Normans and Buildings

I tried to come up with a pun or something for the title of this post, but nothing would come to me...

Anyway. A bit of progress to report on. First off, I've finished (more or less) the exterior of my buildings, so I've started on the inside. I'm working on the "bank" first (I keep thinking of it as a bank even though it'll probably start off as nondescript offices). I bought some tester pots of matt emulsion from Wilkinsons, reasoning that the best way to get the colours of interior wall paint would be to use interior wall paint. I needed two coats to get the right level of coverage, just like painting a real wall, and the end effect is pretty much exactly the bland office interior that i was after.


Then, moving on to the floors - for the upper floors, which I imagine will be the offices of the bank, I wanted carpet so I went to Hobbycraft and bought some doll's house carpet. This was self adhesive, so it was a simple matter to cut it to size and stick it in.

On the ground floor I want a tiled floor, so I'm using some textured plasticard. I think I'm going to try to get a wood effect there, but I'm not sure yet, I might still change my mind. We'll see.

Having worked on the buildings for a while I fancied doing something else, so I've assembled some plastic Norman knights. These are the Conquest models which I think have been very popular.

Notice that there are 15 complete knights here, from a box that supposedly makes 12! A fine bit of Cheaphammering if I do say so myself. Basically the pack comes with 3 spare knights to make command figures, but there are only 12 horses, and 12 kite shields in the box. There are round shields as well, but that just doesn't say "Norman" to me, so I've raided the bits left over from my Anglo Danes and found enough shields and arms to give everyone the kite shield. To provide the horses I did a bit of begging and Aneurin kindly gave me four Lord of the Rings horses which are basically the right size.

So now I have 15 knights ready... 16 would make two units of warriors for Saga, and 17 would allow me to use a model as a warlord too. I still have the metal models I won to put together as well, and I've got a set of Norman dice for the playtesting we did before the game was released. Which means that, if I can find a couple of spare knights from someone else's Conquest pack (I have two more spare horses), I can field a complete Saga force which has cost me £2 - for the two packs of bases the knights will stand on. Not bad that! I do want to get some crossbowmen for these too, so I'll be keeping an eye out for anything appropriate.