First bases of Early Medieval Russian army

Today I want to show you two new dba-style bases of Early Medieval Russians (or any VIII - XI century Slavic army for that matter), with a bit of a twist. The figures come from Strelets Russian Peasant Levy in Winter Dress set. On closer inspection there is nothing particularly "eastern" about these figures (I could easily see those mixed in a Viking or an Anglo-Saxon force) and some of them are quite well equipped for a "peasant levy" (most wear a nice helmet and a shield, and some come equipped with a gambeson and even a sword!). Thankfully there are a few basic peasants armed with agricultural tools and lumberjack axes in the set too. I painted a base of each style, so one base of light infantry with shields and one handed weapons and one base of armed peasants with improvised weapons. As always, they are based on 60mm wide bases an per DBA, but still Lion Rampant remains my ruleset of choice. There are multiple ways you could field this two units in LR, but I will use them as a unit of veteran light infantry and a unit of levied infantry for 6 points total (18 to go, for a standard game :) ).

Now, let's talk a bit about how I painted them. As you can see figures themself are painted in my usual way. What is unusual is the minimalistic, plain green base. It started as a bit of an experiment, but to be honest I'm quite fond of the results. It gives them quite a unique "1970s toy solider" look. Where did I get the idea? Well, as you may know, I'm way too young to remember this time period (me being born at turn of the millennium), and I guess you cannot be nostalgic for something you did not actually experience :) . My inspiration came from two articles in recent issues of "Wargames Illustrated" (issue 428 and 432). First was "Retro hobby projects" by Rick Priestley, who actually has a great blog on the topic, and another on Mexican-American war of 1846-48 by Nick Buxey, with some great looking armies all done in this style. I also remembered that Paul from Paul's Bods did something similar with his American Civil War collection a few years ago.

 

 

Besides the simple base there is also an issue of varnish used. Most people I've seen use gloss varnish to complete the look. I've been tempted to try it, but went with my usual, "safe" option in the end - Vallejo Ultra Matt. 

 

Well, this must be the longest post I've ever written. Thanks for reading! I would love to get some feedback from you. Do you like this simpler style of painting?

 

P.S.

As a bonus I decided to coat one of my old figures with nice, thick coat of cheap gloss varnish and I am positively surprised with the result. It doesn't look bad and it has a nice solid feel when you pick it up.

Also the paint underneath is next to indestructible :).  I might experiment a bit more in the future. 

 That's how a modern 1/72 figure (Zvezda Knight, first released in 2007) looks in "retro" style, complete with gloss varnish: