Painting Challenge entry 8: More Norse-Gaels

Next up is the second half of the Gripping Beast Norse Gael starter box with an extra dane axe wielding warlord. I've now got 7 points done with the plastic models so I shouldn't have to resort to borrowing stuff anymore :) I actually finished these guys last thursday already, but didn't want to put them here before Curt had time to put them up on his blog.

I used some Battle Flag shield decals on these guys. They look great, but I had some minor problems. These are meant for the plastic Vikings which apparently have different sized shields so I had to cut them up a bit to make them fit. They are also quite thick to make the colors vibrant, but it does have a downside that they don't work well with curved shields. Ended up using them on the straight ones and just hand painted some basic shapes onto the curved shields.

These guys seem far more peaceful than their Dane Axe weilding brethren, but I guess that comes from the fact that they've managed to keep their shoes and haven't had to resort to selling them to get better weapons. I added a Warlord Games Celt casualty on the warlords base to spice it up a bit. Blood effect with GW's "Blood for the Blood God" paint.

Looking at the images now I've noticed that there's a bit of the white undercoat of the warlord shield showing from next to the shield boss, so I'll still have to fix that up. Damn close ups...

The Ostmen

8 Bonnachts with various weapons (counts as Javelins)

Painting Challenge entry 2: Norse Gaels

Time for my second, or the first published entry for the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge. First one should be published on sunday when the first fortnight challenge ends.

Here we have the first half of the Gripping Beast Norse Gael starter warband featuring all the Dane Axes. Warlord, 4 Ostmen and 8 Bonnachts should allow me to play Norse Gaels with a 6 point warband when I combine these guys with my earlier Saxons. I definately like the GB minis way more than the Wargames Factory ones. No more open hand and long neck syndrome and a lot more detail. The only gripe I have with these is the amount of barefoot models. If there was something I learned in the army it was the importance of foot care. Maybe the Gallic Vikings are either pretty darn poor going without shoes, or then just really tough buggers, or then both...

I started out with a 3-color basecoat by first doing a light layer of black followed by grey at a 45 degree angle and then white straight from above. Gives a nice base to start painting over as you already have shades in place, emphasizes all the folds and shows you where all the shadows would be naturally. After that I painted all the base colors on and used GW and Army Painter inks to shade the model a bit more. This was followed by a few layers of highlights to bring out the detail. I like how they turned out especially the axe blades. The shinier blade part gives a nice contrast.

I ordered some Battleflag shield decals to make my task a little easier, but they are still on their way so I decided to paint some quick freehands that can be later covered. Tried to add a bit more variety by shading them slightly. Doesn't really show on the pics though.

Next up is a short break from painting as I'm leaving on saturday to see some relatives and I'll be coming back after christmas. So plenty of time to figure what to paint next. Fantasy Battle Chimera, 28mm Winter War Finns or some Flames of War paras.

 I really do like the second guy from the right. Nice sculpt on the face.

The fur cloak might need a slightly stronger highlight to make it pop more.

Another sculpt with nice character in the face is the one on the left.

Saxon Thegns

Next up on my list of completed long time WIP stuff is 16 Saxon Thegns from Wargames Factory. I originally bought these to have a cheap way to get into Saga, and cheap they turned out to be both on their price and their looks. I'm not too thrilled about the castings as they have some weird poses, terrible heads with really long necks that have to be cut down, bad detail on armor, arms too big for the weapons on the sprue, and all weapons being extremely prone to breaking apart.

Anyhow they didn't break the bank at less than 20 euros for 32 minis in a box so maybe I shouldn't complain too much. Would have wished for more spears though as only half of them can be equipped with them. I ended up trying to speed paint them. So I skipped all highlights and instead just used the army painter stuff like a dip instead of as a wash. Looks OK for gaming I guess, but I did have to go back and add highlights to the faces to make at least some part stand out a bit.

Shields are all painted as I didn't have any suitable decals for them. I did try painting some shields with animals and runes, but they just ended up looking horrible so I ended up doing everything with simple geometric shapes.

Still a some Hoplites to finish off after these fellas. Maybe tomorrow will finally be their time after waiting 3 months on the table for decals and basing :)

And the weirdest pose of the pack. Doesn't really look good with any arm options.