Björn Grendel's Unberogenes. Warrior Blue warband. Month six, rank and file.

Barbarian warriors ready to face the enemies from inside

 

Alright. We've finally reached the end. A six-month ordeal for my first OWAC, a challenge I wasn't entirely prepared to face. But here we are.

I am fully aware that this is by no means the end of the project, I am aware that next month requires another wrap-up post and I am aware that I still have a couple of things to prepare before the end, however as far as the army itself is concerned I can say that I am finished, I have finally painted everything I had planned.

Before letting the images speak for themselves, I would like to make a final consideration on some aesthetic choices of the project, clarifying some points that I have left out:

Ethnicity, material culture, art and symbolism.

To obtain a certain variety among the models I tried to paint a certain number of different skin tones, but always trying to represent a native Central European population, so generally light skin and more freedom in hair color. The Umberogenes tribe obviously represents the equivalent of the Franks in our history, furthermore it is impossible not to notice the similarities with Conan and the Cimmerians so I added many characters with red and black hair.

To better represent a believable culture, however fantasy, I chose models as similar as possible in sculpture and equipment, as long as I stuck to the Mirliton line it was pretty simple, but adding models from other companies I had to choose the most similar ones in design. 

I also decided to divide the army into two distinct warrior clans, with a Red and Blue theme (Age of Empires anyone?) but to better represent the individualism of the warriors and the future birth of human heraldry I wanted to paint the shields in the most different way possible, mixing geometric patterns with shapes and freehand without a shred of coherence. The difficult thing was the desire to still recall a central European culture but without using recognizable symbols and art, so yes runes yes symbols, but making sure that they did not represent true concepts of our history, no real meaning, no patronage to any deity of our world, no connection to a specific historical culture. for this reason I mixed elements "stolen" from very different peoples, taking inspiration from all of them and representing none of them and yet obtaining something recognizable as ancient and barbaric.

Hence the choice of colors, and the overall design of the miniatures. Choice of simple weapon was mandatory, we covered this topic before, and obviously the lack of steel armor, the majority sporting bronze gear more for showing off status than practical use.  Only Nobles or very rich ones having enough incombe for early but well crafted maille.  Similar to the weapons, many really good and ornated pieces of steel for the wealty, other simple pieces of cr.. for the others.

Last consideration fo the practice of headhunting: someone pointed out to me that it is usually associated with negative and evil factions, especially in the fantasy world, but I do not believe this is the case. In our reality today it is undoubtedly a deplorable practice, when in use, but in the past it was not always so, but quite the opposite. Many ancient warrior societies made it an honorable practice and even certain rites of passage and personal or public victory were linked to it. In our case I simply decided to leave these macabre trophies already present in the sculpts and I added only a few more justifying them as a sign of respect for the worty defeated foes rather than a way to distespect the dead and taunt the living. Remember that in my intention this army represents a faction of "good guys" although wild and brutal warriors. The only regret is not having included enough female characters. There has been much discussion about the presence of women in the armies of antiquity, but in my opinion the barbarians of the fantasy world would be the ones in whose ranks there would be the greatest number of female warriors: young shieldmaidens or hardened veterans. Unfortunately I have not been able to get the number of models that I would have liked, but I leave the door open for the future; who knows, maybe I will integrate many of them into the regiments already present, or maybe I will recruit a unit of only women, perhaps tied to a particular oath or female warrior cult...

Those 2 are ment to be consorts so they fight better and always die together..

Matching colors, weapons, tattoos..

The simplest and ugliest shields of all

A special mention goes to these models: the bald warrior was painted a couple of months ago for the Red Warband, and the beautiful barbarette was intended for the Blue one. However I couldn't adapt her to the Blue theme, so I left her ginger and retouched an earlier Red warrior to make the swap.

In conclusion: those brave barbarian warriors, pointwise, counts as

20 Chaos thugs: light armor, hand weapon and shields (or 2 hand weapons or great weapon)... 180 points

As always I plan to place the models with specific weapons at the first rank and remove the others gradually

Fron rank: weapons and shields

Front rank: 2 hand weapons 

Front rank: twohanded weapons 

Last but not least the command.  Nobles on foot banner and hornman.

That's long enough. Cant wait for the next month's wrap up!!!

In the meantime 

Stay strong, stay oldschool.

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