Colore ton Monde, July: Saga Vikings I

Chop chop chop went the cutting tools, and on we go with this month's challenge: to paint a mini I have yet to play. In this case, I'm going with a game I have yet to play, Saga. As previously mentioned,  I have bought a couple of viking minis, and plan to turn them into a command base.



The mini in its original form



I started off with the standard bearer. As he is going to be on the base with the leader.I felt his winged helmet was too much. I felt it would draw the eye away from the leader and onto himself. I want the focus on this model to be the standard, not the man. I think it makes him a little more historically accurate too. Also, I feel the knife he was holding was a bit of a rubbish weapon for a viking, so off it came too, to be replaced eventually with a shield. As this left him essentially armless, I added the belt knife that came with the miniature I intend to use for the leader (Freydis). Again, I don't want her to be too busy a miniature with all the little odds and sods that work on a single mini being too much for the vignette.

The plasticard for his base was a kind donation from Guillaume. A little polyfilla and sand will be added once I decide on the placing for Freydis. I did think to use some green stuff to cover the rest of his legs in fur, as I'm not a fan of the peddle-pushers look he's got going on.

I also got some shields from the bits box of my FLGS. The dwarf shields I picked up, although blank, were too small for these guys. There was one larger orc shield, and a chaos shield that seemed the right size. the insert in the orc shield is, I think, from the LoTR Rohan minis. I have seen a few of these minis turn up in Saga blog posts, as they are more historical/dark age in their look than a lot of GWs other stuff. The boss is just a done of green stuff to fill the hole. The other shield, on the left, is a chaos shield. I liked the torn cloth look, although the spike is a bit too much, and if i go with this one, I'll round that off.

What do you guys think? Which one to use?

I think, in the end, the Freydis will not be going through as much of a conversion, and may keep her current shield, unless I find a good way of separating her arm from the shield it is now attached to.