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AUGUST RELEASE π BATTLE IN THE LITHUANIAN FOREST
🕑 Added 2023-08-23 16:44:51 +0000 UTCHi everyone, finally the August Release is done!
To start off our historical releases, I decided to do something that could serve as a bridge between fantasy and history.
Set in the 12th century in an ancient Lithuanian forest, I imagined a scene where a Chieftain and his retinue of warriors (Druzhina), sent on a scouting mission deep in the forest, are ambushed by Wraiths guarding a sacred grove.
The spirits guarding the forest, already angered by the trespass of foreigners from the deep south (In fact it is from the late 12th century that the first incursions, later called Northern Crusades, against the Baltic people began) are restless, and are vengefully roaming the land: the Chieftain, not heeding the counsel of his High Priest, decided nonetheless to obey his liege and to continue on his quest, only to come face to face with the spirits.
I took quite a few liberties with the equipment of the 6 Lithuanian Warriors since this release serves as a bridge between my usual fantasy and the historical I will tackle from now on. For example:
- This type of splinted vambraces are viking, based on an archeological find from around the 7th century.
- The shields have a typical Baltic shape with the ridge in the middle, but unfortunately we don't have much precise information about when they first appeared: the earliest they are found is in Lithuanian and Mazovian seals dating to the beginning of the 13th century. In subsequent years (15th-16th century) they will be known as hand pavise, to differentiate them from the pavise used by crossbowmen.
-The swords are based on an archeological find of a Ukrainian sword from the 11th century (Kamenez-Podolsk sword)
- The rounded helmets with the smooth points are of the Varangian style, from eastern Poland from around the 12-13th century, while the conical helmets are possibly of byzantine origin, found in southern Russia, also from the 12-13th century. Since the steel made in eastern europe was of very brittle quality, importing arms and armour was very common, and many foreign types of equipment were incorporated in local tradition.
With this release I'm also including 9 terrain pieces, so that you can recreate the whole diorama if you wish! The are 3 trees (with removable tops, to which you can add foliage if you want), 3 tree stumps, and 3 forest scatter pieces.
The Lithuanian Warriors can be used as Druzhina or any type of Baltic/Slavic/Rus Warriors in many historical wargames at 28mm.
The Wraiths can be used as any generic fantasy Wraith or spirit you need.
Everything comes pre-supported in 28mm scale! I hope you like the release, please let me know what you think.
Going forward, as you probably might have guessed, I plan on expanding on the Northern Crusades theme, so I'll probably do a scene with some Teutonic or Livonian knights. Please let me know what you think about that also.
DOWNLOAD HERE (IMPORTANT: Download the .RAR files one by one , DON'T right click on the whole "Black Knight Miniatures Release" folder and hit download, otherwise Google Drive could mess up the files)
If you end up printing some of the models please consider sharing the pictures with me on Instagram
Comments
Thank you man! Would love to see some pictures when you do!
Looks amazing! Really looking forward to printing these tomorrow π
Thank you so much! And yes I totally agree, I've been especially obsessed with dark ages/high medieval baltic/slavic pagan states lately, and I think they're very under represented in general medieval fiction
Jay Watkins
Very excited! I was hesitant after the first announcement but this is great! I hope we see plenty of historical slavic inspired models. The costume and armor of the slavs is criminally under represented.
