Hobby Update: Lords of the Wild

Hello and welcome back!

Today's blog is a small update on my Lords of the Wild warband for SAGA Age of Magic. Currently my warband is composed of heroes, creatures, and monsters per the Minotaurs of the Black Hills Legendary Warband rules. However, this feels a bit limiting, especially when Lords of the Wild have so many ranged weapons and abilities at their disposal!

Rather than continue that trend, I've elected to add a substantial number of warriors, hearthguard, and levy, as well as some new heroes and monsters! I'm drawing inspiration heavily from the classic Wood Elves of Warhammer Fantasy Battles lore. As such being the case, I'll be keeping my handy-dandy Warhammer Supplement book handy.

Here's a shot of all the models I'll be adding to my force. I'm using entirely Ral Partha's Demonworld line currently, though I might sprinkle in one or two Games Workshop minis in the near future.

As you can see, these have all been assembled, mounted on popsicle sticks, primed, and airbrushed Vallejo Green Grey 70.971 en masse. While this is a more daunting and "grindy" approach to painting, I find it to be the most efficient and ultimately quickest.

Also, rather than jumping on the juiciest miniatures first (there's a dragon in there!) I elected to go with the most numerous minis first, saving the desserts for last. I've found this to serve as a good incentive when I'm staring down masses of fairly regular-looking infantry.

I had sixteen warriors with bows to paint and they certainly weren't going to paint themselves so, without further ado, let's jump in.

In this terribly lit shot, you can see the sixteen archers on their popsicles. I find popsicle stands really help with manipulating minis, especially 15mm ones. Here, I quickly splashed on some flesh tone (Flat Flesh 70.955) and some yellow for the pants (Flat Yellow 70.953).

Next, you can see that some green (Intermediate Green 70.891) has been added for their shirts.

Here, I've added hair colors (German Grey 70.995, Beige Brown 70.875, Cork Brown 70.843) to the first eight miniatures. I followed a bit of a staggered approach when painting these, doing eight per sitting at a time.

But who's got time for that! Let's jump ahead in time. Here we have all sixteen warriors post inking (Army Painter Soft Tone). I've also added the other hair colors (Yellow Ochre 70.913, Beige 70.917, Ivory 70.918) to the remaining eight minis. For wood and leather, I used a base of Brown Sand 70.876. The weapon grips were painted with Red 70.926, the arrow fletching was painted Ivory 70.918, and the metal was painted with Steel 71.065. The sleeves and belt stone were left Green Grey 70.971.

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Here's another quantum leap forward. This photo shows all the miniatures highlighted up post ink wash. This was a fairly laborious process, but the one I use on all my miniatures. Effectively, I use the base color to highlight the inked areas, then use a lighter color to give an extreme highlight. When need be, I use other inks and washes to add color or add shadow. With all the miniatures painted, it was time for basing and sealing.

As my warband thematically are wood elves, they needed to be appropriately based. I duplicated my process which was used on the previously completed miniatures for the warband, which will give the army a cohesive look. To emphasize this point, here are some miniatures painted previously combined with the new minis.

Hopefully you've enjoyed this update. As my winter holiday break is coming up, I'm sure more will soon follow. I'm currently beginning work on my twelve mounted hearthguard, mounted warlord, and mounted sorcerer, so stay tuned!

Nick