Norman SAGA Commission - Finished - Six Points

Well, this bunch is finally finished. Thanks to everyone for sticking with me on this little project. Last night I got all the weapons glued in place only to discover that two crossbows were missing. I have no idea if I lost them or if they were actually missing from the blister. Either way a replacement pack is on the way from which I will swipe two crossbows. The rest will probably go into the ReaperCon Melt bucket.

Today was touch up and basing today. Touch ups always take way to long and I'm sure I still managed to miss a few spots here and there but overall I'm pretty happy with the entire army. I used a new (for me) technique to add static grass to the bases and get it to stand up straight. I used my Grass Tech II static grass dispenser. this is a powered unit that charges the fibers as they come through a wire mesh and gets them to stand straight (more or less) up. I apply my favorite glue (matte medium and water) attach a wire that goes back the Grass Tech II , hit the power button and shake. Creates a huge mess on miniatures because its designed for large area applications. It also had an interesting side affect. Let me introduce the Norman Chia Pets:

Any way I now have static grass all over the place. Its bad as shipping peanuts. Here are a few shots from last night, they are starting to look like real warriors now that they actually have something to fight with.

That's also about as neat as you will ever see my painting area. It only looks like that way because I pulled out the airbrush to work on my ReaperCon competition miniature after I was done. That requires a certain level of neatness to be able to work relatively efficiently. Also I wanted to see if I could keep my highlights more or less intact by airbrushing on an acrylic matte coat. Overall I would say it worked out pretty well, although my airbrush didn't like it very much. Here are the knights ready to be sprayed:

And finally the finished product:
1 Saga Point - 12 Norman Levy

1 Saga Point - 8 Norman Crossbowmen

1 Saga Point - 8 Norman Spearmen

1 Saga Point - 4 Norman Hearthguard (Mtd Knights) - Note all the shields were painted by hand. I did use the Little Big Man Studios site as a reference. If you don't want to go to the effort of painting shields (almost any kind of shield) I highly recommend them. You can find his website here: LBMS

1 Saga Point - 4 Norman Hearthguard (Mtd Knights)

1 Saga Point - 4 Norman Hearthguard (Mtd Knights)

 Free! - 1 Norman Warlord

So that's it, finally finished. Oh and for the sharp eyed among you, I did forget to edge the bases for the knights, however, I did get that taken care of.

Norman SAGA Commission - Spearmen

I managed to get quite a bit of painting in over the weekend. I have temporarily set the Hearthguard aside for the moment to concentrate on the other three points of SAGA troops for the Normans. What is remaining are the Spearman (Warriors), the Crossbows (Warriors) and the Archers (Levi). It is interesting that among the remaining 28 miniatures that there is not a single armored spearman  but there are a number of chainmail clad crossbows and archers. I approached this last bit a little differently. I decided on two lighter colors for the "pants" ( I guess they are really some form of stocking) and about 6 different colors for the tunics. Concentrating the the spearmen first then applying the colors randomly to the remaining miniatures until I ran out of that color on the palette. The Spearmen went relatively quickly and as befits grunt type troops their shields were kept to pretty simple patterns, either halved or quartered. Later in the evening I called them done and spent time working on the crossbows after that. I'll post pictures of the crossbows tomorrow or Wednesday, but they are down to the highlights. I think I'm going to raid one of my GW plastic dwarf boxes and see if I can use those crossbows for some of the parts. More on that later. For now here are the Norman Spearman (Gripping Beast miniatures).:
The Group Shot:

 At the beginning of the day

At the end of the day, well close. After I took these photos I decided that they were to plain so I added a horizontal yellow stripe at the bottom of each of their tunics. I think it brings them together as a unit better.