Renaissance Reinforcements (and more)

I had some painting time yesterday, so I finished up the other three pikemen, all in unusually subdued colors for this project, loosely inspired by the Medici Black Band.  Given that the practical minimum size for a unit of pikes in our rules is probably 4 stands, I'm thinking I'll aim to do three more eventually, with the remainder of the reinforcements being back to the usual colorful style.  

First stand of my "Black band" pikemen

May was a slow month for painting, although I did manage to game while visiting my parents one weekend, and got to Huzzah on another, so it wasn't a bad month for gaming overall.  At the start of the month, my top project was vintage fantasy, and I finally finished the basing and varnished these three Minifigs NS-range figures as part of a small batch of individually based berserkers/bandits/brigands to fill out the original D&D encounter tables for a future D&D revival game supported by all vintage figures.  

Minfigs NS figures from around 1978

I was also digging through my old notebooks recently, looking for information about the molds I've been using for the Dux Bellorum project, when I found that I had ordered a one-each set of Vikings/Saxons/Normans from Foundry in 1996 some time.  Many of these figures were finished up promptly, and have served in various Dark Ages games since, but a batch of Normans got sidetracked somewhere along the way, and have been languishing on painting sticks in primer for the better part of the past twenty years.  I had a break at lunch one day the week after Huzzah, and I have had a few of them with my portable painting kit at my desk since I was inspired to buy the Saga rules last year. With the Saxon/Viking game I'd played on my mind,  I finished up one Norman archer. I suppose I should sit down with the rules again at some point soon and figure out what I would want to paint to be able to deploy a pleasing Norman war band.

Foundry Norman archer

 Unfortunately, of course, shortly after I bought the rules, the 2nd edition was released.  The local Saga players seem to have stuck to the 1st edition for the most part, so I'm in no hurry to 'upgrade'.