Anglo Danes for SAGA

It’s done! I’m pleased with how quickly I’ve turned this around and I’m very happy with the result. I’ll have to start planning around this army a bit more. Still not quite sure how I’ll pad out other parts of the force but I’m pushing through what I need for my evil dwarves so hopefully I’ll be back to this project pretty soon. Back on hold for now though.

My Anglo Danes have a grassy flocked look to their bases. It’s quick and I like it. I wanted to put a little more effort in on the dragon and started by trying oil washes over a brown coloured earth. The result was crap.

I changed tack and glued some twigs that looked branch-sized on. Then I gave it a liberal sprinkling of Lukes APS premade Forest Groudcover. I guess you know you’re lost to the hobby when you’re buying bags of soil. But I think it looks great and I’d buy it again.

After that I flocked it and I’m pleased with the result. Though a mushroom might help.

Given the army this dragon would go with was a Dark Ages force I was put in mind of the old story of the Red Welsh Dragon fighting the invading White Dragon. But the more I’ve looked at this force the more it’s felt like it’s inspired by natural, woodland themes. So I went with green.

For all my love of this miniature I need it done pretty quickly. I’m in a hobby golf shame league and my score is abysmal (thank you Star Wars Legion). So I’m working to pump out the minis.

I decided I’d try and undercoat with the airbrush to add tones and shadows and then go over with the main colour. I used:

• Gradients of ScaleColour SC-36 red and SC-33 purple for shadow.
• SC-54 Navi Blue for the wing armatures.
• SC-10 yellow and Golden Titanium White for highlights.
• I went over the shades on the body with SC-41 green.
• I masked around the wing membranes and eventually used SC-25. I struggled to gt this right and think it went on a little heavily.
• I also used SC-25 on the front chest and horns.
• I used Vallejo Model Colour 70.843 to add tones to the chest and horns.
• I finished with oil washes of Michael Harding Ultramarine Violet for the scales and Raw Sienna + Raw Umber for the base.

I’ve been running ideas for converting this army to a SAGA AoM force. I’ve got a rough idea of where I’m going but I had decided I wanted a dragon. There’s a dragon in Beowulf and that’s the only excuse I need.

However I’ve been struggling to find something decent and not too expensive. Honestly I’d given up. Dragons seem to be very large and overposed. I was prepared to compromise on a wyvern or something similar. But still, nothing was grabbing me. The wyvern at Otherworld miniatures was the favourite. But I find that if a miniature really appeals to me I’ll just buy it and I hadn’t pulled the trigger.

Then browsing through my local hobby shop I came across the Blue Dragon miniature for Pathfinder. Bingo! And pretty cheap as well.

Got it based and preshaded pretty quickly. I love the feeling of inspiration I get when I love a mini.

After getting a force together for SAGA Age of Vikings a thought gently settled in my mind and took root.

Hey, this force is not that far off an Age of Magic army.

I’m already working on another force for Age of Magic – Evil Dwarves – but I’ve enjoyed running theme ideas for this force. Reading around the legends from back then we’ve got warriors who could take on the form of a fearsome animal, dragons, Grendel and even large versions of normal creatures like bears and wolves.

In Age of Magic there’s a faction – The Lords of the Wild – that has warriors that transform into creatures and even a version of the Wild Hunt! They sound made for each other.

Not quite. This faction appears bow heavy and my force is not. Maybe I’m being too literal. We’ll see.

For now this project is halted while I work on my evil dwarves. I’m still figuring out the minis I want for this force. Then I’ll be back.

Gripping Beasts other warlord for the Anglo Danes is Cnut and I love this sculpt. How did the same company produce this guy and the levy? He should really be on the banner but Harold fits that space so nicely with his retinue.

He’s been painted and based in the same way as the Warriors and Huscarls. I worked on some gold edging to his clothing and the cloth under his saddle. I was very happy with the patterning near the saddle.

I haven’t painted horses much but I fancied going for a dappled grey. I don’t think I committed to really get the dappled effect right but otherwise I think it came out well enough. Time wasn’t on my side.

As much as I wasn’t keen on Gripping Beast’s sculpts for the levy I was quite taken by their Anglo Dane warlords and bought both. In this section we have Harold Godwinson and a couple of Huscarls.

One slight downside was Harold had a kite shield cast onto his back. Instead of fighting it I just went with it and painted a bear. Being metal miniatures I used 3d printed bases with magnet holes.

I also tried to add a little more detail on Harold’s sleeves. Something to make him appear a little more important. It was really just putting down a dark brown base and higlighting a pattern up with yellows to white.

The Victrix packs I mentioned in the Warriors and Huscarls sections came with a few character pieces and a Warlord with retinue.

The painting and basing process was the same as for the other figures. For the warlord I wanted to try something a bit trickier for his shield and went for a horse. I’m pleased with how it came out.

The Huscarl figures from Victrix pulled me towards their range. Victrix make some lovely stuff.
Huscarls (Late Saxons/Anglo Danes)

You can likely get enough for a base army in the pack I mentioned in the Warriors section.

