Irish SAGA

I have used two slingers when building my levy. Just for variety and enjoy using the different options on the sprue.

This guy talks softly and carrys a big stick.

This levy unit would be ill advised to get into close combat in Saga, but some of the fun poses that jumped out at me from this box just meant that the bare armed shillelagh with javelins in a shield hand was too tempting to miss.

Had fun with this one.

Black Templar Contrast Paint for the tats over a Bugman’s Glow and Army Painter Barbarian Flesh mix and washed with Reikland Fleshshade. Then an Army Painter Barbarian Flesh highlight. The back tat is a stylised serpent and the swirls on his left shoulder were just wild and deliberately unsymmetrical.

All the naked arms seem to look slightly “off” when connected to the body. Even if I cut the ball joint connection piece and glued it direct to the body it would still look slightly off. This arm looks like it was designed to show a person throwing the spear, but the sculpting under the arm looks so soft that it was tougher to paint.

All that said… I am still happy.

For the affordable price point, ease and variety of assembly options and overall look as an army I think it will be great to look at.

Irish levy continued.
Last slinger I made from the box for this project.
Simple repeated pattern on the shield was subtle but nice.

The dark small shields will be enough to differentiate between warrior and levy, but the added element of having my two slingers in the mix is a nice visual cue and makes the levies look less uniform and less well equipped.

Irish wolf hounds and handler.

The leash is just the plastic cord that lives in some earphone cables with the copper wire to help the wire survive the trauma of being twisted and thrown around.

The tartan wasn’t very good this time, so bad i revisited it after taking the pics. I made him deliberately darker than most of the others and his clothes more grubby. Having to manage angry dogs can’t be a clean and easy job.

I got a bit of scarring on the right snout of one dog and the other pretty clean. Only two ended up with bloody mouths because for some reason the thought of them all being bloody just didn’t seem aesthetically pleasing.

East paint job; just Army Painter Uniform Grey, Nulin Oil, Celestra Grey dry brush. A bit of Morghast off white around the eye brows and snout, because looking at pics on line this seemed right. To add variety I used other off-whites (Grey Seer, Celestra Grey etc.)

Apart from being shaggy, big and paler around the legs there’s not a lot of patterning to the coat to play with.

Finished off the full Saga point of 8 hounds and a handler.

The remaining 2 dogs in the box have been put to good use on a hero’s base.

This looks fairly cool in the end, but I had an arduous night fighting with this Warlord / Hero.

This Ulf the Quarrelsome Footsore mini had no mold lines worth attention, was stuck to the base with super glue between the Wargames Atlantic dogs without the shield.

The Mistakes

• I thought I had stuck the metal model to the plastic base effectively, but after he fell off on two occasions during basing I realised that I had not filed the bottom and a little node of metal kept the model from glueing flat. The first time he fell off was down to me not dry fitting the shield effectively, forcing the shield into place and the dog stayed firmly in place and Ulf popped off. “Dry fit twice, cry less.”
• I painted the models but rushed into basing too early and grass was sticking to the paint job.
• I was frustrated at the falling off the base, put down a load of superglue and used the Army Painter activator spray. I didn’t realise that this solvent would make the paint tacky and ended up having to do a load of touch ups to the shield and the dogs’ backs.
• Super glue, PVA and activator spray equals nasty white streaks where the mixture converges and dries. To cover up a nasty white patch in the grass and help secure Ulf to the base I used a big piece of Flint. This also helped put a touch of weight on the back of the base, though the balance of the model wasn’t that bad to begin with.

Chevy and Cuan with their brighter shields make that 8 levy, so just 4 to go.

Realising that Levy die in their droves in Saga, given their low armour and not generating a lot of dice in a fight, I must spend less time on these minis. If they will only be in a game for half a battle they shouldn’t have hours of tartan and tattoo work thrown at them. ? Hopefully finish the last 4 soon and call another point of Irish complete.

I liked the shield design but over weathered it sadly. The simple lines suggesting wings and the bird head are nice, but the splayed lines to represent the tail are under the dust and mud.

Though I know that plaids and tartans weren’t uniform and as family specific in the Dark Age, but I have done a different pattern for every model. I have decided on which colours and patterns I prefer and might try to stick to one or two for my next few minis.