2 warbands for Saga age of Vikings

So the idea is to make not one but 2 warbands. The warbands need to be easily distinguishable from each other because I will probably be the only one to care enough about them to actually see the difference. But since i have at this time only one 4 point warband that is what I will start with.

For reasons lost in the sands of time I decided to glue and prime half of the Vikings.

To get into the mood of painting these Vikings and while looking for interesting terrain pieces i stumbled upon a nice video by Landvaettr’s Lair  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_L9l7YJD7_45tyla1gWIqA where he is building a Viking longship.

So with that in mind I started making my own.

So with that out of the way and my Vikings ready to be painted I was totally in the mood to start painting.

I like to do a zenithal highlight so it is a bit easier to see where the shadows are. For these i used an (cheap) airbrush to prime them. Starting out with an all black coat, especially look for spots only seen from the bottom. After that i did a grey prime from the top and the sides basically. And when that was dry i gave it all a pure white spray from the top in the hope this all will help me in painting.

So after letting the primer dry it was time to start painting. First I started with painting 4 of the Heartguard.

As said I wanted a color scheme that was easily identifiable from some distance so i went for a blue-offwhite color scheme.

The shields I used for the longship were to be the heraldry of this warband. In my mind there would be 2 warbands. One of “Free men” this one, with all warriors having their own shields with their own colors. The other to be done in the future one, will have more of an “army feel”  where a Jarl or other noble has his own raiding force.

After the fishing the 1st point of Hearthguard it was on to the next unit. As i undercoated half of what i had the choice was already made and i started with painting my Warriors. To see what the optimal number was to batch paint I first wanted to paint all 8 at the same time, but that seemed like to much. So i settled on painting 5 in this go (and than have 3 remaining for this warrior unit afterwards)

Once again using the shields i made for the longboat as inspiration for these shields. Also getting more joy out of painting the shields than before. So I probably spent more time on it that i should have. Than again the most important thing is that one should enjoy oneself when busy with their hobby and that was one thing i surely was doing, enjoying myself.

After the first 5 were painted and based it was up to the last 3 of the Warrior unit. Having some examples to see how you want to paint something does help a lot. So having some painted Warriors already did speed up the painting of the last 3. And to be honest i am quiet happy with how they look. I always feel a lot of other people make things way better than I do, and they really do! But still I feel that despite that one can still be proud of his own achievements.