Viking Mega Game

I work at a public elementary school and I'm primarily teaching 4th-6th graders. I'm a huge fan of gamification and using play as part of teaching. We've previously done some big games like Roman RISK and Space Mission: Immigration. 

Now we're going to go for Vikings. 

The Structure

This year we have 6 classes attending 4th-6th graders. The game will be for a full school week. Five days from 0800-1400. The 6 classes are mixed into 6 teams instead, and will follow their team the entire week. It's great for the social structures to mix students like this. 

The theme for the entire week is The Viking Age (Dark Ages, ~800-1066 A.D.). Each day a team will spend the entire day at a single workshop run by a teacher. 

Workshops

This workshop could be anything and we'll have among others:

*  'Music and Skjalds' - students will listing to old songs, music inspired by old times, make their own, read poems etc.

* Tin casting and amulets - Students will be using 3d printed mjolnir amulets to make molds and cast in tin. They'll also make amulets from soapstone.

* Leather work - Making pouches, bracelets and shoes from leather. 

* Ancient games - playing different fighting games known from the viking age. Wrestling and such. 

And other classes, depending on what a teacher runs to run. 

The Game

Center to it all will be a massive board game, that I'll by running. It's a ressource management, trading and war game. 

The game is played flowingly without turns, some kids can come to the table do some actions and return to their workshop. So teams will have to talk about plans and decicions for when kids go to the baord. 

Mechanics

These are not entirely in place yet (the game is in 14 days). But when doing well on workshops, teachers will hand out random ressources as rewards. And teams will also earn ressources from the board, if they control areas. 

Ressources are spend on: 

Making other ressources. Wheat to Beer. Amber to Jewelry. Iron ore to iron ingot to weapons. 

Making units. Getting soldiers will require weapons and food items. Ships will require wood and wool (for sails). 

Ships are faster than going over land. The teams can sail to distant shores to pillage and plunder. There will be cut out ressources on the board for taking. 

At certain trade places there will be stuff for sale (spices that can be aquired otherwise) and stuff needed (gain lots of silver for certain items). These will change during the day (controlled by me, manipulating the game). 

Teams will be able to build upgrades on areas controlled, fortifications, religious areas, farms. And gain points based on that. 

Points

It's always a good motivator with multiple win conditions. When a team controls an area say all Fyn/Funen they are Jarls. When the control a larger area ex. all Jylland / Jutland they are Kings. The goal of the game is to control enough areas to be the mightiest king. But there's also points for having the Gods favor. So teams can sacrifice live stock and valueables for religious points. 

The finer details will be explored in a later blogpost. 

Miniatures

I love 28mm miniatures. And while this game could work with whatever colored pieces, painted minaitures look cooler. So I've painted 36 (that roughly 200) miniatures for each team. The idea is the pieces will show where teams have control and what quality of army it is. 

First the all only have unarmored Bondi (there's a ressource called Simple Weapons), later to be upgraded to Hirdmen (ressource Advanced Weapons). 

A lot of ideas will probably not develop before we're actually playing. And my mind is full on Game Design until kickoff. It'll be awesome, also for the kids. There doesn't need to be super advanced rules for something like this to work. It's more abnout visually driving a story and giving motivation for kids to work well together - and seeing that having an effect on the game. 

200 vikings in 6 different colors. 

Two examples of the 36 miniatures painted for a team. They have an equal amount of the different types. Each team has (without any effect in the rules yet). 12 Bondi (spear, axes and bows), 11 Hirdmen (spear, sword/axes, bows), 3 command (jarl, banner, skjald), 4 Huscarls (dane axes) and 2 Berserkers (pelts and two axes). 

Viking Bondi - unarmored vikings. Many assembled without helmets and non are having swords. 

And here are their armoured better quality version. These are all with chain mail, all have helmets and half of them have swords. 

Maps

Here's some examples of maps. On Monday only Scandinavia will be visible to the kids. The Maps have different sizes. Tuesday we'll add the Baltics and coast of France / Normandy and the British Isles. Wednesday we'll add Iceland and Thursday Wineland (North America and Greeenland). 

They are made with Civilization VI screenshots and graphics work in xnview and GIMP. 

The maps will be laminated. So I can add further ressources, cities, fortifications etc with gluestick and easily remove them later with ethanol. 

Island will be introduced after a few days play. 

The runes say Sachsen, Venden and Østerled (Eastarea).

I've added a few known places to the map, like Hedeby (famous trade town) and Jomsborg (legendary viking settlement for Raiders). 

And all the planned maps. Will take up a bunch tables when the game is going. It'll be pretty cool with the expanding areas. 

I'll be writing more about the project later, both hobby wise, gaming rules and didactic thoughts.

