Pictish Warband, Allies of Valusia

Finally finished these stands! This is a unit of Pictish (racially similar to N. American Indians) horse archers, part of the Royal Army of Valusia. I'll give more background on the military of Valusia in another post, but these guys are armed with bows and bronze swords, except for Brule the Spear-slayer, who I've portrayed in the centre stand, in dark leather armour and with an iron sword. He's also on a chestnut horse, the rest of the warband rides pintos, paints, and dappled grays.

The warband is wearing quilted torso armour, black leather kilts, and most are wielding their bow, but I painted some waving their sword around. Most with swords in hand have their bow on their backs, and some of those with bows have swords across their backs.

My painting sequence was: base -> horse base colour -> legs -> loins -> torso -> arms and head (both bare flesh in this case) -> hair (or the occasional baldy) -> weapon(s) -> mane and tail -> spotting/dappling on horse.

Nothing special in the method, and it worked ok...no muscle twitches while adding the spotting saved on the angst. But I did decide to change things up when I get to my zebra-riders for Imaro. That will be a more challenging job, so I'm going to add the stripes (probably black added to white) before I start on the rider. The riders will have a lot of exposed flesh anyway, and they'll be dark-skinned obviously, so the occasional stray daub won't be too obvious...probably only obvious to me, actually.

Anyway, onto some pictures (pics of Picts, so to speak). I couldn't decide if they looked better with or without the flash, so for your consideration you get...both.



And some close-ups, showing a bit more detail (but also giving away the illusion a bit too).

Next up should be the Red Slayers and the Red Guard, but I've also started the process of painting up the bases for Lemurian mercenary foot archers (20 bases!) and Acheronian heavy chariots.