1/72 DBA III/40a Viking army complete

I finally finished my 1/72 plastic army of vikings to play De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA). It's a mix of Zvezda and Emahr/Imex models. The last DBA armies I made were the Romans and Gauls painted way back in 2000. I'd like to think my paint skills have improved since then. I half-finished a 15mm Dacian army 2 yrs ago, but I gave up. I'm just not into painting 15mm.

These 1/72 models are based following the 25/28mm base size rules. However, you'll notice all the bases are the same 30mm depth and all the blade elements have 3 models. I did this for a few reasons. The army list for III/40a calls for eight 3Bd elements and 1Ps (which are all 30mm deep). That left only three elements with a different base depth. I've always thought it was kind of dumb that the same element, whether 3Bd or 4Bd, had different depths. I realize this has to do with using the same bases for other wargame rules, but I'm not into that. I wanted all my infantry stands to be a uniform size. It's difficult to fit 4 models in an even row on these 60mm wide bases, and adjusting this army to all 3Bd saved me on some painting time (because of fewer models).

On Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog you can see he tweaked the rules to make all his infantry bases a standard 40mm deep. He does this to fit two ranks of troops on a single base, thereby creating more of a big army look. As for my vikings, I prefer to think of this as a raiding warband from a single ship—not a representation of a full army.

I didn't do anything especially clever with conversions except for the general's paper banner and the viking seen above with the red shield. This Emhar figure (painted in the yellow tunic) was holding a mace in his left hand. I trimmed off the weapon, glued on a Zvezda shield, and painted his fist to look like the iron shield boss.

My wife recently bought a new camera for her food photography, so I finally have a way to take some decent quality photos. Click on any of the images for a larger view.

You can listen online to a BBC Radio 4 piece about the Volga Vikings, those who travelled east into modern Russia. It just aired today. Also check out BBC Radio's older series, The Viking Way.