Anglo Danish Huscarls/Fyrd Back Rankers Unit Four!

I found myself two thirds if the way through a unit with the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge coming on. The date for starting to paint is late December but due to a multitude of other considerations I find myself in the unusual position where my first post for the AHPC will be the back ranks of a unit I was already working on. This would be a great  opportunity to combine my first entry with the  of present a brief article on the varnishing process and how I construct a unit which, I hope, will be full of dynamism.

I have a major project painting coming up this month, which for reasons that I cannot discuss here (the dark arts of painting wargames figures!) so I need to get my first post into the challenge ASAP! The kind folks at The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge agreed that, in order to get my first post in by the requisite date I could post up pics of the unit un-based then post a later image of them based in order to claim the points!

For anyone interested in how I go about my varnish there is a very comprehensive recent article on this very blog here; Varnishing Dark Age Period Miniatures- Gloss and Matt- My Way

Glossed Miniatures:

(You can see why I matt them down!)

Matted Down Miniatures:

(Done with two coats of varnish)

Front on and Overhead View of Based Back Ranks:

The Whole Unit Prior to Adding Filler then Sand/Grit and Painting the Base:

The secret, if I can call it that, to getting the miniatures to look representative of a closely packed group of Huscarls and Fyrd working on combination is to plan out what miniatures are to go where prior to even adding the primer. This can be sketched out with the bare metal miniatures by placing them on the bases after gluing their respective shields, shields, swords and axes in place and then taking a photo on my phone just so I have a concrete reference for how I want the composition to look. 

The next step is to paint up, gloss then matt down all the miniatures! This takes time as I always leave a week between the gloss coat and the matt coat to make sure the gloss ifs "fast" and will not chemically interact with the matt varnish. It can be a bit frustrating looking at a very glossy assemblage of miniatures on a shelf for a week but the end result is worth waiting for.