Carolingians - my next Saga warband

[mikedemana]

With the completion of my Moorish army (https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=125573.0) for Saga's Age of Crusades, it was time to move on to the next warband. Awhile back, I'd seen a boxed 4-point starter army by Gripping Beast in the local game store. I always try to support the local shops when I can, so I snagged it. I'd been experimenting with playing the Carolingians in Saga, getting in a few games. I was definitely intrigued, so it seemed a solid purchase.


The core of my next army, Carolinigians, would come from this 28mm Gripping Beast starter box

The box contains 8 mounted nobles. I like to paint in smaller batches - 4-8 figures, preferably, so I figured that I would begin with them and do them in two separate batches. Half of the miniatures appear to have scale armor while the others are in chainmail. I went back and forth about whether to paint the scales bronze or steel. I ended up going with steel, but in the midst of my internal debate, I remembered how much I like the two-tone combination of bronze and steel on a miniature. I decided that I would do their helmets that way.


The first four mounted Carolingian nobles for my next Saga army

However, I am getting ahead of myself. I always begin with the horses. Usually, I epoxy the rider to the mount before priming. After doing these four, though, I may go back to my earlier method of painting the two separately and then affixing the rider to the mount. It was difficult to get to some parts of the miniature with the horse's head in the way. We'll see, though. I like that all that primer and paint adds another layer of "glue" keeping the model together and preventing him from popping off.


Closeup of two of my 28mm Gripping Beast Carolingian noble cavalry

I actually use a handy little chart (https://thehaybarn.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/img_5877.jpg) I found on the internet to pick out interesting horse colorings. Previously, I painted my horses in a very mechanical way: a variety of base colors (black, red-brown, gray, white, and various browns) with white "socks" and usually black manes. These are much more interesting, I feel -- never mind that a horse breeder may tell me that a particular coloring of horses was not around in the period I'm depicting! I want my horses to look more realistic and interesting.  I chose a speckled gray and a brindle-patterned brown among my four and think they turned out tolerably well. Not my best horses ever nor my worst.


The other two cavalry models in a closeup - you can see the two-tone bronze and steel on the helmets here

With the closed fists on these figures, I decided to go with wire spears for weapons and drilled them out with my newer pin-vice I'd purchased last year. It works MUCH better and faster than the old, hand-me-down that I had been using for years. Next batch, I may go with some hand weapons rather than spears to give the unit some more variety to its look. Speaking of variety, my plan was to do the cavalry in more brighter colors and the warriors in more faded ones. I also gave patterned borders to their cloaks to represent their wealth and overall "fanciness." I decided to go with a theme or "look" for the army, with a couple colors running through the variety of colors I choose for tunics, pants, and cloaks. Red and green would be the theme, which of course would be repeated prominently on the warlord himself.


A look at the back of the models with their decorated borders for their cloaks

The shields were all hand-painted. I keep telling myself I will give decals a try on the "next" army. Of course, when I start painting that next army, I don't have the decals yet and tell myself "next time" again!  I did a little research on Carolingian shields and tried to replicate the main patterns found here on these guys. I think they came out fairly good, though I imagine decals would look ever better. I try to paint highlights on the shield, which you can probably see best on the dark and light green shield with the "cross" pattern.

Another common theme I plan to have running through the models of the army is flower tufts on the bases. I don't want to overdo it, but probably laid it on rather thick with these guys since mounted have such a larger base. Hope you guys enjoy this first steps towards my army. As always, feel free to check out my Lead Legionaries blog below for more discussion and photos.

Thanks for reading!

Mike Demana
http://leadlegionaries.blogspot.com/

[bluewillow]

Nice Mike,

A nice army to build

Cheers
Matt

[Thaddeu]

Very nice, and inspiring for myself! It's odd that they aren't a more popular choice given how much they got around...

[mikedemana]

Time to post my 2nd point of Saga troops (plus bonus trooper) -- Foot warriors. Once again, from the Gripping Beast metal starter box. I know plastics are the rage now, and they make kitbashing and creating new miniatures easier, but I prefer metal still. Maybe it's my severely lacking superglue skills! 


My Carolingian army grows, with nine 28mm Gripping Beast foot warriors joining the ranks

There were 16 foot warriors in the Gripping Beast 4-point starter set that I'm using as the base for my army. However, 9 of them had wrist stumps which needed to have separate fists holding either a sword or axe glued on. Actually, the box came with only 8 matching weapons and fists, but luckily I had a spare left over from my Moorish army. The remaining 7 foot warrior figures had closed fists meant to be drilled out, presumably for spears. Normally, I would do 16 miniatures in two batches of eight, but I decided to do them by the weapons. So, my first Carolingian warriors would be a batch of nine!


