A New SAGA
Vikings are the coolest.
Full stop. There is nothing more awesome than bearded dudes angrily destroying everything in their path.
Go back a month, and you'll find me drooling over this amazing picture of SAGA Vikings from Gripping Beast. Turns out, the rules behind SAGA are surprisingly cool for an "old man's" historical game. (Yes, the therapy has not yet helped me accept that I am an old man.)
I got hooked.
My FLGS had a few Gripping Beast army packs in stock. They also had a cool Black Friday sale that involved rolling a D20. As an ALEPH player, I dutifully rolled a 13 (either a crit, or more to my luck, a miss by 1) and went home happy with 13% off my order of a plastic Saxon Thegns box and a 4 point Crusader starter army.
Most of the first group of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Danish warriors. In total, I painted 30 miniatures in a little over 3 weeks, a personal best.
The Saxon box was cracked open first. While these are technically my second line of plastic miniatures ever assembled, I gave up on Malifaux after assembling the first Crew box. Screw you, Electrical Creation...
The most important part of assembly was figuring out what army I was actually building. I settled on building 31 Anglo-Saxons and 13 Scots. A box of Gripping Beast Plastic Dark Age Soldiers will flesh out both warbands.
Three days of glue later, all 43/44 models in the box were built and primed... Because I forgot to glue one of them to their base.
The Hearthguard models practice prior to the big battle.
The recipe that I am using for the chainmail armor is simple. Start with a drybrush of Reaper's Blackened Steel, then do two highlighting drybrush sweeps of Lead Belcher and Runefang Steel. It looks pretty good, and I am able to get through a group of 8 in about 20 minutes.
The tunics on these guys are super-basic. I am just base coating them and hitting with a wash. For the next batch, I want to be a bit more selective on the wash to clean them up and save some time.