The Goonhammer Historicals team have been getting very excited about SAGA recently. So much so that we’ve infected half the discord with a Victrix-kit-fuelled fervour for Historicals Skirmish gaming. Try as I might to keep us all focused on boats, sometimes you’ve just got to give in, so I thought I’d get on board too. Someone has to keep that lot under a mail-clad heel, after all.
But I’ve got a lot of boats to paint, so making a SAGA force to throw down had to be a quick job. I’m not a quick painter though, especially in recent years. Something I used to love, a long ol’ time ago now, was setting aside some time (a day, a proper day, from midnight to midnight), putting on some music and grabbing some beers and painting as much of an army as I could. Last time I did this was ahead of a big Pike and Shotte mega-game where I realised I couldn’t turn up with three bases of painted pike, so I sat down and forced myself to paint 60 pikemen and 20 musketeers in 24 hours, got very drunk in the process and listened to sad Scottish music.
With SAGA on my mind I thought, why not, eh? Why not do another army in 24 hours? Then the baby woke up, and I realised something. The Pike were in 2021. Times have changed. You can’t step into the same river of spilt nuln oil twice. It’s not the same pot, and you’re not the same man. One job, one day. Except it’s not a day, because the idea of setting aside a block of 24 hours for painting and getting distracted isn’t on the cards anymore, so it’ll be several blocks of an hour or so – we’ll see how far I can get in 24 hours (total), when 24 hours (consecutive) is an impossibility.
Preparing for a Day in Normandy
The quickest way to do this was to cut corners. Transfers (Delightful transfers from Little Big Men Studios, instead of freehand. Textured bases from Wargames Atlantic instead of sand and glue. One set of miniatures as much as possible – Victrix’ delightful Normans.
What follows isn’t quite a stream of consciousness, but my best recollection of my thought processes, half dictated into my phone at the end of each session. The tense-sensitive may wish to look away. Many things came to mind as I was doing this, so here they are.
Hours One and Two
The baby is asleep, finally. Last night I laid out all the sprues I’d need – Victrix Normans and Norman Crossbowmen, Wargames Atlantic textured bases and Conquest Archers. The applicator needle for my plastic glue has been lighter-cleaned and all my files are ready to go. I clip off one Norman infantryman body and the baby wakes up. I said I wasn’t the same man as I was, and I realise as I’m getting him back down to sleep that maybe the challenge here is that I am, and I want to be, still. I love me, the parent, but I worry that too much has changed, that I can’t really have the time for “me” anymore. I want to remind myself that I’m still here too.
So, take two, let’s get at it. With little attention to mold lines (thank God the Victrix models require only a tiny bit of cleanup, though later I’ll regret being so blasé about this) and the WA bases, I’m just prepping models and sticking them down, eventually getting down to about 30 seconds per infantryman from sprue to assembled. Poses are a mix of straightforward (Normans in mail) and nightmarish (Normans with spears) and end up looking pretty off with some of the spearmen and nearly all of the archers.
It’s amazing to me how quickly plastic casting for Historicals has come on. When I started Historicals way back in about 2015, lots of plastics were pretty lumpy and cartoonish (the Conquest Archers, while a decent kit, has a bit of this going on). The Victrix kits are on their usual superlative level, and fairly fly together – a real pleasure to make. My first Goonhammer articles were about the English Civil War and the Warlord Plastics, another world away in terms of quality. We’ve reviewed the Norman infantry before and I take a break from frenzied making and gluing to re-read the review. Ilor got it right – these are bloody lovely – but I should have read it before as I’ve paid no attention to which arms I’m using for the shields. Some of these will look downright odd once the shield is on. I chalk it up to an acceptable speed-based compromise and move on, not for the first time ruing my inability to read and process instructions in the face of my unassailable and completely unsupported kit bashing arrogance.
