Hengist the Hairy and his Saxon javelin men

[James Morris]

With the resurgence of the Dark Ages in my gaming activity, I revisited some old models from the bits box last week. The West Wind range of Arthurian/ Dark Age miniatures was released after I had collected most of my 28mm armies, so I don’t actually have that many in my collection. This is a shame, as they are terrific sculpts and I always fancied getting some more done.

Fortuitously, I had a pack of Saxon javelin men handy, so I set to work getting these prepped and primed for painting. They have separate heads, which is great fun as you can really vary the models (my favourite is ‘Hengist the Hairy’ who is clearly in need of a barber.) These were a bit of an experiment as my original Dark Ages armies were painted with a black undercoat, base coat, wash and highlights. Recently I have converted to using a white undercoat with GW Contrast paint base coat followed by highlights, therefore cutting out one of the stages, but I wasn’t sure it would be quite right for these chaps.

I needn’t have worried as I managed to pull off something appreciably similar. Using Contrast Guilliman Flesh speeded up painting the skin areas and will certainly be something I do again. Other base colours used were Wyldwood, Gore-Grunta Fur, Snakebite Leather, Cygor Brown and Ultramarines Blue, all with various amounts of thinners. Once done, I just highlighted key areas with similar acrylic paints from my collection.

The pics here were taken against the new background from Jon Hodgson Maps, ‘Two Tree Valley’. This has distinct shades of the English Peak District but could equally be the Scottish or Welsh Borders.

Blog article on mogsymakes.net: https://mogsymakes.net/2022/02/03/a-handful-of-saxon-skirmishers/

[Rick F]

Yep, you've definitely pulled it off, these have turned out really well and show how good contrast paints can be.

[Bloggard]

great - love your table (?) / scenic setting too.