Flemish Mercenaries for Saga

 Having had these plastic Normans laying around for almost 10 years I figured  the AHPC was a good time to put them together and get them painted.

In Saga, Normans on foot don't get much benefit from the Battleboard abilities unless they are armed with missile weapons. Although they cannot gain advantage from the Battleboard Flemish mercenaries are a solid defensive unit; for those that are interested, their rules can be found here.

Four of the Flemings were constructed straight from the components of the Conquest Games Norman Infantry box set. Very straight forward:

For the other four I used some components from Conquest Games Medieval Archers box set. The two below were made using the bodies in mail from the Archers box. The one on the left also has a head from that kit whereas the one on the right has a head from the Norman Infantry kit.

Arms with spears and shields from the Norman Infantry set.

My preference would have been for all the Flemings to be in mail but I ran out of bodies so attired and had to make use of  two in padded jacks.

Both of these figures have heads from the Medieval Archers kit; arms with weapons and shields from the Norman Infantry set as per usual.

All shields were hand painted. Although most of them turned out OK, a couple of them did not. I think in the future, unless it is a dead simple design, I will be using transfers as I did with my Taifa kingdoms miniatures. 

Crossbowmen For Saga

 As part of my Analogue Painting Challenge one of my goals is to finish off a couple Saga warbands. To that end I have painted up some Crusader Miniatures Crossbowmen for my Normans.

They are actually from Crusader's El Cid range but are suitable for Normans.

I found the figures alright to paint. I quite like the faces though the detail on a couple of the left hand eyes was a bit obscured.

In Saga terms these 8 figures count as one point of warriors. Once the archers are finished that will give me two units to take advantage of some of those shooty abilities.