I can now play Saga fully painted.

(Or rather, I’ve been able to play Saga fully painted for a month, but only just now got the chance to take pictures.)

I mentioned the other day that I was kind of intimidated by the fact that I’d have to paint a fair amount of cavalry for this warband.  I’ve never painted horses before, and I know that they’re one of those things that, when painted badly, looks really bad.

After looking around for some approaches, the one really key piece of advice I got boiled down to “get reference material; horses don’t actually look the way we picture them in our heads.” Which is to say, there’s (almost) no such thing as a single-color horse: there are always spots,  socks, transitions, etc. So, that’s what I did.

I settled on this picture: mostly chestnut, with a white stripe on her forehead, white stockings, a black mane and tail, and grey around the muzzle and knees.

If I felt more adventurous or confident, I’d have done a few different variations… but this was my first attempt.

All of these are Conquest Games Norman Knights, which share the clever design of the Norman Infantry and are still pretty cheap (15/$32)… but do require some determined green-stuffing around the neck and along the rump.

So, here’s the horse:

I’m pleased with how the horses turned out. They’re not perfect, but they’re perfectly acceptable.  They painted up super-fast, too, which is never a bad thing.

Here’s the whole unit of Hearthguard/Knights:

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The technique I used on the horses was:

Chestnut

• GW Rhinox Hide basecoat
• GW Mournfang Brown heavy overbrush
• GW Mournfang Brown very thin layer touch-up
• GW XV-88 drybrush
• GW XV-88 very thin layer touch-up
• Wash
  • 3 : GW Agrax Earthshade
  • 2 : Water
  • 2 : Matte Medium
• GW XV-88 very thin highlight

When I say “very thin” here, I ain’t kiddding around.  The paint’s nearly translucent, and I might do a couple of passes.

White (spots, stockings)

• GW Zandri Dust basecoat
• GW Tallarn Sand layer
• P3 Menoth White Highlight thin highlight

Grey (muzzle, stockings)

• P3 Cryx Bane Base basecoat
• P3 Cryx Bane Highlight layer

Black (mane, tail)

• P3 Thamar Black basecoat
• GW Dark Reaper drybrush
• GW Russ Grey drybrush

Hooves

• GW Steel Legion Drab basecoat
• GW Tallarn  Sand layer
• GW Zandri Dust highlight

I’ve made excellent progress on painting these Normans: this past long weekend (opportunity) + the need to distract myself from shutdown/furlough stress (focus) went a long way towards checking boxes and getting minis ready for varnish.

For context, when I started painting these guys, the list was:

• Warlord – Mounted
• Hearthguard x8 – Mounted
• Warriors x8 – Crossbows
• Flemish Mercenaries x8
• Levies x12 – Bows
• Levies x12 – Bows

Now that I’ve played the game a bit, I’m swapping out those Flems for mounted Warriors… but I’ll need to pick up the models, etc, so they’ll be the absolute last thing I do with the warband. In the interim, the Flems are being used as regular Norman Warriors, split into two units of 4.

The backbone of the models I’m using are from Conquest Games, with missile troops coming from Perry Miniatures. I’ve also got a couple of Gripping Beast figures in there, too, but just a few.

Crossbowmen

The first models I worked on were the Crossbowmen.  These are Perry Miniatures Crusades Mailed Crossbowmen (CU23) I’m not crazy about them; overall, I’ve been kind of disappointed with the Perry metals: insane amounts of flash, detailed where I want simple, and simple where I want detailed.

Flemish Mercenaries

Reading the kind-of-woeful Saga forums, I got the impression that I had to run Flemish Mercenaries.  They’re hard as balls to kill and provide much-needed foot troops for some of the scenarios (because the Norman battleboard strongly encourages mounted troops).

I’m no longer convinced that they’re quite right for me: they don’t generate Saga dice and with two units of levies and one unit of crossbowmen… I can’t swing it.  I have to drop either archers, crossbowmen, or flems to get a unit of warriors I can get dice out of: and the battleboard tells me that’s these guys.

Anyway: I painted them differently.  Normans will be red and yellow (like this guy), levies will be drab… these guys are from somewhere else. I felt like doing this dark, rich blue with grey and white.  I’m pleased with how it turned out.

Most of these are Conquest Games Norman Infantry, which I cannot say enough nice things about. They’re cheap as balls (44 for $32!?!), have just the right amount of detail, and are very cleverly designed.  (Gripping Beast’s plastics have arms that attach at the shoulder, which that requires green-stuffing; Conquest’s Normans have an unusual design that attach midway up the bicep… or just where the arm pokes out of the mail shirtsleeve.  It’s inconvenient for indiscriminate kitbashing, but makes for very clever gap avoidance.)

Two of these guys are from the Gripping Beast Flemish Mercenaries pack, ordered before I learned that I could download the rules for the unit from the forum.  I hate these figures, and am only using two because I ran out of Conquest Normans with spears held up and not thrusting. They’ve got terrible proportion, are ugly as sin, and have worse flash than the Perry figures.  (There’s less flash, but what’s there is sooooo much worse.)