From PaulS - 28mm Savage warriors from ancient sagas (148 points)

I last year's secret santa, some kind soul sent me a batch of Black Tree vikings so I could start a Saga force I'd been talking about doing. 12 months later and I can happily say that they are all painted, with a few of the Gripping Beast plastics thrown in to bulk out some of the stands. This can be fielded as 4 points of vikings, if necessary, but I'd like to add another set of warriors (these are in the painting queue). I may have to order some more Black Tree vikings instead of the plastics though as they are really nice models. Thank you, whoever you are :)

Historical accuracy with the shields is well out the window, but the fabric colours are all pretty accurate and were compared against a pile of naturally dyed wool in my wife's wool stash. That makes up for the shields, right?

The other thing to note is that unlike most of my models, I decided to actually put decorative basing on these guys as I really didn't want to spend weeks filing off the metal bases. The reason for the snow will become apparent later.

The warlord stand is three Gripping Beast plastics. You can't have your warlord going around unprotected now can you? The first bodyguard likes geometric, pacman style shapes for his design. The second bodyguard is obviously on some sort of mushrooms with the abstract design on his...

The main Heathguard unit is a mere 4 strong, but they look like the toughest of the tough. Worthy warriors to attend the Warlord.

We then have two more groups of Hearthguard that will go together into one larger group. They are here in multiple angles to show off their fancy shields. this group was bulked out with two plastic Gripping Beast models so that all of them, except Mad Karl and Slightly-less-mad Jorik, have chainmail. I think you can guess who Karl is...

These are accompanied by a group of 8 warriors. One of them is a bit camera shy as he wanted to show off his shield instead

I decided to use colour to signify the different groups. They might be family groups... they may just have a very picky boss who likes colour co-ordination... I'm not quite sure. When all 23 figures stand together, it makes a very satisfying sight

While I was planning these, I realised that (other than the warlord base) these are all perfect minions for Frostgrave, hence the snowy bases. The snow is made using ground glass fragments and water effects. It is not so obvious on these, but in person they catch the light and sparkle like real snow.

If I was to use these for Frostgrave as well, I needed a wizard and an apprentice that fitted with the theme. Red Box games came to the rescue with two really nice figures. The detail on these are stunning and they just seemed to paint themselves.

I can't believe I missed the wonky line on the headscarf. Too late to fix that now, but I will go back and tidy that up after the challenge. Probably... or maybe it is a loose thread that has popped loose during the fighting. Yes... that is it. It is on purpose... honest!

Although they are from two different factions, they seem to fit together nicely now they are painted up.

And here they are with all of the vikings, ready to raid Frostgrave (minus the Warlord, who isn't useful here)

While we're on the Frostgrave/fantasy theme, there are also three hellhounds from Dungeon Saga. these could be hellhouds of some sort, or maybe just warhounds for the cultists. These had to be painted twice as they were the casualties in last week's varnish-fail. One side of them went completely white, while the other side was perfectly varnished... very annoying indeed.

All in, that is 28 28mm figures, 25 of which count towards the Frostgrave challenge.

Superb work Paul and a great idea to make the Vikings do double duty for Frostgrave and Saga. That's definitely a loose thread on the apprentice's headscarf, not a painting mistake *grin*.
The snow effect on the bases is wonderful. I'll have to remember that mix.
28 x 28mm foot figures gives you 140 points, and I'll throw in some extras for the 16 freehand shields.