SAGA Welsh Army project WIP#6 - Skirmish bases tutorial

SAGA may be a skirmish game, but moving multiple miniatures en masse on the battlefield can be tedious, so I decided to buy some of these excellent 2p Sabot skirmish bases from Warbases.

Here's how I did them:

1. Apply texturing.
I use GOLDEN coarse pumice gel, this allows me to make an uneven surface, but allows me to apply ink directly to it once dry. I use a knife to apply the gel, scraping away any that falls inside the sabots.

2. Whilst the gel is drying, I apply various tufts in random locations. I use tweezers to remove the tufts from the backing and to press directly onto the surface.

3. Once the gel is dry, I apply a brown ink wash 

Again, you should try to avoid inking inside the sabots, as the ink will become the glue for flock. Make sure you get the brown as close to the roots of your tufts as possible.

This is the ink I used, Rowney FW Sepia.

Fully inked and ready for dipping.

4. Whilst the ink is still wet, dip in your dipping tray. Here's mine, made of normal flock, clump flock and  scenic leaves.

I bought the leaves from Atenociti's workshop. Far more than I'll ever need for a reasonable price. My friend bought the dead leaves, so we traded a small amount (in the bag).

So, pop your still-wet base in there

Then give the whole box a few shakes to randomly cover the wet bits

Yes, the base is in there.

 Pull it out, shake it off and voila.

You'll notice there are some brown bits, which is fine. After dipping, run around the edge of the base with your finger to clear unwanted flock. You may want to take any detritus from inside the sabots out with a knife edge too.

This process works on larger bases in the same way, but you may need to dip each edge separately and sprinkle some across the middle.

before

after

So, pretty easy to do. Here's how they all look. Finished units at the back, newer, unfinished to the right, and the empty ones are for the two units I need to make for my basic 6pt army.

The army so far

Expect finished Priodaur unit 2 in WIP #7.

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#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.

Heresy 28mm Tunnel Dweller (Metal version)

This has taken many years to complete (not all of it working on the model. To begin, the original metal model came in many parts and took several aeons just to clean and assemble. The main abdomen came in six or seven ill-fitting parts so several sessions were required to even get to the upper body.

This kit came with several optional parts. I chose the insectoid head over a humanoid one, and the sword replaced a large scythe.

The six insectoid legs were a pain in the arse to be blunt, I should have pinned them really. 

I undercoated in White, and then it lay dormant for several months whilst other projects continued. Most of the time it was still on the table, staring at me with its beady eyes, and I guess this time was when I began to formulate how it would look.

It picked up the basic stone/rubble base, and then a few greeny ink coats around the base told me that was not the way to progress. More dormancy.

Inspiration happens strangely sometimes, and when painting yellow on another model, I pulled it off the shelf, and set to. Perfect. 'I shall waspify it' thought I.

Much image searching on our friend Google, and I knew what was going to go in all the different spots on the model.

Here are some of my work in progress shots.

Several coats of ink and basic black pattern, blue ink wash on sword, no work on armour yet

More yellow work, and basic bone colour on sword. Tinny tin base coat on armour. Antennae added from fuse wire.

More coats of yellow ochre on body, sword finished, antennae thickened with successive coats of thick paint.

Highlight yellows, define face and upper body more, severed head in hand completed.

More definition and highlighting, armour highlighted, antennae details.

And finally, here's the 360 of the finished model.

28mm Spartan Greek army WIP03 - Cavalry finished, other news

With so many projects on the go, things get done in bits here and there. I've been experimenting with NMM on a commission miniature for a friend, and I thought I'd give it a go on some older miniatures to see if it helped. Well, I think it has, I have finished some mercenary medium cavalry - you can see it on the commander's breastplate

These are ancient minifigs miniatures, I think the middle one is supposed to be Alexander, but he'll do as a leader figure for now.

I've also been playing with some different basing gels

The crackle paste gives a nice dry and cracked ground effect, I think I'll have to mix it up a bit for the best effect though. Here's a tester on the front of some hoplites;

More on those soon

Also on the table, some WIP Vendel hoplites

...and the Jason and the Argonauts figures are making slow progress

A couple of old citadel Runequest hoplites have joined them too.

More soon.