Drabant Miniatures Archers

It's a return to the dark ages this year (and no, that's not a satirical political quip). Last night I had my first taste of the Saga Age of the Wolf system, and it was so tasty. I will post more about it after a few more sessions, but suffice to say the very next day I dug these archers from out of my stash, prepped and glued them on to bases.

These are Drabant Miniatures archers, one box of Saxons and two of the Vikings, though my aim has always been to use them as one unit of 12 fairly generic dark ages archers. Once painted, this unit will be serving in both my Viking and Anglo Dane forces. It's surprising how effective they can be - especially against fully armoured knights.

I have been taking a look at my Dark Ages collection and it's a real hotch-potch of stuff. I started with some plastic Wargames Factory figures, and they are the worst. Avoid. Then I tried some Gripping Beast plastic Saxons and they are quite reasonable, though all heavily armoured (wearing chain mail) which is not so useful in the age of the woollen sack vest. Then I tried some Gripping Beast metal vikings and I was a little disappointed in those, some pretty awful sculpts and poor casts. More recently I have tried Saxon Miniatures Anglo-Danes and they are pretty decent. By far the cream of my collection are the Drabant Miniatures vikings - painted examples can be found here. If you are looking for high quality and don't mind paying a little extra, they are highly recommended. It's a shame that the range is so limited.