Dan Becker's Baueda Frankish and Norman 15mm DBA Army Figures

This photo shows the entire Baueda Frankish/Norman army. In the front row center is the mounted General with a mace, The other front row units are foot spearmen and mounted knights. In the second row we see more mounted knights and a few infantry blade units. In the back row are some peasants (with farm tools), some psiloi (loose formation bows and javelins), and two camp tents.

I think I lucked out with two command tents, but Baueda alway provides extra items and figures, and sometime two of the same sets have varying types of figures. This Baueda set has enough figures to cover some of the bowmen, psiloi, and peasant variations.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman army from the left.

Baueda intended this as the III/53 Eastern Franks form 888 AD to 1106 AD.

Option	Amount	Description	Type
	1	General	3Kn
	4	Milites	3Kn
	1	Bohemian Cavalry	3Cv
	or 1	Bohemian Spearman	Sp
	2	Spearmen	Sp
	2	Archers	Ps
	or 2	Peasants	7Hd

There are 8 mounted cavalry in this set - an excess for all options. There are not quite enough figures to make 2 peasant hordes or 3 spearman, but often you can borrow a different option or different army for the missing figs.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman army from the right.

With a little more hand-waving you can also model the III/52 West Frankish and Norman army of 888 AD to 1072 AD.

Option	Amount	Description	Type
	1	General	3Kn
	3	Milites	3Kn
	3	Milites	3Cv or Bd
	2	Milities	3Kn
	2	Archers	3Bw or Sp
	1	Archers, crossbow, or peasants	3Bw/Ps or 3Cb/Ps or 7Hd

So this Baueda set does not have enough Bd, mounted, or Cb to make the army. Hopefully you have enough stand-in units to cover it.

The set does have the nicely shaped kite shields for which the Franks and Normans are known.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman leader knights.

The General carries a mace and rides on a white horse. Next to him are the standard bearer with a paper flag on his lance and a trumpeter with horn.

Three milites with couched lances are next to the standard bearer. On the flanks, six more knights.

The knights are all two parts, rider and horse, except for the milites here which are the only one part horsemen in this army.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman leader knights from the left.

The photographic setup consists of a BattleMat Bazaar cloth table covering with the grass or open field pattern. The backdrop is a cheap plastic scenery backdrop with water and mountains. The aperture of the camera has been selected (f22 or f25) to keep the minis in focus and the back drop slightly out of focus.

Because the aperture is so small, a few LED light panels throw lots of extra light on the minis. Luckily these minis are not moving because the exposure is still about 3 seconds.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman leader knights from the right.

All paints are Vallejo Model Color acrylics followed by a dull clear coat, Kylon Matte Finish (#1311).

The shields are hand painted usually halved or quartered with two colors, and occassionally a geometric or animal design. At this point in history I doubt there were any uniforms, so most figures and horses have various color schemes, whatever was popular in their village.

This photo shows the remaining Frankish/Norman knights.

This and the previous group of knights bring the mounted unit count up to eight. That is a generous amount. Mounted units are always visually interesting.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman knights from the left.

The bases are done with one top layer of thin plywood and the bottom layer of ferrous metal. The metal base allow the unit to stick to the magnetic sheet that I put in the storage boxes.

The base is decorated with some bright green static fiber and two colors of clump grass for small bushes and weeds.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman knights from the right.

The knights like to practice their formations riding by the lake.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman infantry.

The two center units are blades, one of which has the dismounted leaders. The two flanking units are spearmen with their distincly Norman kite shaped shields.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman infantry from the right.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman infantry from the left.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman missles, peasants, and camps.

The peasant units are in the center. I base both of them with 4 farmers. This way they can serve as 7 horde or two units of auxilia. The flanking units are psiloi bowmen which are loose formation harassment units. There were only 4 of these figures in the box so the choice was to make one 3Bw unit or two Ps units.

This photo shows the Frankish/Norman missles, peasants, and camps from the left.

The Baueda army set provided two of these Viking style tents and also the various barrels, sacks, and pottery.

Finally, this photo shows the Frankish/Norman missles, peasants, and camps from the right.

This section of the article has not much discussion, but it does have a carousel of photos that you can use to view the army from 12 angles.

Click on the photo of the army and use the arrow buttons to spin the army to the right and the left. See 12 images of the army fronts, sides, and backs.