About 2 years ago, Lancashire Games had a big sale on their Gothic range, and I picked up enough figures to do a whole range of 'Dark Age' armies. I picked up enough figures to do 30+ elements of mounted, 50+ elements of spear/warband, 24+ bow plus figs for 20 'Late Romanesque' foot, and a 20 or so elements of Hunnic light horse.
The idea was to have enough generic 'Dark Ages' (early medieval/late antiquity) figures to do a whole range of armies, from Patrician Roman through Franks, Goths etc. Purists would shudder - but I don't have a lot of armies in period, so I thought it would be fun to try a few different ones out.
Now, traditionally, I force myself to paint by committing beforehand to taking an army that I have but isn't yet painted. So with Wintercon using a 'Men of Steel' theme, I committed to running Middle Frankish.. around a month to go, and I need to paint up 75 foot and mounted elements. I started last week, and tonight finished up the rank and file Frankish mounted except for the generals, plus the first 10 foot elements. These are all armoured, but will do for Cavalry or Knights. 67 mounted - 12 to go.
Given the numbers I need to paint, I elected to keep it very simple, undercoat is a variety of commercial spray paints to give base horse colours, then block paint, a varnish, a dirty black/brown wash, and ready for basing.
The Lancashire figures look rough when raw, but paint up quite nicely, out of these 67 there were a couple of minor miscasts but easily hidden as the central figure of a three figure element.
Looking forward to getting these on the table. Hopefully, I should be able to polish off the rest of the spear/warband over the weekend, or early next week. I really would like to get these on the table before the tournament.
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