Last words

If you wanna hang out, nerd out on stuff like this or have questions, come join the Discord Server. All the SoMe has been on the backburner for long, so please consider dropping some follows across my platforms. They're all on LinkTree.

Space Marine Upcycling

My kid loves Space Marines, and there's no around it - they are cool. We've been searching through old trash boxes and found 30+ broken, badly painted marines. Some back from 2nd edition. We've been removing as much paint as possible. 

Now I'll convert at force with whatever bits I have from other auction job lots.

Devastators 

We need some devastators with big guns. I had a bunch of devastator weapons from some trades and will try and work them on the old 2nd edtition monopose marines. There's som size difference and it'll need a bunch of greenstuff to fit (and connect the wires to backpacks). 

Simple greenstuff connections. Most importantly is that there's a visble elbow armor, that will stand out when painted and washed. 

This guy was pretty maimed on the right side. Made a wire from the backpack to the helmet, will hide up this area good. 

Command Squad and HQ

I want one of each of the command and HQ choices, all the classics. So I've converted up a chaplain (cut a mace, to make it flat like the crozius).  

The command squad options so far is a company commander with a powerfist, cool helmet, banner and plasma pistol. Also made a champion (saw it listed on a real HQ box), a dude with a shield and a power sword. 

The librarian turned out really nice. Game him a power axe (that's pretty 90s classic) and a storm bolter - cause those are cool. Added some scrolls from bit box and added a book to his back, glued on a tooth pick as a 'banner' pole.

For the chaplain I've used a chaos spacemarine skull helmet. I've removed the chaos star and is left with a nice skull helmet. Found an iron halo for his backpack and a ton of purity seals for one side of him (to add some color to a black armor). 

We had 3 broken Terminators in the box. I found some terminator bits with better weapons and a resin power hammer from a anvil industry goodie bag. One have power claw and bolter. Assault Cannon and power fist. Thunder hammer and storm shield. 

I didn't have loose terminator shoulders, so did some cutting on their regular arms, to save the shoulders. Reworked a shoulder pad in green stuff for the right size. 

Instead of building the entire force (as I often do with projects), I base coated these first couple dudes. Will paint them and then move on to the next ones. These are mostly for toys and playing with. There's not really any rules in mind when working. 

I'm really excited about bringing life to some very old miniatures, all gotten as part of other lots or trades. A nice conversion project. And painting old 2nd edition monopose marines (my first ever miniatures) is awesome. 

Fantasy - Elementals

 I love elementals and always have. It is a perfect and classic fantasy monsters. Having backed all manner of kickstarters over the years, I also have a lot of different elemental miniatures. So here's a collection of some of them, big ones. All these are from the Blacklist Miniatures Fantasy Series 1 KS. 

Most of the Blacklist elementals are made in transluscent plastic, which makes for some quick paint work on them. A layers of matt varnish first, so a wash will stick to it. 

The fire elemental had some sepia wash and red wash. Then I drybrushed it (very lightly) with black. The based is made with dead grass and then it's painted black closest to the elemental, to give the look of burned grass. The eyes were picked out with yellow. 

The shambling mound / swamp elemental. Base coated green, drybrushed different lighter greens. Then I used some basing materials to add 'living' plants on it. The based is given a lot of life with tufts. I used an old broom to make the reed. 

The little dude fits well with the shambling mound. The living little tree is from Dreadball Extreme from Mantic Games. Base coated brown, drybrushed different browns and had flock added to the back. 

The ice elemental is cast in clear blue resing and is a limited edition thing from Kings of War: Vanguard kickstarter. I backed it mostly for the miniatures, sold off a bunch of it and ended with free miniatures. I matt varnished it and gave it glue wash. Then I added snow flock to his back. 

The small ice golem is from an old Mantic game - some elemental chess that I've forgotten the name of. The miniatures were dirt cheap. He's base coated dark blue and drubrushed light blue to white. 

Both are perfect for Frostgrave.

The water elemental is simple washed with a blue, then it's been drybrushed lightly with white (hard to see in photos from shine) on the back, so it looks a bit like foam on him. 

There's a lot of great earth elementals out there, I don't think this is a very good one. I painted him in different browns and some chunks to loke as stones. Then I added a lot of flock and tufts to him, like he's just been pulled from the ground. That saves the miniature and gives it some much needed detail.

It's pretty tough to paint air. ... The miniature is pretty well done though. I picked out the eyes and then gave the entire thing a sepia wash. It works quite well and it brings out the swirlyness of the sculpt. 

If you enjoy all manner of miniature blogging, follow some of the social media. I try to use all of them differently. You can find them on linktree. Also considere giving a look on Guilders: A Life In Shadows, a skirmish campaign game I'm working on.