OK, as my Milite Christi warband for SAGA gets nearer completion, it is time to add the decals... I honestly struggled with this for a variety of reasons... First and foremost... I have never used this type of decal before and I was unsure of it. Now is also a good time to rehash my only complaint with the SAGA decals.... Yes, they are made by a 3rd party for SAGA.... but, as I have said before... why are they made with 12 per sheet and not 16? I admit, my limited exposure to the game is that you need 16, NOT 12.... but I might be incorrect somewhere. Anyway, I had to buy a second pack of the decals to get enough to do up my whole SAGA Milit Christi warband. There were 8 mounted knights and 8 warriors on foot who would need them.
Like I said, I was a little apprehensive as I have never used this kind of decal before... I read and reread the instructions. It seemed simple enough. The first part was making sire the area of the decal was painted white. This was because the way the decals were made, white was not a color on the decal. To print white on a decal is expensive. The work around is to print the decal on clear decal paper and then make sure the area beneath is painted white. It worked well. I'll have more information on this later as I have picked up a decal making kit from Testors. That will get it's own review and blog spot.
The hardest part was the second part... cutting out the decal. I opted to use an Xacto knife as the decals are small and I am terrible with scissors... mostly because I am left handed and do not own any left handed scissors. Even then I suck with them. It is a grade school lesson I never learned well.
To cut out the decal I ever so carefully cut through the plastic covering and into the paper beneath, I then flipped the sheet over and cut through the already existing line created from the first soft cut. I found that this worked well. Beneath the plastic cover is a sticky side that attaches directly to the figure. The decal print goes through and once the backing is removed, you get the reversed side of the decal showing.
It looks rugged, but it was a smoother cut than it appears.
Once you align it, you then apply water to the paper backing, not a lot, just enough to soak it through. If you add too much, you can dab it off with paper towel or q-tip. One great thing about the decals... the shield boss was already pre-punched out... this really helped in aligning the decal correctly. It was a great feature and I am glad they did it.
Once it is applied and wetted, dab off the excess water and then peel off the white backing. At this point I was skeptical... but the final product really looked nice. Being that it is a decal, it has a somewhat glossy finish to it. I will take the leap of faith and believe that when I spray the whole model with matt varnish, it will look correct.
The next step is to go around and touch up the decal edges, etc... When I prepped the figure I saw that the white really only needed to be in certain edges or where the white would need to show through from beneath. Because of this, my touching up wasn't all that bad. I had to touch up some of the brown around the shield edge and only a little black where some white still showed around the edges. The decals took paint easily. In the end, they look great so far, but I really need to varnish them to see the final effect.
I think it looks fine. You cannot see the shine from the decal in any of pics, but it is there. I have high hopes it will "wash-out" when the matt varnish is added.
I did find one thing, I was being too conservative when I was cutting them out. The decals are sized very nicely to fit in the space provided, especially because they were made specifically to fit the SAGA models. So, when I cut them out I stayed as close to the edge of the decal as possible... I had to use the back end of a paint brush to better "form-fit" the decal on one of the models. It worked well and the decals stayed in place. They were easy touch up and in the end, very easy to use. I highly recommend them as they are very inexpensive and if you cannot paint the small details or straight enough lines, decals make the work a lot easier. Definitely worth the money in my mind. It makes the models look a lot more professional and the shields are the largest thing on the individual models and it draws the eyes... the better the shield looks, the better your overall model will look.
I'll post a review of the whole army box when I get all of the decals done. Unfortunately, I took very few pictures when I was actually painting the mounted figures up.
So, final decision.... I am very glad I bought the decals and even happier that I bought them for my Norman army box set for SAGA. It will make the models "pop" more and have a positive effect on their appearance. I am glad I went this route instead of trying to freehand all of those crosses!
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