OK, so at long last, My SAGA Milite Christie... Templars are complete! Now to get some games in!
First up, I wanted to do an overall review.... from box to board. Starting with the price, I find the SAGA starters on par with the rest of the games now a days. Still too expensive for what you are actually getting, but priced at what the market will bare. The only disappointing thing about this set is the amount of prep work that had to go into it. The castings were just bad.... by this, I mean not quite full molds, air pockets and misaligned molds.... this was the hardest part. When you get figures from a misaligned mold, they are very hard to fix. I did what I could and moved on... It was an ongoing process too. Even though I used magnifiers to paint, I didn't for the prep work and found myself going back to strip paint off and shave off some lead.... Especially when it was time to mount the figures.... At one point I had them all aligned. Somewhere along the line I got them mixed up. I STRONGLY advise that whenever you work with mounted figures, you figure out which guy will go on which horse and match them up for best fit! THEN MARK THEM! So when they get separated.. and they will... You will be able to match them back up again later.
Now, I want to say.... I probably should have returned them and gotten a different box, so that is on me. I also want to state that I also have the Norman box set and they are beautiful! There were hardly any mold lines and they cleaned up very easily. I think my Millite box was a fluke as I have seen many other SAGA sets by Gripping beast and they were pretty nice, right out of the box, so lesson learned!
So, here they are, each group... Up first, the foot warriors. The color pallet for these figures was really easy.. white, black, brown, steel and flesh. Each had their own highlights and shading colors too. The bases were a mix of GW tan & brown colors with some Army painter grass tufts added in. The shields were all done with the decals they sell to go with the figures. A very nice decal, simple to use and they give the figures a very nice finish.
From the side. I really liked painting this group the most. They were actually really clean compared to the knights and horses.
Nest up, the archers. They took some time to get through as I just wasn't motivated to get through them... they just didn't have the feel of what I expected in the Templar order. They might get replaced with Norman crossbow men in padded armor.... to give them a more military look. The colors I used were all flats, even the red. Colors were not a big thing during this time in history and anything extravagant was expensive, so you would see simple colors... but mostly raw muslin colors, tans, browns and some grey.
My Warlord. I want to add the Templar cross on his cape.. I can still go back and do that. He was a simple paint job. His colors were the same as the hearthguard except he was mostly covered by his cape, so a lot of black... that is why I chose a lighter colored horse.The only thing I think I did a little different than the intended piece is that from the looks of the model, he had the top of his head shaved like a monk. I didn't like that and painted over the "shaved" spot and tried to add in some detail so it wasn't just smooth...
The mounted knight/hearthguard with hand weapons. I really liked how some of them had empty hands so you could mix up the weapons a bit... this is where the real troubles began... I found a few areas I missed during initial figure prep and that got me angry. Then it went down hill from there. I notice one of the horses was missing the lower part of one of the front legs, while others were just really bad casts. The colors for the warriors were the same as the ones on foot. I tried to distinguish them by using different horse colors. Again, I tried to stick with common colors for the era. They are plainly painted with only a little dry brushing. One thing I actually really liked about the horses... they were different... and by that, I don't mean the poses, I mean the reins, tack and harness... they were sculpted with a variety of different kinds. This made painting them a little more fun and really interesting to see the different styles they were sculpted in.
The hearthguard with spears... these guys painted up fairly easily, but again, the worst part was the misaligned molds, especially at the feet... the molding was bad. You couldn't really see a clear shape with the feet. I had to cut, snip and file and do what I could to get them to look right. In the end, most folks will never look that closely at the underside of their feet, but.. I know what issues were there to overcome... again, these figures were NOTHING like the Norman box set I picked up.. those guys had very little prep work to get ready for priming. More on that when I start that project.
And finally here they are in all of their glory! I still love them, they are my own.... I won't be winning any prizes for their paint job, even the ones that are really nice, still have some visible mold issues in places when critiqued. I think I want to add a hero and possibly a Templar mounted and foot standard....
In the end, a lot of lessons were learned. I do like how they turned out as a whole, but I am biased. I might go back and ink the rest of them, but they are, as of now... complete and table top ready.. matt varnished and good to go. Now I just need a storage container for them! I cannot wait to get into the Normans! I have a lot of plans there and am looking forward to painting them!
Most likely though.. I will be back to some LOTR miniatures.... I'll work on the Normans in between the other ones.
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