28mm Saga Warband: Romano-British

A commission for a customer of a Romano-British warband for Saga. Most of the figures are Gripping Beast, with a couple of Footsore Miniatures for characters. Spears were replaced with wire spears and Little Big Men Decals were used for the shields.

The LBMS decals didn't quite fit so required quite a bit of trimming and touching up.

28mm Greek Mercenary Hoplites

Here's a box of 28mm plastic Greek hoplites from Victrix to expand a customer's Greek army. This is the Mercenary armored hoplite box of 48 plastic figures. Shield decals were from Little Big Men Studios.

Close-up of a few figures. The customer requested no eyes so we left them with shading.

The kit comes with enough parts to make 48 figures. It is a multi-part kit, where each figure needs to be assembled. The torso, both arms, head, short sword, spear, and shield all need to be glued together. One note about the kit is to check the arms as you are assembling. There are bare arms and arms with a sleeve. Make sure to match them up, but also note the kit is short on some arms pairs; I actually raided another kit for sleeved arms to make these match up more.

Overall a pretty nice kit with decent figures. I'm still partial to metals (with Foundry's Greeks still being my favorite) but this is the best detailed plastic kit of Greeks I've had to do so far. The detail is nice and sharp for a plastic kit, making painting easier. There' is still a fair bit of time involved due to assembly.

More 28mm Saga Dark Ages Warbands

Here's some images of two more war bands for the Saga rules we finished up recently for a customer. They are am Anglo Saxon war band and a Breton war band. All figures are Gripping beast and with the exception of one shield, the shields are finished with Little Big Men Studios decals.

The first war band is the Anglo Saxons. Here's the whole war band posing for the photo shoot:

These are the warriors of the band. There are 16 figures in this unit. We painted them with a mix of brighter colors and some more muted tones as these would be a slightly higher quality of warrior over the levy:

This is the warlord and the heartguard of the Anglo Saxon band. Since these are the elites I kept the colors brighter and added borders to the tunics, some with patterns:

Here's the levy of the Anglo Saxons, 12 figures strong. Since these would be pulled from the lower classes we did the colors in muted and earthy colors:

The second war band is the Bretons:

All of the Breton cavalry together:

The mounted heartguard and mounted warlord, 9 figures total:

A unit of 8 mounted warriors for the Breton war band:

The Breton war band also includes a unit of 12 levy armed with javelins. Again, since these aren't regular warriors and are probably pulled from the lower classes the clothing is painted in duller colors:

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.