Starting a Viking SAGA Warband

I found some time to make headway on a viking warband for SAGA. I was especially keen to see if the color palette I selected for my vikings would provide a suitably gritty and varied appearance while still maintaining a subtle tie between the various figures.  I've used predominantly warm browns, with a large amount of ivory and red as the thematic tie between all of my vikings.

2 points of vikings for SAGA

I picked up a pack of Gripping Beast bondi to add to the Wargames Factory vikings I had on hand. I wanted to use Little Big Man's shield decals, so did a little swapping to keep the bondi all wielding similar shields and reserving the intricate designs of the LBM decals for the more well off viking hersir.

Wargames Factory viking hearthguard.

These vikings were some of Wargame Factory's first plastics. WGF early sculpts seem a little off to me, but the flaws in their Romans disappeared once they were ranked up. Based singly for SAGA though, the Wargames Factory sculpting oddities are more apparent. Many of their arms seem unusually short and stumpy, and their hitchhiker thumbs sticking out allow various weapons to be chosen for the warrior, but look pretty wonky to me.

Viking bondi. Gripping Beast on the left, Wargames Factory plastics on the right.

To fill out the unit of bondi I added a pack of Gripping Beast metals. They mix well enough with the WGF plastics to my eye, have great detail and life, and were free from egregious mould lines or flash. I'm hoping to get some GB plastics to compare, but with the few models needed for SAGA I'm leaning towards forking out the cash for nice metals rather than the more economical WGF plastics.

More vikings may have to wait until the new year though. I've switched scales and periods yet again, this time to gingerbread in 80mm, but this should be a short side project that won't divert me from the dark ages for too long.