Painting For Hippos Ishoo Fiv: Vikings

SAGA has led many a man to the inevitable conclusion that what he really needs is a Viking warband. And why not? They are big angry men from the north who enjoy nothing more than a good raid. And what is more, they are readily available at nice low prices from a variety of manufacturers including Gripping Beast and Warlord Games plastic ranges, so the cost of  warband is slight. Oh, and they are quickly painted too!
For the purposes of this Ishoo, Grot will be using some generic Dark Ages bowmen from Eureka Miniatures of Melbourne, Australia (not sure if these are available on their online store yet, I went in in person and Nic got all excited and showed them to me). These are not specifically Vikings, but they were ready to hand and look better than using Warlord plastic Bondi with bows.
Take it away Grot!

And there you have it - a quick and easy way to paint up your viking hordes. Naturally, it works just as well on other SAGA and Dark Ages armies!
The paints used are a mix of Citadel, Vallejo, Formula P3 and Reaper depending on what I had to hand. I am replacing my Citadel with Vallejo when they run out, but I am only about half way through the process. You can use whatever brand you prefer, there are plenty of conversion charts available.

And I promise the People's Choice Dead End Diner will be up soon. It's just stalled at present due to SAGA mostly...

NOTE: astute readers may have deduced by looking at the URL, that this was originally called PFH Ishoo For... because I checked to see which PFH Ishoo I was up to, and the last was PFH Free according to the tags. But woe unto the house of Grot; PFH For actually did happen during Duelling Paintbrushes, so it only had the Duelling Paintbrushes tag and I missed it. Curses. I've changed the name, but the URL remains to taunt me! Gah.

Ishoo Fifty-Ate: Dark Ages Village Part Too

Last ishoo we started to build a Dark Ages village in 28mm to go with the popular SAGA rules. Not only have we now completed the ishoo, we've also gone and bought a copy of SAGA! While it remains to be seen if the game is easy enough for a hippo to play, the second half of the village is certainly easy enough for a hippo to make!

Part One: The Hall.

Part two: The Roads.

And there you have it dark ages hippo fans! It's not hard to build up a decent sized village quickly using these techniques.
It's important to paint the under sides of the roads black - this helps to counter the warping caused by the other paints on top shrinking. They will probably still warp a bit, but it's easy to bend them back to the right shape, or leave them under a stack of encyclopaedias or something to flatten them.

Well, that's it for thise ishoo - look out for this lot getting it's first SAGA test drive soon - and don't forget to vote on the reader's choice polls and enter the compometition!

Ishoo Fifty-Sven: Dark Ages Village Part One

What with the shiny new SAGA rules from Gripping Beast, many a gamer is thinking about the dark ages - and why not? How can you possibly go wrong with vikings and shield walls? Well, you could easily go wrong by playing it across the same terrain you play your Sci-Fi games across! And that would be a tragic mistake, since it's really very easy to make some nice characterful dark ages terrain! Let's see what Grot has in store for us?

PIT HOUSE:

VEGETABLE GARDEN

And there you have it Dark Ages Hippo Fans! It's really very quick and easy to build a Dark Ages village, as we'll prove even further in part two coming int he next ishoo!