I don’t bother with scabbards, knives or pouches. Speed is king. 29 models assembled and based in about one and a half hours, half an hour of kitbashing the Conquest archers to give them more a more Norman feel. Just in time for me to hear faint stirring noises from next door that recall me to my first and most important duty.
Hour Three
I’ve only got six bloody crossbowmen (the perils of buying by the sprue – just buy a bloody bag next time), so the first half of hour three is spent perusing the Footsore Miniatures store for exactly which Norman Crossbowmen I want. I then get distracted and hang about on the Goonhammer Discord for a while talking about painting philosophies (you should join, it’s good), and make a note to appreciate my friends there more, because I like talking to them and online relationships are also worthy of cultivation, time and careful management. Refocusing, I hit “buy” on several packs of shield transfers and the first set of Crossbowmen I looked at, making most of the time on the site wasted. They’re very nice, though, Footsore. That’s another thing that has changed about Historicals recently. We’ve always had a plethora of manufacturers, but now they have nice websites, well painted models as examples, even functional shop front software so purchasing no longer requires an email (or a call, or even a fax) to a guy spinning metal in his garage. It’s better, yes, but we’ll miss the old lot when they die of lead poisoning, you know?
Everyone in mail is primed black, and everyone in anything else is primed off white. This takes about 30 seconds, and the weight of what I’m attempting here kicks in because 41* miniatures is a shitload when they’re all crammed base to base on your spraying board. Nursery calls – unexpected pickup time is here.
*see Hour 24 for an unpleasant discovery on this front
Hour Four
I used to love this, you know. I used to love painting, every single model a joy. I don’t think I ever once ran into painters block or a feeling of time wasted until I was somewhere in my late 20s. I once did a Night Goblin army in the same time it took to watch all three extended LOTR movies, with my mum slapping Dark Angels Green basecoats on exposed flesh, the messiest painter I have ever seen, before passing them over to me for highlights. It was great, a weird but firmly loved moment, both determined to get my army ready for an event that I can no longer remember. What was I doing? Where was I going? A year later I sold the Night Goblins on the something awful forums, packed them up and sent them to the US. If by some miracle you’re reading this, mystery recipient, get in touch if you still have the models. I’d love to know how they’ve fared over the years. Decades, perhaps. I miss that army, but what was I going to do with it?
Painters block hit years later, and strikes me now more frequently than ever. Do I not love this as much as I did, or is it the combined weight of two and a half decades of painting Christ knows how many models that’s done it? I no longer want to improve my painting, is that it, have I just reached a creative dead end, wedded to sponge and blanche and weathering powder? 41 models is… it’s a lot.
The mail. Okay. Drybrush Boltgun metal, might be the same pot that did the goblins. Stain with Army Dark tone, drybrush Stormhost silver. Ten minutes for 15 models, at most. Forgot about helmets and swords. Drybrush them too. Another couple of minutes gone. Get real, real, sad a kind of bone-deep sadness that strikes me from nowhere at all and lasts until I put the brush down. Realise I’ve been listening to Frightened Rabbit. Put on Brian Eno. Feel better.
Hour Five
Fully intending to batch paint these all in one go, I almost immediately didn’t bother and instead spent the next few hours mini-batch painting groups of four hearthguard. It’s all a pretty simple process, going back over leather and cloth with Vallejo Off-White, a wash of aggaros for cloth (then more off white as a highlight), snakebite leather and basilicanum grey for leather and a red trim (Word Bearers and then Evil Suns). Faces get Bugman’s Glow, Army Painter Barbarian Flesh and a tiny highlight of Kislev flesh. It’s all fairly mechanical and proceeds smoothly. I spend about three hours over the course of several days getting the hearthguard done.
Deciding on a basing scheme is a big part of that time, but ticks along in my brain as the paint goes on. I want these to be fairly generic Normans – suitable for 1066 (and after), especially in the East of England, but also for Sicily and the First and Second Crusades. Something that ties all these areas together is periodic aridity, which is (luckily) easily done with the scenic supplies under my desk – parched yellow grass, brown tufts and a little green and white in the form of Gamergrass flowers. It looks good, it’s simple to apply and a basic wash over Morghast Bone on the WA bases means it can go from basecoat to finish in a few very quick steps.
