While co-writing The Age Of Arthur supplement for Warhammer Ancient Battles, I tried to convince Andy Sherwell of Gripping Beast that the Early British Kingdoms and Welsh could benefit from a few extra packs…I proposed that some of the current minis could be converted and recast. Andy thought bigger and chucked me together with sculptor Andy ‘Soapy’ Dormer to discuss a full range with heroes, infantry, cavalry and skirmishers. I trawled around for background material to give these warriors a particular ‘Welsh look’, despite the lack of evidence for this period.
When I finally got my hands on the castings, I made sure to spend some time on the paint work, and it’s still one of my favourite wargames armies.
All of these were painted in acrylics over a black undercoat, as was standard at the time! (I’d probably use white or brown now.) Shields were all hand-painted, using my trusty George Bain ‘Celtic Art: Methods of Construction’ book as reference for getting the spirals right. This level of detail on the shields is probably fanciful, but it gave them the Celtic look I was after. White shields are mentioned several times in the poem Y Gododdin, though, so I felt confident with the base colours.
mogsymakes 