Finished! 28mm Gripping Beast Black Hoods Cavalry for Saga

After 23.5 hours painting this unit on my Twitch.tv stream I've completed my Eastern Horsemen 'Black Hoods' mercenary unit for Saga. I've painted this up for the February Saga Thorsday painting contest.

This unit can be fielded in both my Crusader and Eastern Princes armies, the latter being the more likely to use them on a regular basis. I've been using some Lithuanian medium cavalry as a stand in for this unit. When playing the plethora of Mongol opponents from my local club, I find the Black Hoods gives me an affordable mounted warrior option with my Eastern Princes army who otherwise would have to bring hearthguards if they wanted more horse flesh on the battlefield.

I have little to critique about the Gripping beast figures. They are well detailed and nicely cast. I always enjoy painting them. This unit came with only four horse poses, two of each pose, and I got an extra archer in place of the horn blower shown on their website. Both minor concerns. The only other minor complaint is all of the archers have the same body position. Some variance with these would have been nicer.

I took some extra time on this unit to practice some shading with a glazing technique I recently learned by watching other miniature painting streamers. Results are mostly subtle, so I think in the future I need to dial up the contrast in my color selection to '11'.  I'm particularly happy with the two mottled ponies I painted up ant the bone coloring on the skull totem.

I've been using a three-step process on flesh tones lately with a base color, P3 flesh wash, and a highlight of lighter flesh color. This combination was also used on these to good effect. In addition I added some eye detail to really make the faces pop. For shields and horse blankets I kept with the red theme that the Gripping Beast artist used on the web sample images. I also really liked the look of the totem bearer in the samples so I copied that fairly closely as well.

This adds sixteen figures to my annual painting total. Good progress to start the new year.

28mm Crusader Heavy Cavalry #2

I'm playing some Saga tomorrow and the scenario requires that I use my crusader army. Call this 'just in time inventory'. I've finished up these eight Gripping Beast Crusader Hearthguard figures tonight, just in time for tomorrow's game.

The horses on these were painted with inks over zenethal primed figures. I still have some refining to do on my technique for this, but I'm happy with the results and in the end it was faster than brush painting with better results.

The riders were painted using my usual techniques, although I used more intentional highlighting and only used spot washes where needed instead of a complete 'dip' of the figures. I like the results a lot. The shields were LBMS transfers, but they were too small for the shields, so a lot of hand painting to fill in the borders and touch up the look was needed.

It's winter weather here, so photographs are inside. My apologies for the glare. I'm counting these as 16 figured in my annual painting totals.

 

Recently Painted Figures and Terrain

I like to take my photographs outside on an overcast day. Winter and early spring here in New Hampshire haven't been kind to going outside to photograph toy soldiers. Spring has finally sprung, so here are a few items that got finished this spring. First up eight hearthguard for my Russian Princdoms Saga army. These are meant to represent the Samogitian Nobles and carry two-handed axes classified as 'heavy weapons' in Saga. These are Gripping beast figures. I modified them by replacing the axe handles with steel wire requiring some fancy drill work in the hands and axe heads to get everything assembled.

Two incendiary pigs to be used with my Eastern Princes army when using it to play Warlord Games fantasy rules "Warlords of Erehwon".

Final addition to convert my Eastern Princes to Warlords of Erehwon - a Cyclops toy purchased from Amazon pre-painted. Required minimal touch up and basing. I'll count this as one 'Terrain/Misc' in the painting totals.

Warlord Games 28mm Stone Bridge - I've given this one my lead shot treatment to make it a bit heavier, then painted with liberal dry brushing, two color stone work and some muddy wheel tracks to make it lived in. Nice easy terrain piece and looks great on the tabletop.

Total effort in this post: Ten 28mm painted figures and two terrain/misc items.

28mm Eastern Princes Warriors for Saga

I'm a big fan of warrior units in Saga. I like the balance of durability, offensive power and number of figures. My Eastern Princes box set only came with one unit of eight warriors. This is a second unit that I made up by converting some Gripping Beast Pagan Rus warrior figures. Some only required a shield swap. Some required carving off the rectangular shields more characteristic of the Pagan Rus and some were used as-is. Decals are more LBMS from the same batch as my other figures.

Next up on the painting table, some German WWII armor. They've been on the table since before I started the Saga figures, but were stalled due to me needing to order some air brush parts. Now that the parts have arrived, the armor should be next to finish.

Saga Civilians

 These are the civilian figures from Gripping Beasts pack "SSC01 - Baggage for the Escort Scenario". I've painted them up in mostly brown and homespun clothing with leather capes. All but one is carrying the farm implements from the pack. The last I replaced with a spear because I broke the lead cast pitchfork it came with by accident. I'll use these as a unit of four (4) civilians where required by Saga's Book of Battles. Next up on the painting table is a unit of eight Rus warriors.

Saga Objectives

While waiting for my Saga Book of Battles to arrive, I decided to start to work on what I thought I might need to play some of the new scenarios. My starting point was the Gripping Beast pack "SSC01 - Baggage for the Escort Scenario". The two carts shown here are from that pack as is the scattered baggage around the smaller cart. The civilians from the pack will be based individually as the civilian unit of four figures called for in the new Book of Battles. Those will be the subject of a future post.

The cows will fulfill the 'livestock' requirement for some of the scenarios. For those scenarios each player is expected to provide three bases of animals. With many new players in our group, it made sense for me to base up six bases worth of animals. The figures are O-gauge pre-painted model railroad figurines, given a quick magic wash, matte overcoat and based. I'm counting the wagons and basing as six figures in the painting totals for the year.

Saga Eastern Princes - Lithuanian Archers

These are another point of figures for my Saga Eastern Princes force. They are the last of the unpainted figures I had from the Gripping Beast starter army boxed set. Russians can have crossbows, but Lithuanians can only have regular bows. That's why I'm calling these Lithuanian archers. In reality I may also use them with my Russian crossbows when I want two missile units in my warband.

Looking at the photographs and the video below, I can see that they still need another coat of matte lacquer to give them a true flat finish. There's still a bit of gloss showing through. Next up on the painting table is another unit of warriors made by converting some Pagan Rus figures.

Saga Eastern Princes - Hearthguard, Warriors, Warlord

Since I'm hosting a big Saga game day on Saturday, getting the shield transfers onto these figures was top priority. I cracked on and got it done and here they are. Most of these figures were painted last week during the World Series games and have been based and flocked just waiting for the transfers. This group shot shows all the figures not previously shown. All of these are from Gripping Beast's Russian Princedoms starter warband box. As far as figure count is concerned, I'm counting this effort as 26 figures.

 Hearthguard unit number one.

Hearthguard unit number two.

The Warlord. Most reviews of this boxed set give this figure low marks. I think the sculpt has good detail, but the pose is a bit awkward. 

The Warriors. I really like this unit. I have a second one to paint up that's just waiting on an order of shields. I'm going to convert some Pagan Rus figures as more city militia to give me additional poses. I've only played a few games of Saga, but so far I'm really liking warriors with melee weapons as good all-purpose troops.

Getting the (war)band back together. Here's a group shot of the entire six point warband. A video, which actually shows the figures more clearly is below.

After finishing up the army I also designed a set of Saga measuring sticks for club use with our club name and logo. These were cut and engraved from arctic birch plywood on my laser engraver.