SAGA Welsh Army project WIP#5 - Priodaur, Teulu and unit bases

I'm pretty old school in my wargame purchasing habits. I like to see what I'm buying, and with the dearth of actual bricks and mortar establishments, this means I do most of my purchasing at shows. One such show, which I attended recently was Reading Warfare. I've been a couple of times before, and It's always been one of those 'just right' events. It's well attended by traders and has a decent bring and buy. I had a nice chat about all things SAGA with Andy of Gripping beast, and he was kind enough to feature some of my Welsh on their Facebook page.

Anyway, I digress. For the purposes of this blog, this is what I bought:

Top left, unit skirmish bases for 2p based troops (which I inserted for this shot, not more troop purchases) from Warbases; 

top right - Conquest Norman Knights box, which will be mixed with upper bodies from Saxon Thegns to make two units of mounted Hearthguard;

upper middle, going across the shot - log fort from the square;

left middle - two packs of logs from the square;

right middle - Maredudd ab Owain from Gripping beast;

left bottom - pack of oval cavalry bases and 60mm round bases from Warbases;

Centre bottom - some very cheap (£2.50 a sheet) tufts from Gamer's grass;

Centre bottom - welsh banner and shield designs from Little Big men;

Bottom right - Welsh SAGA dice from Gripping beast. 

So on to what I've been doing. Another unit of Priodaur (Warriors) and the first unit of Teulu (Hearthguard) were assembled in short order, sprayed with Halford's grey, then a light overhead spray of white for a cheap zenithal highlighting effect.

I set about painting the Warriors first, using more Browns than before.

I sort of had it in my head that the Teulu could double as Hearthguard in another army, so I decided to keep their shields as simple geometric patterns without too much widdliness. 

Next, I highlit the clothes with white, then ink washed. Added faces and hair. Painted javelins and metals. More work on the shields.

Did some basic work on the Hearthguard as I was doing the Warriors, testing out the skirmish bases. Decided to do the skirmish bases when I do the bases for these troops.

Basing commenced before completion again. Shields almost complete.

I've decided to do a tutorial on how I do the skirmish bases, so expect that in WIP #6.

SAGA Welsh Army project WIP#3 - Terrain - Stone circle and Cairn

Well every army needs something to fight over and terrain can be so boring. As I've mentioned in earlier WIP posts, this project is also to complement my Dark Ages DnD campaign, so these will be a part of that too. On to it.

Stone Circle

I picked this up at a wargames show. It's either from Magister Militum or the Square, or Black Cat, but none show a picture of their offering. I'm fairly sure that it's supposed to be for 15mm, but it works as a 28mm piece too.

Moss on one facing

Neolithic Cairn

Again, picked up at a wargames show. Probably from one of the three manufacturers mentioned above, but an Internet search didn't help. Perhaps a reader can enlighten us. A nice characterful piece. EDIT: Eric Ducreux has helpfully pointed out that it's from Ainsty - http://ainstycastings.co.uk/product_info.php/cPath/46/products_id/311/osCsid/360896fec175aaadf2bfdabbdf81f968

WIP on 4ground Saxon hovel

I still need to 'tame' the thatch with some PVA and water. I have a second one to make, so I'll do both thatches at the same time.

Help! It's the hair bear hut

In the pipeline are the first unit of warriors and more terrain. 

SAGA Welsh Army project WIP#1

Doh! I've gone and started another project. Again.

The current generation of wargames tend more toward the skirmish action style, and this means fewer miniatures - better in many respects for actually getting an army finished and games played. SAGA takes this and some nice dice mechanics pilfered from the realm of boardgames and makes a fast and ingenious game.

I've looked at this game for a while, and generally I've only heard positive things about it, but the startup cost I always thought to be a little on the pricey side. 

The extra impetus (see what I did there?) I needed to splash out came in two forms. Firstly, my current immersion in all things dark ages as I study the period to create background for my DnD campaign set in 800ad, currently based around the capital of Mercia, Winchcombe. This has also spawned a need for miniatures of the period.

This led to my discovery of the second reason - Gripping Beast Plastic (GBP) Dark age Warriors and Saxon Thegns.

A trip to Colours in Newbury led to a joint purchase of Rules, the two boxed sets and some 4ground Saxon dwellings (which Colonel Bill's did me a good deal on). The good gentleman on the Ainsty stand was also very helpful and saved us £24 on startup cost when he revealed that we don't actually need the SAGA dice, but can use normal D6 as proxies. I already covet a set of Welsh dice, but that can wait until, the coffers refill. Total spend was £85, but some of that was mitigated by the joint purchase, and I could justify it as most of the spend would be useful for DnD too.