Though this period of painting is broken up into ten or fifteen minute slots around other duties (man when babies start to feed themselves with a spoon they are messy. House needs a lot of cleaning), I really get the joy back and remember how much I do, in fact, love painting. It’s such a zen space when you can steal that little sliver of time to complete a step or two on a group of models, and there’s enough detail components here that are simple to paint that doing each one individually is pleasurable. The belts in one sitting. Trim in another. Four Hearthguard down. And then another, and another, and another, until they’re all done, so I move onto my mail-clad plastic crossbowmen and polish them off too, a peaceful, relaxing time, meditation through miniatures.
Hour Nine
Why have I never used these Little Big Men studios shield transfers before? They are phenomenal. Simple to use, look incredible, only slight hitch is that I bought the Footsore sized ones instead of the Victrix ones*, but man, they are beautiful. They really set the models off. I don’t add them all on in an hour, because, again, distraction in the form of giving Goonhammer writer Bair a history lesson, and I’ve been doing them as I go, but I do spend an hour enjoying them, so that’s alright. I break off from explaining the Saxon invasion to finish off the two Footsore Crossbowmen I’ve added to my plastics.
*I then bought Victrix-sized ones from LBM.
Hours Ten to Sixteen
Base colours go on the spearmen. There’s eight of them, but I really dislike the cloth-only ones, so I sub in models that were going to be part of the sequel to this article (Working title: 2Fast 2Normandy). That gives me six spearmen, a monk and a banner bearer, both of which are point-buy options in SAGA but will do me as unit fillers for now (might pay for the banner, looks good). Different tones of cloth and leather get different combinations and layers of off-whites followed by brown contrast washes. The quilted models I decide should have the look and feel of a well worn leather sofa, snakebite leather followed by fyreslayer flesh. It should be quick, but it isn’t, because I’m distracted by other modelling projects and other articles. Worried that I’ve fucked up, some mysterious anxiety around work and Goonhammer and painting and fatherhood strikes once they’ve all been batch-coloured, and I slow right, right, down, painting each individual model fully, at a snails pace, until I leave off the last spearman and just can’t be bothered for a while.
I’m really proud of the Banner model, he’s come out very well for a rush job, while the spearmen I slogged through, even though I really took my time, look crap. I wish I could only paint when the joy takes me, because my painting is better. Sometimes I think we feel pressured to paint at particular times – perhaps for an event, or because the backlog has grown immeasurable, or even because it’s what we feel we “should” be doing, because we tell ourselves we love all aspects of the hobby (We? I? You?). Each Spearman drips slowly off the painting table and I begin to loathe that this is what I’m spending my precious spare time on. I finish seven out of the eight over the course of several days and go read Master and Commander again.
Hour Seventeen
Making sure I take time every day to work on this project is difficult, so I make up a new task for the slot today. Nursery has now begun in earnest and paternity leave is over, so instead of nap breaks for painting it’s back to lunch breaks when working from home. In my infinite wisdom, I waste an hour painting a banner that I think looks pretty shit in the end, and think about buying a pre-made banner. I snap out of it in time to brighten the highlights on the Spearmen and feel a bit happier with them as a unit. The eighth, unfinished, spearman still lurks at the edge of my mind, but fuck him. What did he ever do for me?
Hour Eighteen
We are often told to think of our commander models as our (player) incarnation on the tabletop, the model that represents you as you lead your forces to victory, but that’s bollocks isn’t it? The most popular games don’t have an iota of command and control mechanics worth mentioning, our perspective is Godlike, our command of the battlefield total, and do I really want to identify with the succession of villains and weirdoes that I paint? There’s some exceptions, but most of the warlords we put on the table – Historicals or no – are not people you want to associate with. I spent an hour this morning sorting out my commander, popping him on a hero rock and then taking him from mail-drybrushed to done in around 50 minutes of painting time over the course of the day. He looks damn good.
