Saga Sunday: Anglo-Dane Levy
When I first started my foray into Saga a couple of months ago, I thought I had the units pretty much sussed from the get go. Warlords are nails and can batter everyone – check, Hearthguard are tough as old boots and batter most others – ish, Warriors are the bulk of the troops and can deal a lot of damage – sometimes, levy are there to make up the numbers and cause irritation – wrong.
For me, the realisation of their effectiveness came during a battle – the one we reported on last week, here. During this battle, they really showed their worth against lightly armoured troops, so for the likes of Adam’s Byzantine/Last Roman mounted archers, they were particularly effective and caused a lot of casualties. That said, they also did well against Warriors on foot. At some point I’ll be trying six units of Levy and a Warlord and seeing how that works.
To paint them up, they were very similar to the Warriors I painted up here. The first thing to do was undercoat them black. For this I used Halfords Black Primer.
The next thing to do was paint on most of the base coats. For this I used the following colours.
Shoes – Vallejo English Uniform
Leg wraps and slings – Vallejo Beige Brown or Vallejo Flat Earth
Tunics and pants – Citadel Russ Grey, Vallejo Russian Uniform, Vallejo Pastel Green, Beige Brown, Vallejo Brown Sand, Vallejo Tan Yellow.
Skin – Flesh Base
Hair – White, Citadel Fire Dragon Bright, Vallejo Burnt Umber.
Chainmail – Citadel Leadbelcher
With the bases all done, it was time for the bit that for me, really sets off the miniature – the shades. I’ve listed the shades and then everything I shaded them with, as it’s easier than the larger list above when there’s only a tiny number of shades on the go.
Citadel Nuln Oil – Chainmail, brown hair
Citadel Agrax Earthshade – Shoes, leg wraps, slings, some of the beige tunics.
Citadel Seraphim Sepia – remaining beige tunics and pants
Citadel Athonian Camoshade – green tunics and pants
Citadel Drakenhoff Nightshade – blue tunics and pants
Citadel Reikland Fleshshade – skin
Citadel Casandora Yellow – white hair
I decided to work on the skin and faces next, using a Citadel Small Layer brush to paint them.
Skin – Flesh Base
Eyes – White with a Black spot.
Next came the hair and the straps/belts.
Blonde hair – highlighted with a Citadel Averland Sunset/White mix.
Ginger hair – highlighted with Citadel Fire Dragon Bright mixed with a bit of the above blonde mix.
For the straps and belts, for the most part these were painted Beige Brown and shaded with Citadel Agrax Earthshade. On miniatures with Beige Brown tunics, I used Flat Earth for the straps and belts. These were also shaded with Agrax Earthshade.
The slings were highlighted with some Flat Earth. Buckles, crosses and the like were painted with Vallejo Model Air Steel.
I also used a little Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey to paint the stones in the slings.
With that, I was calling them complete. All that remained was to base them. For this I used a very simple technique. I coated the base with Citadel Texture paint Lustrian Undergrowth.
I then glued on some different coloured Army Painter static grass tufts to each base to break up the colour and add a bit of life to them.
I called it a day with them here as they are only the levy, and they don’t have the kind of detailing that the Warriors or Hearthguard have (in terms of the patterns on shields, etc) and with even this very basic paint job they were looking good to game with. Next up, the Warlord.
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