I have slowly been finishing off my two Saga armies, Saxons and Vikings. You will be seeing more of these over the next few weeks but here is first of them and it is a group of Saxon Warriors.
Now I have tried to be quite historical accurate as I can be, really there is not a lot of information about what these chaps where really clothed like but I have looked into what colours where common and was surprised but just how bright some of the natural dyes were.
These chaps are the from the Saxon Thegns plastic boxset by Gripping Beast and I love them. The multi-part hard plastic means that you can make them individual and the equipment that they come with is quite amazing. Plus the number you get in the boxset is staggering, you get forty four figures in box and all for a the princely price of £22.00 GBP, making each figure only 50p each.
The actual sculpts as very good and fit in the rest of there range of metal figures very well and they are easy to assemble and a joy to paint. In fact this boxset is the foundation for my whole Saxon Saga army with all my Leader, Huscarls or Heathguards and Ceorls or Warriors unit coming from this one box and I still enough left over to make a couple more units of warriors.
As I have said before, these are a dream to paint as the level of detail is good, deep and clean, though I have to say like all plastics, there is a bit of flexing when painting, especially the swords and spear, which can be alarming at first, but they are rather strong and robust and I have had no breaking or damages. I have found that having a metal base instead of the plastic one that come with the box, helps to give them weight and an added bonus of if they are knocked off the table or dropped they seem to land standing and thus further protects the figure from getting damaged.
I am also planning on use these chaps for East Street Games, Valhalla, which is a very interesting small level Dark Age Skirmish game and worth checking out, the rules are free to download or only cost five quid for the book. Is has an interesting narrative playing style and is great fun.