He’s picked up a name (thanks Roxin!) – Enguerrand – and a little backstory, but he certainly isn’t me. I don’t particularly want to identify with a Norman warlord, he’s a playing piece and hopefully the source of much opponent woe, but he’s not me. The treacherous little thought “who are you, then?” creeps into my mind, but it’s shut firmly down. Not today. Today is for tufts and hero rocks!
Hour Nineteen to Twenty
Do I enjoy writing about models more than painting them, or even playing with them? Levy enter the fray, 12 of these bastards. Contrast top robes (tunics?) in different shades and brown for everything else. I was a fool to do this. A fool. I’m not enjoying my reading, either. The book I got for background info isn’t as accessible, or interesting, as I’d hoped. I spend the last bit of hour twenty looking for a better one – and find it.
Hour Twenty One
Even though this 24 hours has been spread over several weeks, I’m starting to feel as if it’s all been at once. I don’t feel good about these levy, not good at all. Is this really what I wanted for the army, a slog to the finish with the poor bloody infantry I’m going to have hanging about at the back? There’s a lesson there about planning. Do the stuff you don’t like in bits, and sprinkle them throughout the project. These are enough of a slog that I spent an hour picking out the leather belts with Vallejo off-white again on 12 models while listening to King Creosote.
“Is this what I wanted” is a treacherous worm of a thought because it spills out into the rest of your life. I find the mistakes, or triumphs, I make when painting deeply affect how I feel the rest of the time. So, “Is this what I wanted” – yes, it is. Not just with the army but with life – I did want this, and I bloody love it. I love it. I feel like I miss it and that I’m not actually doing it, because nursery now takes the days away from me and feeds them into the maw of “real” life – job, commuting, writing, organising – but real life is parenting, and I miss the pointed finger and the shout, the laughs at weird times, that unbelievably good feeling that you get when… well. All the time. Every time and every moment, even the hardest and I’m an unbelievably lucky man to think so. Session ended. I’m going to go pick up early.
Hour Twenty Three
In an attempt to try and finish these I just base them because why not. The eighth spearman lurks, still.
Hour Twenty Four
I realise I never even primed five of the archers. I’ve mixed up the last of the Crossbowmen and as a result the levy pile has been too small for days. I’m going to go do that now.
I never plan properly. Even something like the Knight Lancer where planning would have been good, evolved as it went and took twice as long as it could have as a result. I keep wanting to chop and change the army list (include some Mounted Knights – back in hour 4 it was pointed out that all foot Normans is not so good), the format, even just abandon this altogether, but I’m so damn close. Another fifteen minutes and Spearman eight would be done, but I’ve come to hate him. Another two hours and we’d be done altogether if I focus.
Reader, I focused. Brian Eno to the rescue, again. Once you get good painting music, treasure it. Whatever it is, stick it on. Stick it on loud, or quiet, or whatever works for you. A wise man once said “just paint”. He was right – just paint, with music. The clock hits 24 hours without me noticing.
Hour Twenty Six
I didn’t get it done in a day, but with the clock just ticking over 26 hours (grand total 26 hours and 15 minutes) the last paint goes on the last levy, everyone’s base rims are done, tufts and flowers applied everywhere. The levy look rushed as all hell but I feel elated. That speed painter who cranked out an English Civil War army, that 20-something who co-painted goblins with my mum, is still me. I’m slower, but I’m better, too. Parenthood might have changed my availability and my schedule, changed the blocks of time I can take to do this hobby that I love, but I can still do it. I’ve changed, but not for the worse. I did it and it looks great. One day in Normandy.
Hour Thirty Four
I’ve moved on to more boats when suddenly I remember I haven’t painted the eighth spearman.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more
