The post was originally published on June 22, 2019 on the HMGS site.

I still haven’t finished this warband almost 7 years later. I’d really like to play this game again!

Now that I’m done with Viking Warband (for now) I wanted to show it off as a group.  I decided to paint up all Hearth guard to ensure that I got a playable force in time for Historicon.  It’s quicker to paint 4 figures a point than 8 or 12!

I had a hard time coming up with a color scheme for this force as historically the Vikings didn’t appear to wear similar colors, nor did they use a consistent livery.  That said I like when armies look like an army, not a ragtag collection of warriors.  Even though that would be more accurate I decide to use a shared color scheme across the warband.  I decided to do a triadic color scheme so everyone has a combination of blue, red and some yellow on them.  I decided to use limited yellow so all the figures have yellow flowers on the base to make sure each mini has some yellow.  (Thanks to Greg of Wicked Elf minis for that idea!)

I also decided to go slightly anachronistic with the shield designs.  Two of the units have blue shields and two have red shields.  This allows me to combine the units into 2 point units and the shields will help differentiate the units when they inevitably get jumbled up in a combat.  When they are run as separate units I have one unit with red quartered shields, red shields with crossed lines and then the same in blue.  Each mini has the shield oriented differently so they look at least a little individualistic. 

Speaking of orienting the shields I learned a valuable lesson while painting these guys.  I painted the shields separately on popsicle sticks and painted them with a light source coming from the top.  Unlike my Irish from Footsore the Crusader shields have straps on the back which prevented me from orienting all the shields so that their light source was coming from the top.  Some of the Vikings were holding their shields at different angles so the light source was all wrong.  I ended up having to break some off once glued on the mini, carving off the strap, touching that area up and then pinning them on the model.

   

I’m now on to painting for the Historicon/Wargames Illustrated painting comp so adding Bondi will have to wait.  I may pick up some Archers at Historicon as well.  Crusader minis come in packs of 8 so maybe I’ll end up with three packs to make 2 units.  If I do that I’ll own 10 points for a game that generally only uses 6 points.  Makes perfect sense to me!

-Wachtmeister