Saracen Heavy Cavalry for SAGA

Saracen heavy cavalry for SAGA

More progress on my 28mm Saracen Warband for "SAGA: Crescent and the Cross".  This is to be a basic four-point warband, and I have manged to finish the first two "points", eight spearmen and eight mounted archers.  That left two "points" worth of figures to go, and these would be the "hearthguards", which in the Saracen warband are represented by heavy cavalry.  These are 28mm metal castings from the Perry brothers' incredible First Crusade range.

Taken as a youth from Russia or perhaps somewhere around the Crimea? Who knows?

As the hearthguards are made of tougher stuff than the warriors, a "point" of them gets you correspondingly fewer models, with four models per "point".  Mounted on fine horses, sporting heavy armour and an assortment of lances and other nasty weapons, these heavy cavalry will fight to the last in defence of their Emir and his lands.

That warhammer doesn't look so big, but I bet it hurts...

As with the mounted archers, I have found that there seemed to be no specific, formal uniform for these warriors, and some could be equipped in very colourful garb beneath the chain mail and lamellar armour, so I tried to put a nice variety of colours on these warriors.  I also tried to paint a hint of a pattern here or there on some of the clothing to show its fine work, but that manner of painting is mostly beyond my skills so the efforts on that score were limited.

Hand-painted shields are so fun...NOT.  Oh well, they kind of blend together from two-feet away, which works for me.

As before, the shields make me mental, but I've got some decent momentum rolling along on this project so I'm able to tune out the frustrations and just power through.  And I was able to get an LBMS transfer on one of the warriors, which is a nice touch!

A different angle showing some of the horse furniture and different clothing and equipment

Some of the warriors may have been slaves, "Ghulams", so I painted one warrior with blonde hair, representing a warrior who may have been taken from somewhere in Europe as a youth and found his way down the retinue of an Emir, having grown into a loyal warrior in service of his Lord.

Ready for the charge!

With these painted, I have only one "point" of hearthguards to go before the basic warband is complete.  I hope to share those final figures shortly!