Mongol Horde Ready to Ravage the Saga Scene!

    More than 40 horsemen comprise my Saga army from 28mm Curteys Miniatures

My Mongol horde for Saga is done! I say "horde" because it felt like I was painting up a horde of figures. Lots of people joke about hating to paint cavalry, but there is no denying it takes longer to paint up a mounted 28mm miniature than it does for most foot figures. Looking back at my blog posts on this army, it not only felt like it was taking a long time, it DID! I began painting this army more than a year ago. The first blog entry for the Mongols I found was dated July 28, 2021. Wow!

    My Mongol warlord, Kettle Drummer, and half of the light cavalry horse archers

Now, I admit I worked on other things in the meantime, from terrain for the Advance the Colors Saga tournament (last year and this year's), to post-Apocalyptic figures, to demons for Reign in Hell rules. So, it was not literally 13 months of uninterrupted painting of this army. In fact, with my busy teaching schedule, there were long stretches of time when I did no painting whatsoever. On the other hand, I am not really done painting all the figures I want for this army. I plan to paint up one more batch of mounted, armored cavalry to give me some choice and variety in army composition. So, technically, I'm not really done...

Six armored cavalry and the rest of the light cavalry of my Mongol Ordu (where we get 'horde' from)

Nevertheless, I have 6 points worth of Mongols that I can begin playing with. The last two things I painted were the warlord's stand and the Kettle Drummer's stand. The Kettle Drummer is a 1/2-point "hero" stand that gives a free activation to all units within one Long distance of him and is indispensable to a Mongol general. As I plan on fielding my army, I am also taking 1.5 points of mounted hearthguard (armored cavalry) and 4 points of mounted warriors (horse archers). So, that's a total of more than 40 horsemen that I painted up for this army.

    Three different angles of the warlord's stand (with small pile of severed heads)

I like to paint up the warlord stand last when I do a new army. I think I will be more skilled at color combinations and looks for the army by that point, so I want to maximize on what I learned painting the rest of the army. I decided to mix things up from what my 28mm Curteys Miniatures cast for the army general. I mounted him on one of the armored horses rather than the unarmored one that came in his pack. I gave what was supposed to be his horse to the standard bearer. This included a very cool add-on - a pet leopard perched on the rump of the horse. This isn't fantasy, it is from an account written by Marco Polo from his visit to the emperor's court!

In addition to the spotted leopard riding shotgun with the standard bearer, I added in a stack of four severed heads to the base. I went through my unpainted (and unlikely to use) 28mm figures and found figures that would be easy to sever, and leave a nice, flat bottom to be glued in place. With the horse tail banner, leopard, and heads, I think the warlord stand turned out very nice. Especially considering the time I took painting the individual scales on the horse armor!

    My Mongol Kettle Drummer mounted on a camel and accompanied by a Shaman on foot

When I ordered my 28mm Curteys Miniatures from 1st Corps in the UK, I ordered quite a few extra packs. The main reason I chose Curteys was the huge variety of poses that they had in their Mongol line. One of those was a Mongol Shaman banging a large drum that I added onto the Mongol Kettle drummer's base. Perhaps the coolest part is that the towering kettle drummer figure is mounted on a camel. It's the only camel mount in the army - the rest are all on horses. The camel and the rider are also cast as a single piece. With all the other packs, the riders are separate from the horses. The kettle drummer actually painted up fairly quickly, at least compared to the horse archers, who are festooned with all kinds of equipment, bottles, bow cases, quivers, etc. With him wearing mail, there wasn't a lot to decorate on him - just his sleeves. So, I made up for it with the foot shaman, and gave him a patterned robe and decorated border and headband.

I really enjoyed painting up this army. The figures are a bit smaller in size than other 28mm mounted, but I am okay with that. Not only are all the figures in my army from the same manufacturer, cutting down on odd-looking size differences, I mounted them on taller bases so that they don't look too much smaller than opponents on the battlefield. I also used oval bases that were probably a bit narrower than most probably would have. This was purely for game purposes. I wanted the bases of the back rank figures to be able to project up in between the front rank for measuring range in Saga. The composite bow in the game shoots only 6", so the more I could scrunch them up, the easier it will be to move and fire my horse archers on the tabletop. I put lead sinkers as weights on the base to keep them from being top-heavy or (hopefully) from toppling over.

    Eight 28mm ravens as fatigue markers for my Mongol army - I like scenic markers on the tabletop!

The final touch was an addition at Historicon last month. I found a pack of 8 ravens from Bad Squiddo Games. I figured these would be perfect fatigue markers for Saga! I can use them for other armies, of course, but these will be the ones I put in the Mongol figure box. They were quick and simple to paint up, as nearly all of a raven except the legs are black. I based them on squares of magnetic material, flocked them, and now my horde is complete. It took my way longer than I would have guessed last summer when I started painting my Mongols, but I am very happy with how they turned out. Whew - finally done!