SAGA Irish Warlord and Fianna

I had some time this weekend to get a few painting hours "logged in", and I continued working on the starter set for my Irish in SAGA.

The box is now about halfway done, as I painted up the Warlord, as well as the first of two units of Fianna so far.

The warlord is a sort of "free unit" in the game as you don`t pay any points to field him, but at the same time he is the most important model in the force, as he basically represents "you".  The figure came with a larger base to distinguish him from the regular troops, and I went for a free hand design on his shield.

The Fianna, or Hearthguard, are the elite troops of the Irish warbands, and they come in units of 4 models for a point.

Compared to regular warriors, they tend to have better armour (read: at least some) and the figures depict this nicely with the odd coat of mail, a helmet left or right, and the models usually wearing tunics compared to just a pants and sometimes a cloak for the Bonnachts instead.

I added some javelins in the mix instead of just hand weapons, and the shields once more had some hand painted designs on them.  My regular troops will just have plain, tan variation shields, something the poorer warriors had anyways. 

Now, also on the contrary to popular believes, Irish troops in the Dark Ages weren`t all "greened out" in their colours, that came actually later as the "national" colour.  Predominant where earthen tones, with the occasional blue as that dye was unusual but not uber rare to get.  Red was reserved for the real rich warlords, so I`m avoiding that colour so far in the warband.

The next set of figures I`ll be painting for the warband will be the Bonnachts, see you then!