Hastings Paper Project

2025, I knew on the 1st of January it was going to be a tough year. Our daughter had been having major struggles at school around sensory issues and expected a rough year. Having a child that needs adjustments in the UK around school uniform, despite the law being on our side, it is not enforceable for most parents, and in the mean time you can try to protect your child but the system forces you to either force and harm your child to comply or punish you as a parent for not doing so. However this is not what this blog is for, but for context, the trials of trying to raise and protect a child with neuro-divergent profiles in a system that punishes non-conformance has thoroughly sapped my strength and will to pursue hobbies. Even in school holidays where the whole household sighs relief for the break from coping with this system, things are not always easy. In June I began to prep some metal 20mm Celtiberians from Newline Designs and I just lost the will to go on!

I thought instead of powering through I need to pursue a topic I fancied at the time, to use what little enthusiasm I had. Hastings 1066 had captured my imagination and I felt Lost Battles could work for that as it works great for solo. I worked on a scenario (post to follow) that gave me a basis for an army list for each side. I then dug out my Victrix stash and worked out what miniatures I would need while keeping the Lost Battles troop ratio. Being larger figures I wouldn't have the usual mass of troops I like and I would need to get  another set of cavalry. This was looking more and more like a huge project that would take years and require tonnes of storage! I didn't want to buy any more cavalry and didn't want another main project.

I then thought Peter Dennis' Helion book on 1066 might be an option. I had looked into paper miniatures in the past but felt I wasn't up for intricate snipping. This time I did a deeper dive into the practicalities of it, there was a number of videos that gave excellent pointers. So I got a few free files from Helion downloads section, followed Peter's advise and was impressed with the possibilities. By the end of June I bought and downloaded the 1066 book and printed off the required sheets for my Lost Battle's scenario I printed 4 x A4 pages to 1 side of A4 effectively halving the scale of the troops in the book.

early July saw me making steady progress getting a unit done every other night when i got the chance to spend an hour or so on them. I hoped to have the full armies done, and a game set up and hopefully posted by the anniversary of the battle. 2025 being 2025 has lead to that date passing by with finishing touches still needed, still not too bad, but the situation had halted much productivity! But casually tinkering on and ending up with two completed armies would never be possible with my usual medium of painting miniatures. I enjoyed printing and snipping the paper soldiers and have done as I usually done and gone all in, got most of the Helion ebooks and a few of the sets from Peter's Paper Boys webshop (with my eyes on other eras on there). Its an ideal side track, produce satisfying armies quickly and cheaply, ideal for the wargames butterfly and when I'm feeling more refreshed I can pick up my 20mm ancients main project.

While plowing through fyrd and Norman knights, I quite fancied AWI next, then I was thinking again on 28mm Dark age skirmishing. This project has cemented what I'm using my Victrix miniatures for, thus I have decided that my 28mm Victrix miniatures will mainly be geared towards a fantasy setting whether that's Middle-Earth or my own made up fantasy setting. This also frees me to build and paint miniature without historical accuracy to contain me. I like the look of swords despite their less frequent historical use, more practical spears are more at risk of snapping in plastic. I still could do with making some paper terrain for Hastings but I've started assembling some Victrix Early Saxons again following the principal of following hobby whims.

I'm also thinking on on my next Paper army project, originally AWI, then thought Peninsular war, now I seem to have settled on the Wars of the Roses. I'm in the research phase, imagining the armies, how I will format them using the Helion book by Peter Dennis, and what rules to go for, tending towards homebrew inspired by various other sets including the ones included in the ebook.      

For the Anglo Saxon and Norman armies here, I settled on the usual 80mm bases, with the strips being printed at half scale the frontage of each strip was 20mm, so each base of infantry got 16 strips. Huscarls were based as Veteran heavy infantry so did them on a 40mm base (Lost Battles quirk). I got into the swing of things working on the Fyrd troops and I didn't cut between the legs hoping to give a stronger bond to the base, by the time I got onto cavalry and Norman foot I started to cut between the legs and will do so going forwards. I think the cavalry would have appeared better had I mounted them closer together, but I based them on the troop ratios in Lost Battles (cavalry tends to be half as many mounted warriors as infantry but on double the frontage). I also used spare shields to give casualty markers a bit more drama. I could still do with making a few trees for the flank sections of the battlefield but other than that the armies are done for now.

I've always loved Peter Dennis' art which is an integral part of the hobby, box art, rules and supplement illustrations, board and card game art (I love Milito) and Ospreys to name a few, so to have full armies of his illustrated warriors is a true pleasure and I'm eager to print and assemble more. The relative speed and ease alongside the lower costs makes Peter's Paper Boys an invaluable option to the practical wargamer! The can be stored quite compact also.

Hopefully in time, things improve here and I can have a blow by blow account of Lost Battles: Hastings 1066! in the mean time I will post a scenario for Lost Battles enthusiasts to try. I also hope to get these Moria Goblins posted they have been painted and photographed for ages they are cursed on this blog, there's also a few other June draft posts when I was last blogging. I'm assembling the odd Victrix armoured Saxon warrior, enjoying the assembly phase and hopefully soon I'll work out what forces I need for the Cousins War!