28mm Normans and Welsh for Saga

These are two or the 6 warbands that we have to do for customers for the Saga rules. These first two are a Norman warband and an ancient Welsh warband. All figures are Gripping Beast and the shields and banners are decals from Little Big Men Studios (LMBS).

Here are some pics of the Norman cavalry. Saga doesn't call for a banner but we put one in anyway for appearances. This also gives the customer future options with other rule sets that may need a banner or flag.

These are the Norman archers and crossbowmen. The Gripping Beast crossbowmen need the crossbow itself assembled. The bow part is cast on the back of the figure so some care is needed while cleaning the figure when you clip off the piece.

Here's a couple of shots of the whole warband:

 

The second warband was a group on ancient Welsh. This first couple of pics are of the warlord and his retinue:

The Welsh bowmen:

And the Welsh spearmen:

Here's a pic of the Welsh showing off some of the check or tartan patterns. I use a simplified method to speed up the process.  While not entirely accurate at the typical distance these figures are viewed with I feel the process gives decent results.

First I paint the base color on the cloak and highlight with a drybrush of the appropriate highlight color. Next I paint a cross pattern of lines in a contrasting color, fairly thick but allowing a bit of distance between the lines. This can be a bit tricky as I try to get the pattern to look like it would due to the folds and lay of the cloth. This is even tougher when the sculpting of the cloth is not particularly realistic. Just take your time and try to be neat. If you need to tidy up the line go back with your base color and touch them up a bit.

Next, take a darker color for light cloaks or a light color for dark cloaks, and paint another cross pattern, this time with fine, thin lines, in between the thicker lines. Finally, go back to the intersections of the thicker lines and put either a dot , or if you are a pit more steady, a box, where the thick lines intersect. You should end up with something like this:

Finally here's some shots of the whole Welsh warband assembled
:

Finally the warbands need something to fight over. This is a pig sty made by Architects of War with soem additional pigs from the same manufacturer:

Since Saga doesn't have strict basing requirements we went with a more traditional square basing for the figures. This lets the customer use the figures in other rule sets, especially ones of a larger scope that need figures to rank up.