Viking Hirdmen
Just a quick update on these guys. I painted them a few months ago but rebased them for Saga and other skirmish games, so while they’re technically not a new offering, I did work on them last week. I originally mounted them on the Renedra square multibases that come with the kit, but I rebased them on 25mm lasercut mdf bases. I got them from http://www.laserbases.be – at €1,50 per 20 bases they’re excellent and the company does movement trays as well.
All of them are built from the Gripping Beast plastics.
As you will notice, I invested particularly less time in painting these, certainly when compared to my main Saga warband. The metal, for example, was drybrushed runefang steel over the black undercoat as opposed to the washes I tend to use. Same with the clothes and leather: I washed over a basecoat but didn’t do any highlighting afterwards.
Some left-handed guys here – I ran out of right-handed weapon arms.
As you will probably understand, most of my time went into freehanding the shield designs. I saw these as a good exercise for my freehanding skills, which are mediocre at best. Most of the designs were ‘stolen’ from those of Little Big Men Transfers; they’re an excellent company, but too expensive for me. Some freehanding was done on the clothes of the models as well, mostly a simple stripe pattern or two.
These models hopefully illustrate the amount of different poses you can build from the set.
Though the paintjob is not fantastic, I believe the bright shields compensate for it. They hide a large part of the bodies and draw the eye. And when ranked up on a movement tray, for Hail Caesar for example, that’s about all one will be able to see.
Ships and ravens, and more ships and more ravens. They’re vikings, after all.
There’s nothing I can tell you further about these models, so there you go. Next week will feature the first six French dragoons, but I’ve also assembled and basecoated ten Old Glory vikings. We’ll see how that goes!
Very nice as usual, you really have the Citadel painting technique down. I like there new range. I am tempted to switch from the AP technique, I will have to think about. The Citadel bases and washes give a very nice effect.
John