Pictish Raiders 1

With the Novgorodians finished it's time for my new project: A force for the upcoming Raiders expansion to Too Fat Lardies excellent Dark Ages skirmish rules Dux Britanniarum. 

Way back in the post were I talked about my planned projects for this year I didn't want to say which force it would be, but now it's time to reveal the secret: Yes, the Picts are coming!

Naturally, the force composition is not yet official but after reading some AARs and posts on the Lardies Yahoo Group I've managed to piece together the following list:

1xLord
1xNoble
1xChampion
4x6 Raiders
4xMissiles (bow or crossbow)
4xSkirmishers (javelins)
4xSkirmish cavalry

It seems this list is more or less final – any adjustments are probably (and hopefully!) going to be minor. In any way, I should find some use for these models and so I've started painting them. Here are the first models to be finished: 4 bowmen.

The miniatures are from Black Tree Design. Now, I've read a lot of negative things about BTD – do a search for them on The Miniatures Page and you'll find all sorts of horror stories – but it happily seems these are a thing of the past: I've ordered from them a couple of times over the last year and while the shipping was a bit slow (but not unreasonable in any way) everything did turn up. The miniatures are very nice, especially the Picts. They are a bit slimmer than for example Gripping Beast but I'm not overly concerned about these things. Thus I will happily mix both manufacturers in this force, along with models from West Wind and Old Glory.

This will be a "quick and dirty" project, not quite speed-painted but near enough (as you can see in the close-ups). I've tried a somewhat new approach this time: Instead of priming them black as I usually do, I spray them with Army Painters Leather Brown spray primer. The nifty thing about this it that I can leave some parts in the primer colour (eg belts, bows and spears) and save a considerable amount of time. These archers were certainly finished in no time at all. When doing the warriors, and characters too of course, I'll spend more time on the models, doing some patterns, such as tartans and stripes, on their tunics and cloaks. As usual with Dark Ages miniatures, you can get a long way by concentrating on the core three: bases, faces and shields.

Finally some more pictures:

Thanks for looking. Have a great weekend everybody!