Another up and coming project... Norman SAGA Age of Vikings 4 pt war band

Just an update... of another up and coming project. I will be starting on my SAGA Age of Vikings Norman war band. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the quality of these castings was a lot better than my Milite Christie SAGA Crusades war band. 

 This time around,  I opted to also buy the faction hero and the standard bearer. I really like the Normans, not only because of their history, but for their appearance/armor, etc..... it also makes them a quick work when painting them up.

As I said, I was a lot more pleased with the castings. The biggest issues this time around was the underside of the horses and a little flashing on the troops. There were no misaligned casts that needed any work AND, most importantly.... the feet of the mounted troops were cast correctly and readily identifiable as feet!

The Norman flag looks great! The figure was clean and will go together easily!

The decals were bought and again, only later did I realize I would be adding more foot troops.. which have shields... they will need decals too!!! I'll pick more up at the next HMGS show. I really like the look of the Little Big Men studios decals.... most importantly, they FIT well on the figures. The punched hole makes them great for alignment too!

The 4pt army commander, the spears for the Hearth guard,  crossbows and bows for the foot troops. All were cast well and there were no issues with cleaning them up.

The horses had the biggest issues. I loved that they came in different styles, all historically correct, but not all uniform in tack and harness. They cleaned up nicely, but it took some work. I tried to go the extra mile on all of the figure prep because of the later issues I experienced with the Milite Christie. I have to say.... there was a lot less prep work to get them ready to prime. And, if all goes well, this will be a short work, once I actually get to them.

The last thing I wanted to mention was closing the loop on an earlier statement. I need more shield decals because I plan on picking up 2 more points for this war band. I will be picking up a unit of spearmen in padded armor and either a unit of mounted or dismounted knights.... all will be figures from Crusader Miniatures... I absolutely love their casts for what I want to get. The only issue here is that as much as I love the dismounted knights... and as historic as they are, the SAGA Norman Battle board has most of the knight abilities based upon mounted figures. So... no matter how historical the foot knights are... in the game, I do not think they will perform well. I will most likely have to go with mounted knights with swords.