More Foot Warriors for my Carolingian Saga army

    My second batch of foot warriors from the 28mm Gripping Beast starter set - 5 Saga points done!

I took advantage of summer break to accelerate my painting a bit this last week. I finished off the second batch of my foot warriors for my Carolingian Saga army. These warriors of Charlemagne's Frankish empire are from the 28mm Gripping Beast starter box. I really like the poses and variety of this box. There were four different poses in this batch of seven, all of whom I gave spears.

    I continued my theme of faded colors for the tunics on these Frankish warriors

Besides cleaning excess flash (of which there was very little), my first step was to use my new pin vice to drill out their right fists for brass wire spears. The other warriors in this box came with various hand weapons that needed to be glued into their hands, so I gave them axes and swords. This should provide a nice, irregular look to the units of warriors on the tabletop with three different weapons. Much as I have always said I am super glue inept, I have taken to using Gorilla Glue superglue on attaching the spears. I slide the spear into the hold I drilled for it, dab a little behind the fist, then pull the spear forward through the fist to drag the glue into the cavity. I clean off any excess blobs of superglue on either side and it tends to hold very well. I have dropped them while painting and the spears don't budge.

    I really like the "Yew Green" on the middle figure, and have used it throughout this army

I kept with the faded colors look for this army, with pale blues, greens, yellows, and such. My rationale is that people of the Dark or Middle Ages rarely had the closet full of clothes like most of us do today. So, they would wear clothes over and over, again. Repeated washings and time outside in the sun would fade the colors. Each of figure's tunics also had a solid border on its hemline. Three of them had cloaks, so I splurged and gave them a dotted pattern like I have done with the mounted nobles for this army.

    Hand painted shields for this army...not the best of my attempts, but passable

The leather straps and gartering on their legs was the fiddliest part of the figure, of course. Some of them had solid calf-high boots, which meant I could get away with a solid leather color and dry brush over it. For this army, I am giving them a range of hair color with browns, mousy tan, and red brown. This batch appeared to have mustaches but no beards, for the most part. 

    My five points of Carolingians completed so far...two batches to go!

The shields are once again hand-painted. For some reason, I like the designs I did on the previous batch better than these. They're not bad, but not as colorful as the others, I feel. Still, these are not meant to be noble warriors, so a more boring shield design should be just fine!

Next up is my final batch of archers for this army. Who knows? If I really bare down, I may get them AND the warlord finished before our next Saga game day. My guess is that won't happen, but stay tuned to my blog and see. Thanks for reading!