Monday, July 30, 2012

SAGAing my way out of painter´s block.

It´s been a long time since my last update - mostly because I was in a painting slump caused by too much work. A 3 week vacation solved that problem and I dove head first into the Dark Ages, getting on the SAGA bandwagon with my Normans :)

I pretty much had all the figures I needed, most of which were already painted, which is helpful in getting out of a painter´s block (having to do some 30-40 miniatures from scratch would probably have been too daunting a prospect).

All I had to do was rebase my Basic Impetvs Norman Army, which was based with multiple miniatures per base. I will later procure some movement trays so that I can still use the miniatures to play in Basic Impetvs, which is a simple & fun game.

All figures tallied I could field 6 points of SAGA with only some minor purchases.

My initial band will be:
1x William the Conqueror/Bastard - mounted Warlord, 1 point
3x Mounted Knights Hearthguard (will probably be fielded as 2x6 knights) - 3 points
1x Sargents (Foot Warriors) - 1 point
1x Crossbowmen (Foot Warriors w/ Crossbow) - 1 point

All this miniatures I do have - I still have 6x bowmen waiting for another 1/2 dozen to complete a levy unit, but they can still be fielded as a 4 man bow armed hearthguard taking advantage of some of William´s special rules, so it does give some options (I could field the mounted Knights as 8+4 and free up 1 point to slot these bowmen in as is).

I also procured a slightly anachronistic Perry Thatched house (actually for the 1300s onwards, but it works fine for a bit earlier, at least to my eye).

So here are some shots of the Normans so far:

My mounted Warlord, taking advantage of the maximum allowed base size to be accompanied by a musician, a pious crucifix bearing knight and a banner bearer (banner done as if a piece of bayeux-like tapestry was used).
Some mounted Knights - the core of any Norman band.

A general view of the work so far. The 4 knights to the left of the command base are what´s left on the paint queue.

A closeup shot of some foot Knights with the crossbowmen in the foreground.

A shot of the bowmen, standing behind the foot Knights.

Some more foot knights.

The Perry house, complete with wattle fence and pigs.

More on this project very soon.