Saga - Dark Ages Skirmish Wargame, putting the minis together

This last spring (2013) a friend of mine that is an ex-gamer and now a Father of twins was looking to get into some wargaming. I never really wargamed before, most of the gaming I do is table-top and board gaming. He got into All the King's Men and other musket and pike type games. Also we were interested in Saga - The Dark Ages skirmish game out of the UK... or France... or some Euro country... probably the UK.

I'm totally down with some viking stuff. I used to be in the SCA and am now trying to get an older Regia group back up and plan to make combs and junk like that. Saga is a game by Gripping Beast who also does some other wargames like Tomahawk. I'll go more into the  Saga details later as we have not played it yet. here is a link though:
http://www.grippingbeast.com/

The primary step is getting minis and painting them. I wanted to go cheap as I was not sure I was into it yet. I got a couple Viking boxes from Wargames Factory:
http://www.wargamesfactory.com/webstore/hammer-of-the-gods
I went with the Hammer of the Gods line, one box of Viking Thegns and one box of Viking Huscarls. My friend is going to be Saxons so he did likewise though the Saxons. I got them for about $18 a pop, each box has 30+ plastic minis in it with no bases and you need to assemble them. Torso, head, arms, weapons, shields.

Here's my first pic of the assembled warband!!

Some details - 28mm scale or 1/72. Bases are steel washers, bought at the local hardware store, 100 for $8.99, and glued on with Zap-a-Gap. Tamiya plastic cement was used to piece the plastic parts together. "Warlord", center behind the sweinfilka, is mounted to a 1 3/4 inch washer, as per the Saga rules that is so you know it is the Warlord. Not required but OK to do.

There is a point structure ot the warband but we'll get into that later.

Mind you all - there is a bit of blogger blogs about Saga. Most stemming from last year (2012) and from Europe. Saga is not as popular in the US as it is in Europe for many different reasons of varying degree. There was some Saga tournament up in Tacoma at some time, like last year? Us hippies in Portland don't really follow it much though as we seem to be into the more common games like Flames of War, Warmachine, and Warhammer. Others are being played but not like those 3.

Back to putting together 40+ minis in the manner I did - it was a PITA (pain in the ass). Quite tedious as a matter of fact.Miniatures is one of my hobbies. I'm no pro and probably on the bottom 20% when it comes to skill and experience. Actually, if you are reading this thinking you are going to get pro-tips than you went to the wrong blog. I'm not awesome at this, though I do love doing it. Putting these guys together was like work with no pay. Next time I'm buying way more expensive metal figs by Gripping Beast or something like that.

Wargames Factory puts out a fine product. I like what they do and in proper circumstance I will go with them again. It was me and my skill/patience level that was the issue. Maybe, now that I am drenched in the mud, it will go better next time. No major drama or issues, just doing it right took time and I had not done something at that level before.

My bench is rigged up for painting minis at a "character" level. That is, I play some paladin, I am painting a paladin mini. Making an army is a whole different species.

More pics:

Warlord Viga Hrolfr!! The base is bigger fore he is the Warlord.