Anglo Danes for SAGA

The Huscarl figures from Victrix pulled me towards their range. Victrix make some lovely stuff.
Huscarls (Late Saxons/Anglo Danes)

You can likely get enough for a base army in the pack I mentioned in the Warriors section.

General painting and basing approach was the same as for the warriors. The chainmail was painted with metallics and shaded before a few drybrush marks to hit the upper faces.

The warriors were largely preshaded with contrast colours for their clothes. I took my time painting the faces and shields. Basing was the same as the Geburs.

The figures are from Victrix.
Late Saxons/Anglo Danes

I have around 2 points.

I didn’t want to take too long painting my figures but I decided to spend some time on the shields. I’m not a big fan of decals. They strike me as being a little too good.

I found a set of designs that looked straightforward and would be a good introduction to freehand.
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/161566705365392088/

As far as I know Anglo Saxon shields were red and yellow in all the images we have of them from contemporary artists. I decided I’d use a variety of colours because I wanted to.

The shield’s base colours were largely wet blended. I found that I could layer colour pretty roughly and it still looked ok from a distance.

The freehand designs I largely eyeballed. Painting the outline with a thin colour near the base meant that when you went over with the stronger colour the original outline almost disappeared.

Finally I added some damaged marks by adding a white highlight to brown marks.

I got some Geburs with slings from Gripping Beast. I wasn’t a big fan of the models but they were good value.

https://www.grippingbeast.co.uk/SA05_AngloDanish_Geburs_12_Levy_1_pt_SLINGS–product–2769.html

Since these were metal and I plan to store them magnetically I wanted several magnets on each base. I 3d printed some bases with the needed holes.

I didn’t take a lot of time over these. Preshade and contrast paint sorted the bulk of this job. I took a bit more time on the skintones.

The bases were a mid brown with a wash. Then I flocked them heavily with three progressivly lighter shades of green and a dirt colour.

The final building was a smithy. I took the same approach as the other houses. For the lamp and the hot coals I just wet blended to firey colours. The coals then had a touch dark grey and black on their tops.

The house generally looks a bit large compared to my 28mm miniatures but the door seems the right size.

The houses were primed grey. The plan was to use a grey base to look like weathered wood and do a simple drybrush up from there. I ended up using some different greys and some watered down washes just to give a bit more weathering.

The thatch was another simple scheme. Dark brown base drybrushed up through lighter colours up to a mid yellow. I hadn’t figured out adaptive layer heights when I made these prints so the top parts of my buildings had obvious layer lines. So I had to a little easy on the drybrushing and try to use washes to darken the recesses.

Areas of solid colour like the doors were just basecoated and drybrushed. Metallic parts were painted a steel grey and washed with a brown mixed with Typhus corrosion.

I wanted some houses for my table and had some viking style house stl files. Not quite Anglo Saxon but I struggled to find anything to print for them. So stuff it, they’ll do. The prints are from the Viking Legends kickstarter. The creator has just announced a new kickstarter with links to his other projects. So I’ll link to the new one here. I’ve backed it.
The Frost

I printed them using PLA. I don’t like leaving the printer running overnight so I cut the prints into several parts. After I glued and filled the gaps with milliput.

A bought a fleece mat Warren had praised on a Weekender. He gave it a proper good rub so I figured it must be good. I’d not tried cloth or fleece before and I was pretty impressed. It’s easy to kink unlike mousemat material but otherwise the detail was very good indeed.

I thought this would let me place hills underneath for some easy terrain. I made some hills from cardboard to see if it worked. It creased the mat too much for my liking. So I decided to find another way to make hills.

I found some stl files for hills for my FDM printer. They were a bit akward to match up but I got there. Each hill is in 4 parts connected by OpenLock clips.

I wasn’t bothered about lines showing on the hill ‘cos I could split them and use parts on a board edge.

After I printed them it was a simple process of priming, a mess of paints for a base colour then back to the flock mix I used on the tree vases. The rocky areas were a quick paint job.

I liked the result. More importantly my miniatures can stand on them though they’re a little precarious in places.