Saga Four Points Viking Warband

My four point viking warband, with hand painted shields, completed in  less than a month. That's not a bad result, though apart from the shields, I can't say I enjoyed painting it that much. It was the poor sculpts that made it a chore, though en masse they look quite decent. I am not used to such mediocre models in my hands. I would not recommend the Gripping Beast starter warband as a product, but would suggest you look elsewhere. There are a few Foundry vikings in the mix and they are more dynamic models, though a little more chunky in build. At some time in the new year I will try the Drabant miniatures, which I first mentioned in this post.

I have already detailed my choice of the clothing palette (in this post). For the shields I googled lots of designs and used some of them as inspiration, sticking to a limited palette of mainly red and white, with black and yellow as secondary colours. I also looked at  viking jewellery, a couple of the shields have knots and beasts from images of pendants, one even from my wedding ring. The shields have really transformed the warband for me, I will definitely be enlarging it to six points in the new year. Until then, here's a few close ups of each of the four points.

Vikings nearly done

Just a very quick update to show that the viking warband is almost completely painted. It has already been in action a couple of times over the xmas break, which was the reason for rushing them through in the past month. Just the shields to complete on the last few and they are completely finished. In this photo they are packed tightly on to a piece of magnetic paper, which roughly shows how they would look in a conventional wargaming movement tray.

Vikings sighted

This is the first two points of my Saga vikings warband, fully painted. I stuck to a desaturated palette for the clothing, hoping that the shields bring them alive. Those on the left are the bondi, the basic troops available to the warlord. They are armed with spears and shields for the most part, with little or no armour. The four figures on the right are the hirdmen, the warlord's best fighting troops, with armour, swords and helmets and better decorated shields.

All the shields are freehand designs, from simple quarters to stylised birds, serpents and a quite ambitious knotted dragon (second from right). While this approach is more time-consuming than transfers, I do get a little "decal fatigue" when browsing images on the web and wanted to have a unique look to my own warband. They are not quite as polished as they could be, but for wargaming figures they are good enough.

Drabant Miniatures Vikings

If you have been following my posts on the Saga viking warband, you may have noticed that I have been a little curmudgeonly about the figures I have. I spent about a year looking at what the market had to offer and was a little surprised that the range by the historical manufacturers was less than inspiring. After all, vikings are an iconic part of European dark age history, so you would expect there to be plenty to entice the gamer.

I looked at Foundry, but find them a little chunky and leaning towards fantasy style. Gripping Beast are more historically accurate but fairly stolid, their range has barely been updated in twenty years (though the newer Jomsvikings look much better). There are a couple more smaller metal ranges which fall somewhere between these two. And then there are plastics by both Wargames Factory and Gripping Beast. I have held these in my hand, seen them up close. They are okay, not up to the standards expected by fantasy players, but cheaper than metals and so a possible starting point. In the end, after dithering for months, I went with the Gripping Beast viking starter set, mostly because I managed to get a deal with a rulebook and dice thrown in, hoping that I could make them decent enough with some nice shields.

The good news is that I have finally found what I was looking for. A very nice set of viking sculpts, leaning towards historical accuracy rather than fantasy looking, with good proportions and some dynamic poses. And with hands that actually grip their weapons. Drabant Miniatures is a Russian company with a small but very nice looking range of vikings. The UK supplier of the range seems to be Old Glory. My favourite set is those shown at top, but I would be very happy to include the others in my warband too. These three packs would make a unit of hirdmen and a unit of bondi, taking my starter warband up to six points. Something to look forward to in the new year I think.

Vikings WIP 3

With the first half of the four point Saga warband well underway, I thought I would make a start on the remainder. As I mentioned earlier, the warband is based on the Gripping Beast 4 point starter deal. I had my doubts about the berserker models from the pictures online; in the flesh they are pretty disappointing and I have decided to sideline them for the time being. This left a hole in the collection and I needed four substitutes. Luckily, I have the remnants of my very first viking force and was able to recruit some of them. This force was my first foray into historicals, many years ago. See if you can spot them in the photo, though no prizes for guessing that one of them is front rank, 2nd left.

The warlord is front centre, on the bigger base. Either side of him are a second unit of 4 hirdmen, while the remaining 8 figures are more bondi. I quite like the hirdmen, the non-gripping hands I can just about tolerate as long as the figure has a bit of character. The bondi are less good, I have to say I would probably not recommend the starter set to other gamers, the quality of the sculpts and figure poses are mediocre. The annoying hands can be remedied if you have some plastic bits, ironically I used Gripping Beast plastic Saxon bits. All is not lost, these figures form a reasonable basis for a warband, and I have recently discovered some excellent figures to add to them. More on that in a future post.

Vikings WIP 2

After priming white, I set about getting the boring bits done first. Shoes, belts, pouches are all painted in orange-brown or darker brown, the two shades of leather most seen on any pictures I have looked at. I also painted the backs of the shields in these colours, to act as wood. Then I painted on the socks/garters and trousers and a few bits of clothing in natural colours, to simulate undyed wool. All these areas were then glazed with browns and greys to add some shade and texture.

The clothing was painted in a range of fairly desaturated colours. For most of these I toned down the intensity of the original paint colour by adding a pale colour such as grey or even white. I also used less vivid versions of some tones, for example instead of red I used chestnut. I kept the richer tones mostly for the more elite warriors, just a few bondi have any colour of note. These areas were then glazed with darker shades of the base colour. Finally, the armour and other metal areas were given a base coat of chainmail.