When the Levy Breaks

Original post 8/4/15

I've finished most of my Viking army and the only thing I have left to paint are my levy.  In Saga, levy is the term for your warband's weakest troops.  They represent untrained fighters: peasants, or in the vikings' case, thralls aka slaves.  Levy do not generate any Saga dice for your army, have less attacks, and lower armor.  However, you do get 12 models of levy for just 1 point which makes them a great meat shield.  In the Viking faction they are also the only unit able to take a range weapon, and ranged weapons have a bonus against cavalry armor.  So, I knew 12 bow levy would be a great addition to my army.  The next question was what models to use.

One of the things I really enjoy about Saga is that you can use any 28mm historical miniature in your warband.  You just have to stay with the historical theme and follow WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get).  Jere wanted some levy in case he wanted to run his Jomsvikings as true Vikings so we agreed on splitting a box of plastics as that would provide us both enough models for one unit.  I found the Wargames Factory Viking Bondi on eBay for $17 shipped, and we were in business.

The Wargames Factory Bondi were good because they would match the rest of my army, but were unarmored.  However, 20/20 hindsight I am not sure I would use the models again.  Unfortunately, I ordered all mine before seeing Danny's fantastic Gripping Beast plastics.  Granted, they were about half the cost ($17 vs. $35) but after putting so much time and effort into my army I really wish I had some better miniatures.  Here is a pros and cons list for using Wargames Factory over Gripping Beast off the top of my head:

• Pros
• Inexpensive ($17 for 32 models)
• Very customizable
• Bodies seem properly proportioned
• Have bows (Gripping beast has slings for their range weapon, YUK)
• Steel rimmed shields (For hearthguard)
• Ton of left over bits
• Cons
• Not a lot of detail on clothes, face, beards, anywhere
• Poor casting leads to loss of what little detail you have
• Heads have a large neck and lump on the end meaning you have to cut them and fill neck gaps with greenstuff
• All shields are steel rimmed (warriors wouldn't have this)
• Weapons are very thin, look less imposing, and are prone to breaking
• All non-shield hands are open with a "thumbs up"

Still, the Wargames Factory minis were great for me to get back into painting.  If you are on a tight budget I definitely recommend them, but if you can squeeze the extra couple of bucks to upgrade I would.  They did, however, serve their purpose of getting me into Saga for as cheap as possible!

Assembly was a pain, as predicted.  The arms, heads, and weapons all come separate and need to be glued together.  One of the problems I found was getting the correct arms (you get a ton) to give you the pose you are looking for.  I also hated cutting and fitting the heads.  Never less, I was able to complete them and make them look half decent.  Since one of the purposes of these guys was to experiment I tried out GWs Liquid Greenstuff as a small/ hard to reach gap filler.  I had heard mixed reviews but found it worked great for gap filling and had the added bonus of wiping away from areas you don't want it.  I think the trick is you have to layer it, but you don't even need to wait for it to dry to do so.  I also mixed in some of the Saxon heads Corey gave to me to make my thralls look like a hodgepodge and also differentiate them from my warriors.

After spending a ton of time painting my warriors and hearthguard (champions), I was not too keen on spending forever painting my twelve levy/thralls.  Luckily, my friend Danny is a very quick (and good) painter and he showed me how he sometimes uses washes to color his basecoat for a quick paint job.  Since I wanted my thralls to wear browns and grays this seemed like a good time to try the technique out.  I bought Army Painter Skeleton Bone spray and used it to base coat the models.  Unfortunately, we've been unusually humid for San Diego and the coat was a little grainy, but I was able to smooth it out with the Army Painter perfect match bottle.  I then proceeded to paint on the base colors.

Primed model (Almost, I forgot to take the pic until I had painted the bow and hair)

Base coat colors

You will notice I base coated very very little.  That is because I was going to test my Army Painter Soft, Strong, and Dark Tone Quickshades.

Yes, I'm a little bit of an Army Painter fanboy... Sounds like a future article ;)

I was very curious to see what colors I could get with the washes.  The benefit of using the washes to color is it will allow me to paint a lot faster and also be way more forgiving for my shakiness.  This proved to be very true as I finished the model extremely fast and in one sitting.  I didn't even have to stop when my hand went through some bad twitching.  I decided to wash the hat with the Dark Tone, the jerkin with the Strong tone, and the pants/ sleeves with the Soft Tone.  This would give me a good idea of how the three different shades would look.  Each area got two coats.  All the base coated colors were also washed with Strong Tone.  Here is the final product:

Nicknamed "Cletus the slack jawed Saxon" By Jeremy

You may notice that the mold had more detail on the jerkin's back than front

Overall, I am quite pleased.  He isn't the quality I would want for my warriors or hearthguard, but the dirty earthtones will do quite well for my thrall bow force.  I plan to do the rest of my levy like this, mixing up which colors I use where.  It looks like I will be on track for SagAugust, the big Saga day they are having in San Diego that requires a fully painted force.  Hopefully my levy can stick some arrows into all the cavalry I will be facing!