Weekly WIP: The Last of the Saga
This week was another week of scrambling to complete my Saga project in time for a game on Friday. Each batch of miniatures had taken less than a week to paint and I was able to start the last one, the Hearthguard, Warlord and Standard Bearer, in last week’s Weekly WIP. However I was moving from 10 miniatures to 12 and I was planning to paint more intricate designs on the shields to represent the higher social standing of the Huscarl.
Saxon Thegns as Saga Anglo-Dane Huscarl by Gripping Beast. Painted by Tyler Provick.
I was able to progress quickly to painting the shields since the mail shirts covered much of the tunics of the Huscarl. Since the central boss is metal I wanted to paint the shields before reaching that section. While I’m not sure it is accurate I decided that my Huscarl were more pious than the Ceorls and used more Christian iconography on the shields. Again I took inspiration from Little Big Men Studio transfers while attempting to not copy them directly. The knot-work pattern on the black shield is likely not accurate to the period.
Saxon Thegns as Saga Anglo-Dane Huscarl by Gripping Beast. Painted by Tyler Provick.
Mid week I was starting to get my groove painting the shields. Here I completed four shields in a simple session and started experimenting with outlines. The shield at the back is probably terrible inaccurate.
Saxon Thegns as Saga Anglo-Dane Huscarl by Gripping Beast. Painted by Tyler Provick.
Normally I don’t use washes at any point of my painting process. With things like mail shirts they are warranted so I alternated between painting on metallic paint and then adding a black wash. I’m pretty impressed with the quality of the mail sculpting considering that these are plastic miniatures.
Anglo-Dane 4 Point Warband by Gripping Beast. Painted by Tyler Provick.
I finished the miniatures on Thursday. They are not yet based as I don’t have enough neodymium magnets and ordering them from Ebay is incredibly slow. Once they arrive they will be superglued into the pre-drilled holes. A layer of modeling putty will blend the bases together and add texture. This will then be painted brown and flock applied for grass. I’ve cropped the extra miniatures out of the image. There are 4 extra Ceorls and 2 extra Huscarl, plus a Huscarl banner bearer. I picked randomly here but will probably pick my favorite shield designs.
Friday Saga Battle Report
Sadly my Friday game fell through. Not only was there no-one available to host and few people looking to play but I ended up working the whole evening. All I can say about that is everyone needs to limit the levels of subfolders they use and keep file and folder names under 10 characters if possible.
Future Plans
I’m taking a little break from imposed deadlines and massed unit painting. My plan was to return to the Walkin’ Boss figure I’ve been slowly chipping away at. I haven’t yet and instead have been putting together the last of my unit of 1812 Upper Canadian Incorporated Militia I started so long ago that they pre-date this version of the blog. It turns out that I only had 16 miniatures left, a number that currently sounds very small.
Victrix Napoleonic British figures.
I have 10 figures left to assemble, which I’ve started on since I’m taking a short painting break. I’ve forgotten how wonderful and frustrating these figures are. The multi-part plastics gives you lots of options for posing but also increase build and cleanup compared to Gripping Beast’s Dark Age Warriors. To make matters more difficult the plastic is resistant to the Tamiya Polystyrene Cement I’m using. It does work but it takes a long time to soften the plastic and doesn’t penetrate deeply. For the shoulders I’ve taken to scoring the joins with my knife to aid penetration of the solvent-based glue.
My plan is for multi-based miniatures, 8 figures to deep base so the muskets and bayonets don’t overhang the front. I’m using a very narrow frontage, only 60mm for 4Â figure ranks, or 15mm per figure. I haven’t glued anything to the base yet, planning to arrange the models in pleasing mini-dioramas. For example, this is supposed to show a sergeant assisting a private in reloading his musket while his own it leaning in the crook of his arm.
I’d like to finish the unit before I start anything new. I won’t be following my normal policy of painting all the miniatures in the box whether I need them or not. I don’t know how many of these miniatures I’ll need for my large project. All the officer, sergeant, drummer and colour bearers have been used for the unit. I think that each box of 52 figures will leave a few privates behind and eventually I can combine them with some metal officers to form their own unit.