Closeup of three warriors - the yellow and green border on the right was my favorite

I tend to be all thumbs when it comes to using superglue, and prefer 5-minute, two-part epoxy. However, I found when working on my Moors that I could actually handle the wrist stump and fist combination with Gorilla Glue superglue. These axe and sword hands went in equally smoothly, much to my relief. That was all I had to glue as the shields come cast on to the figure. Woo-hoo! That much less to glue! So, the "assembly" portion of these warriors was over quickly, and it was on to priming and choosing the colors for the tunics, cloaks, pants, and more.


I was happy with how the fists with axe/sword glued onto the wrist stump easily and look natural

One of the reasons that I am a big fan of inexpensive craft acrylic paints (Ceramcoat is my #1 choice) is how affordable it is to purchase a wide variety of shades in various colors. I like to have a range from dark to light when it comes to all of the main colors -- greens, reds, blues, etc. For Dark Ages figures, I like to use the brighter tones for the richer or more noble figures (hearthguard in Saga terms). For poorer figures (warriors and levy in Saga), I like to select more faded colors. For example, I may use a medium or dark blue for a noble, but for the poor troops I would use a faded, grayish blue (like Ceramcoat Wedgewood Blue). Of course, I mix in grays and tans, especially for the pants or leggings.


The last three of this batch of Carolingian warriors -- I really like these Gripping Beast poses!

Probably the most difficult part of painting this batch of miniatures was the leather cross-hatching on the leggings. I compounded this difficulty by doing my usual two-tone (darker base coat highlighted with a lighter tone) on the leather. It's interesting how painting some parts or equipment of the miniatures is more enjoyable than others. One of my least favorite stages of painting a miniature is the "leather equipment" -- belts, sheaths, etc. Why? I honestly don't know. It just seems that this is more of a chore than the tunics, pants, hair, and other parts. For this warband, I am continuing to favor greens and reds in attempting to go with a "theme" (which I plan to repeat on the warlord figure himself, of course). I don't want it to be the extent of, say, a medieval retinue. However, I am attempting to see with these Carolingians how a hint of a common color theme running through the irregularity of choices turns out.


A look at the nine shields I hand-painted for these Carolingian warriors - the middle guy is my fave

Four of the figures have cloaks, so I wanted to make sure they had some sort of border or pattern. I decided on the previous batch of four mounted nobles that I would go with a thicker contrasting border on the bottom of the cloak (rather than the pattern running along all four edges). I decided this -- in all honesty -- because bottom edge was the easiest and most accessible on the miniatures. However, I also did a narrow line as an accent color on the edge of all of the warrior's tunics, too. This should give more subtle visual interest to the models than if they were all one plain color.

For the helmets, I kept my theme of bronze and steel that I began with the mounted nobles. This idea of a theme was suggested by Rodge and Monty on the Saga Thorsday blog (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHu09rW_Wgkd7TG7F0hcgUOF0sm6bzjQL). This is quite the shift for me because originally I was painting my Dark Ages figures so they could be generic and used across multiple armies. Now here I go making them more tailored! I guess with this being my sixth Saga army, coupled with my plans to have each army using unique and not shared figures, there is nothing preventing me from individualizing armies anymore.


My two points' worth of Carolingians done -- I'll try to do a "army so far" group pic each update

The next splash of color consideration was, of course, the shields. As always, I did my Google and source research to see what common shield patterns would have been at the time. I admit that a common image that pops up in my searches nowadays are the commercially-available transfers by Little Big Men Studios and others. I rarely copy them exactly, but take themes from them, such as the swirls, crosses, and other devices that seem to be what the Carolingian army used. Once again, I tried to use various shades of reds and greens more than average. Since these are warriors, I could have just gone with plain one or two color shields. However, since Saga armies are so small, I decided to splurge with detail and do individual patterns inspired by my online research. I was definitely happy with how they turned out.

What's next? The first point of warrior bows (8 figures) has begun its march to being finished, too. These are actually a mix of figures from different manufacturers that I had in my unpainted bin. Hopefully, they'll mix well with the Gripping Beast. Stay tuned for more updates as the army of Charlemagne's empire continues to grow!

Mike Demana
http://leadlegionaries.blogspot.com/