really use the stuff a lot for that to make a difference), but the fact that the two components touch in the middle. This leads to the middle part hardening, which in turn leads to inconsistent, lumpy putty. You may have to do some hunting to purchase GS in bars, but knowing the manufacturer's name (Polymer Systems Inc.) and the product's official name (Kneadadite Blue/Yellow Epoxy Putty) will get you far.

 You can do some sculpting by just using your fingers, but not really anything very detailed. Sculpting tools come in variety of shapes, and the "best" one is largely a matter of preference and habit. Pictured are two bought miniature sculpting tools and one that I made myself out of two sewing needles, a little wood and Green Stuff. The one in the middle is by far my favourite that I use for most of my sculpting. The one made of needles comes in handy when nudging the corners of a model's eyes into shape and other precise tasks. The bottom one is in the picture pretty much just to show that they come in that shape, too. There's nothing particularly wrong with that shape, though, I'm just far more used to the middle one.
Whichever tool you need, make sure you dip it in water, lick it or maybe use a sponge first. A dry tool will stick to the putty, making sculpting unnecessarily frustrating.

A miniature drill and a hobby knife are pretty much essential for modelling, but they have their uses in sculpting as well. The drill comes in handy when you're attaching a head sculpted at the head of a toothpick to the armature or when adding a top knot to a model's head, for example. Basically, whenever you want to expand a model substantially enough to need an armature, the drill comes in handy.
The hobby knife is there for when you will inevitably make a mistake and need to cut off the failed part and redo it. In some cases, you need to use pliers and/or sidecutters instead of or in addition to the knife, depending on the size and location of the part being worked on and if you need to redo the armature as well.

 Speaking of armatures, you'll want to have a variety of different thicknesses of wire. Pictured are 0.4 mm copper wire and 0.7 mm and 1 mm steel wires. These suffice for most situations, although I sometimes use 1.5 mm steel wire for some of the larger pieces. Choose wire thin enough for your purposes; you can always add more Green Stuff around the wire to give it extra support, but if you chose too thick a wire, the final piece will be too thick, too.
Cork is very useful material for basing. For sculpting, I generally use it to hold the piece being worked on. In this case, it's a work in progress shot of a head at the end of a toothpick. Triangular toothpicks are often pretty useful for using as armatures for smaller pieces. Unlike wire, they can easily be whittled thinner as necessary, and the fact that they're angular and won't bend makes them easier to hold comfortably..

One final piece of equipment I find very useful, if not absolutely necessary, is a miniature oven. Green Stuff cures faster in higher temperatures. However, if the heat gets too high, not only does it cause a fire risk, but the Green Stuff piece may distort and even start to bubble, obviously making a mockery of any fine detail you worked so hard to sculpt on it. When in doubt, the safe bet is to use less heat rather than more.
There are a several different methods for achieving the optimal curing temperature. I used to have a lamp with a 40 W light bulb right over a metal jar, until EU regulations made finding normal 40 W bulbs uncertain at best. Currently, I use the same metal jar lightly covered with a piece of aluminium foil on a coffee maker's heatplate. The piece being worked on doesn't directly touch the metal jar, but is being held at the end of a length of wire or a toothpick.
Whichever method you choose, pay attention to fire safety. Keep the heat source well away from any flammable painting chemicals (white spirit, acetone etc.) you may have around. Have a smoke alarm in the room you're working in, and a small fire extinguisher wouldn't hurt, either.

Hope this helps someone to get started. I'll try and think of an appropriate difficulty level project for a more detailed tutorial at some point later on.