The first big painting project of the year, was an Anglo-Saxon army for my Fury of the Northman rules. That was going to be a relatively large force with 1 Thegns unit, 3 Fyrd units, 2 Skirmisher units, and 3 missile units. I had all ready batch painted the Shieldwall and now it was time for the support units.
For the Skirmishers and Archers, I was using leftover Victrix kits of Early and Late Saxons. For the Missile Troops I was using the Dark Age Archers kits. The great thing about the archers was that I could use them with a variety of Dark Age armies if I wanted, as they were relatively generic.
When we last left-off on this project, I was batch-painting about 50 models at this phase. I had managed to paint them up with my standard techniques to about half-done before we left off. It had taken about three weekends to get that far, thanks to a bad case of Influenza A. Yuck.
They all had on pants and basic clothing, but there was still a lot of weapons, hats, helmets, hair, and gear to go. Therefore, it was time to get started again and finish them off. Thankfully, my wife is in school so I have most of Saturday open to paint while she does homework. That has given me plenty of time to paint.
I went to work on the rest of the models using my standard batch painting techniques. I worked on belts and pouches next. Here I used a variety of Armypainter browns such as Skeleton Bone, Desert Yellow, Monster Brown, Leather Brown, and Fur Brown. I had to make sure that none of the gear matched anyone's tunics either. Each model tended to get two of the brown colors to create some different colors on the same model.
I also painted the weapons up. Here I went with a very different look. I opted to do all the Bows with Dessert Yellow to give them a yellowish look. On spear and weapon hafts, I had primarily used Oak Brown and Skeleton Bone, which I did again. The weapon tips were all Bronze or Gun Metal. The feathers on the arrows I decided to use Mummy's Robes for a goose-feather look.
That just left heads and headgear to be finished off. So close to getting all the base-coating done! For hair, I used Fur Brown, Monster Brown, Dark Stone, and Uniform Grey. I avoided any Orange hair and I think only 1 guy had Blonde hair in this group. A bit unusual for me, but Blonde's and Red-heads did not seem that common for Anglo-Saxons. It will help the Irish and Vikings pop out a bit.
For the hats and helmets, I allowed myself to go a bit crazy on the color-schemes. The majority of these guys had been in browns, greens, and more nature themed colors. This time, I skipped that and leaned into the brighter colors for headgear, Deep Blue, Pure Red, Daemonic Yellow, Lava Orange, Greenskin, and even Voidshield Blue. Helmets were Gun Metal and Bronze for the most part. That gave some of these guys a bit of a "POP" to them too.
Not a bad looking crew. That left all the base-coating done after 4 weekends of work. I was onto Washing and Base-coating. I had used Strong Tone on the shieldwall due to all their chain mail, and it turned out good, but a bit dark. I wanted these guys to fit in with those, but I decided to do a test on the Priests with a Lighter tone to see how they fit in first. I thought that the Strong Tone might be too much for these minis and make them super-dark.
After looking at the test models, I was happy with the Soft Tone results. It used a black ink base, similar to the Strong Tone. Therefore, I moved forward with washing all the models with a Soft Tone. Here is what it looked like.
Well, they look finished now. All that is left is the basing now. I used the standard Territorial Brown craft paint with scatter moss sprinkled on to make my bases. Nothing fancy and it gives a good effect. It also matches my other Historical armies.
Here was the final 52 models. Two units of archers, one unit of slingers, 1 skirmisher with Javelins, and 1 unit that could be skirmishers or Irregulars. Then, two random priests that are not part of the army but came in the set and I thought they would be cool to have around and painted up for various reasons.
With that, this batch of 52 is complete! I went and put them with the rest of the army in order to get a couple full army shots and some unit close-ups.
Some Skirmishers.....
Some missile troops....
With that, my first big project for 2025 can be crossed off the list! 92 models done for 2025! Done. Now, onto the next project, which will probably be some Heroquest heroes from First Light.
Until next time!
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