Saga: Age of Magic - The Challenge (7)

Well this self-imposed challenge is turning out to be more of an ordeal, and a lot more challenging than I had expected. I lost my painting mojo (and blogging mojo too - no posts for a few months) towards the end of last year and it's been a while coming back. But the good news is that (finally) the Horde are completed and ready for battle. Apologies for the quality of the photos, as well - lighting was not great at all - I need to improve my setup on that for sure.

As expected, future posts in this series are now more likely to follow individual armies rather than tackle multiple factions at a time. And given my rate of progress, I'm deliberately not going to count the weeks. That part of this challenge fell by the wayside a long time ago!

Hearthguard

As the hearthguard are the army's elite, I opted to give them a sort of uniform , so they are painted with red and white designs where they are carrying shields or wearing tabards. The green-skinned look seemed to suit them.

Three creatures

The Champion

Sorcerer (left) and Warlord (right)

The sorcerer was the only figure here that wasn't already at least partially painted, so most of these just required touching up damage and tidying up details.

Eight Warriors

Another eight Warriors

About a third of these needed painting completely and the rest needed quite a few repairs and touching up damage and details. They don't have any particular uniform being less well organised than the hearthguard, and are well suited to warriors owing to their smaller size.

Sacred ground

The sacrificial stone was painted in grey and detail dry brushed.

Chariot

This was the major speed bump in my painting progress. Unpainted, it didn't look very good to me at all and I couldn't see how to make it stand out. My logic with the reins and tackle on the boars is that the chariot would be controlled by way of reins attached to nose rings on each of the boars.

The nose rings are made of metal rings used for jewellery, bought from Hobbycraft. They were attached with glue and strengthened with green stuff moulded in such a way as to enlarge the noses of each boar. The reins are made from thin strips of paper.

The whole was assembled before painting. In hindsight, I could have made it much easier for myself by painting most of the components before assembly. I stuck to the red and white colour theme with the main orc's jacket, the shields on the chariot sides, and the reins. I'm really pleased with the way this turned out; the painting has hidden a lot of imperfections!

Raaar!!

As far as the challenge goes, I'm deliberately slowing down, so it's likely to be a while before I blog again about this topic. In the meantime hopefully I'll be able to blog some reports of games!