Saxon Army Restoration Part 1

After more than a year away from Warhammer Ancient Battles our local group is planning a couple of games days in a couple of weeks. This means it is time to pull out my Northumbrian Saxon army and take stock. I painted this army several years ago and it has been my main army since the release of the Sheildwall supplement for WAB. That makes it about 6 years old.

During that time the army has seen lots of playing time and transport time. In fact, this is the army I took to Historicon 2004 for the WAB tournament. Needless to say, it is starting to show some ware.

This is the first in what will be a series of posts tracking the restoration of this army. I know I will not have this done for our games later in the month but it is a great excuse to get started.

I have a lot of experience with army restorations. It seems that most of my projects involve large amounts of used figures and models. In fact, this army was built with about 50% used models. This project will be a little different, however. For this project I will be doing some touch-ups and highlights along with freshening the bases. The army is very large with about 160 figures. Back when i painted it I wanted to get it on the table quickly so it was speed painted and dipped.

In the Before picture above, you can see the heavy coat of dip as well as some of the damage to the figures. There is also a lack of detail in the painting. The flock is almost entirely worn off the bases. Frankly, they look like crap.

Here is how they look after my restoration work. I have painted highlights directly over the dip layer. This is possible because the figures had already been dull coated. I have also re-flocked the bases. This is about an hour of work and I think they look much better.

Eight down and only 150+ to go.