Newbury Colours haul

So on to the project. In the Dark Ages Warriors (hence DAW) set, there are 40 miniatures, and in the Saxon Thegns (hence ST) there are 44. Here are the sprues:

Left - Saxon Thegns, right top - Dark age warriors, right bottom - ST command sprue

Two of the DAW sprues went to sweeten the joint purchase which should still give me plenty to make my army. There are three types of troops in SAGA, and a point buys a set number of them ; Levy (12), Warriors (8) and Hearthguard (4). The versatility of having both boxes meant I could make all three from the sprues provided.

The basic rules have four factions - Vikings, Normans, Anglo-Danes and Welsh. My co-conspirator plumped for Anglo-Danes as he could enlist some old Citadel DA figures for his army, but I had my heart set on the Welsh, as that is the direction my DnD campaign will soon take.

I didn't want to over face myself with too many miniatures to make and paint at once, so I decided to build a unit of levy slingers and a unit of warriors for 20 figures on the table and two points of my army.

just assembled slingers

Construction is not difficult if you're used to plastic figures. There are ample heads and weapons, although the slings require removal of a spear or other hand and transplanting the sling hand. As part of one of my other projects I have a box of Victrix Greek peltasts, javelin men and slingers, so I checked some of the heads for size - they generally fit. So, in the interests of having a varied army, I drafted a couple of miniatures and some parts in from this box.

I made the warriors up from DAW and ST bodies, but used heads from the opposite set on each. The Javelins with which they are armed have been pilfered mainly from the Victrix box, others are cut down spears. I decided to paint the shields on the sprue. To give the the plastics some weight, they've been based on 2p coins (Queen's head down, so it's not defaced). These are among the cheapest bases, surpassed only by 1p coins. 40p to base two units. 

just assembled warriors

After spraying with Halford's grey, I set about adding some colour. I was aware that some colours may have been unavailable or rare, so I set about researching what I could use. I went no further than this excellent blog post and its links by 1000 foot general on dark ages colour palettes - http://1000footgeneral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/dark-ages-color-palettes.html

To start,  I sprayed the whole lot grey, then gave them a white spray from above for cheap zenithal highlighting. I chose four base colours - GW's old Orc brown, Liquitex unbleached titanium, vallejo sea grey and vallejo elf flesh. I painted three coats and three trousers in each colour, alternating which got which. All the shoes I did in sepia, all the leg bindings in grey, then added flesh and four different hair colours en masse.

adding colours

I used my trusty calligraphy inks and other washes to transform the four base colours into a variety of shades.

The shields I devoted a fair amount of time to, taking cues from the little big men transfers and some books I have on Celtic patterns. They're all freehand though - here's WIP:

freehand shields WIP

I decided at this point that the warriors would be the second unit I would complete, and concentrated on the levy slingers. Some tartan on my 'wild men' that use the Greek bodies, and some simple trimmings on their coats came next.

adding detail

I also detailed all the faces at this point, I think that doing this adds some real character and simplifies finishing each miniature. The shields acquired more detail.

shields done, more detail on slingers

With most of each miniature complete, it was time to base - something I needed to do to a lot of miniatures at once, so off I went and pulled out the basing box.

let basing commence

I use this to give a nice solid gritty base

The next addition was dried twigs, which make great felled logs and trees

After this I added some tufts and then it was a sepia ink wash and off to the dipping tray.

the dipping tray

Here's how that came out:

The warriors didn't get any twigs, but the process was similar:

Time for some final colour additions for their belts, and there's only touch-up to do:

nearly there

Expect finished slingers in WIP2. More soon.

Xyston 15mm Late Spartan Greek army WIP06 - Spartan cavalry

The final batch of cavalry for the army, and my mounted commanders/generals.

As before, here are some close ups, but they're not really painted for such close scrutiny...

You may have noticed that the commanders are on sabots. These were made for me by the helpful chaps at Warbases.

Xyston 15mm Late Spartan Greek army WIP05 - Mercenary cavalry

Some more progress on this army, as they've been 'nearly finished' for a few months now.

The base is done with GOLDEN texture gel and crackle paste, plus small slate chips from a council rockery and tufts. Lots of tufts. I need more.

I'm a little loathe to put up these next shots as they show some fairly flaky speed painting techniques which are for effect when seen at distance. I could have done eyes on them too, but how long can you take when an army (and all the other stuff) needs doing? Here they are anyway.