General painting and basing approach was the same as for the warriors. The chainmail was painted with metallics and shaded before a few drybrush marks to hit the upper faces.

The warriors were largely preshaded with contrast colours for their clothes. I took my time painting the faces and shields. Basing was the same as the Geburs.

The figures are from Victrix.
Late Saxons/Anglo Danes

I have around 2 points.

I didn’t want to take too long painting my figures but I decided to spend some time on the shields. I’m not a big fan of decals. They strike me as being a little too good.

I found a set of designs that looked straightforward and would be a good introduction to freehand.
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/161566705365392088/

As far as I know Anglo Saxon shields were red and yellow in all the images we have of them from contemporary artists. I decided I’d use a variety of colours because I wanted to.

The shield’s base colours were largely wet blended. I found that I could layer colour pretty roughly and it still looked ok from a distance.

The freehand designs I largely eyeballed. Painting the outline with a thin colour near the base meant that when you went over with the stronger colour the original outline almost disappeared.

Finally I added some damaged marks by adding a white highlight to brown marks.

I got some Geburs with slings from Gripping Beast. I wasn’t a big fan of the models but they were good value.

https://www.grippingbeast.co.uk/SA05_AngloDanish_Geburs_12_Levy_1_pt_SLINGS–product–2769.html

Since these were metal and I plan to store them magnetically I wanted several magnets on each base. I 3d printed some bases with the needed holes.

I didn’t take a lot of time over these. Preshade and contrast paint sorted the bulk of this job. I took a bit more time on the skintones.

The bases were a mid brown with a wash. Then I flocked them heavily with three progressivly lighter shades of green and a dirt colour.

The final building was a smithy. I took the same approach as the other houses. For the lamp and the hot coals I just wet blended to firey colours. The coals then had a touch dark grey and black on their tops.

The house generally looks a bit large compared to my 28mm miniatures but the door seems the right size.

The houses were primed grey. The plan was to use a grey base to look like weathered wood and do a simple drybrush up from there. I ended up using some different greys and some watered down washes just to give a bit more weathering.

The thatch was another simple scheme. Dark brown base drybrushed up through lighter colours up to a mid yellow. I hadn’t figured out adaptive layer heights when I made these prints so the top parts of my buildings had obvious layer lines. So I had to a little easy on the drybrushing and try to use washes to darken the recesses.

Areas of solid colour like the doors were just basecoated and drybrushed. Metallic parts were painted a steel grey and washed with a brown mixed with Typhus corrosion.

I wanted some houses for my table and had some viking style house stl files. Not quite Anglo Saxon but I struggled to find anything to print for them. So stuff it, they’ll do. The prints are from the Viking Legends kickstarter. The creator has just announced a new kickstarter with links to his other projects. So I’ll link to the new one here. I’ve backed it.
The Frost

I printed them using PLA. I don’t like leaving the printer running overnight so I cut the prints into several parts. After I glued and filled the gaps with milliput.

A bought a fleece mat Warren had praised on a Weekender. He gave it a proper good rub so I figured it must be good. I’d not tried cloth or fleece before and I was pretty impressed. It’s easy to kink unlike mousemat material but otherwise the detail was very good indeed.

I thought this would let me place hills underneath for some easy terrain. I made some hills from cardboard to see if it worked. It creased the mat too much for my liking. So I decided to find another way to make hills.

I found some stl files for hills for my FDM printer. They were a bit akward to match up but I got there. Each hill is in 4 parts connected by OpenLock clips.

I wasn’t bothered about lines showing on the hill ‘cos I could split them and use parts on a board edge.

After I printed them it was a simple process of priming, a mess of paints for a base colour then back to the flock mix I used on the tree vases. The rocky areas were a quick paint job.

I liked the result. More importantly my miniatures can stand on them though they’re a little precarious in places.

I finished my first set of trees and felt good about them. Then I read round the SAGA social media and found people recommending trees you could remove from a large base. To make it easier to get troops through. What!?

So I set about a new batch of trees that could be detatached from the main base. I used the large mdf bases again and put the trees on smaller bases, then surrounded them with Sculptamold. Otherwise the process was the same as the previous trees.

I kicked things off by making some trees. Woodland Scenics armatures pasted onto mdf bases I got from a local company.

I’d heard good things about Sculptamold so I gave it a try. It had a nice, uneven finish that made it look like natural ground. I stuck a few stones in and let it dry.

It took ages to dry. I noticed later that it chips quite easily if you leave edges proud. Annoying because you get white flecks in the middle of your paint job. I’m on the fence with Sculptamold. Not blown away by it so far.

After this I got my kids to help me paint them up. I got a mix of craft paints and mixed some earthy tones then we lathered the paint on.

After painting I flocked the bases with 4 different types of flock: dark, mid and light green along with an earth mix. Again, a good one for my kids to help with.

For foliage I attached lichen to the trees. It looks nice but was a pain to affix and I’m not convinced it’ll survive too well in a terrain box. We’ll see how it goes.