SAGA: Preparing for the Norman Invaders

One of my slow-burn projects right now is SAGA. I have about half of the Vikings built, but the Normans went much faster since the only plastic kits I used was the Conquest Games plastic Norman Knights, the rest are all metal, which get assembled much faster.

I am really impressed with the Conquest Norman Knights- I'll do an update of them later, but this will focus on the leader of the warhost.  The Conquest set comes with 12 knights, and a fallen injured knight.  The thing is, SAGA uses unit sizes of 4 or 8 for mounted Normans.  So a box is ideal for 3 units of elites, or a unit of elites & a unit of standard troops, but what about the leader?  Not wanting to move a dying guy around the battlefield, that left me with either buying another box just for 1 mini, or to find an alternative. Looking around, I really liked the look of the Perry First Crusaders, so I ordered a blister of them and picked the one I liked the best to be the leader of my Normans.

The style is similar, and the pose is great, but there is a problem: the metal mini is a bit more gracile than the plastic.  A pretty common thing really: plastic is cheap so not a problem to make the horse wide in the hips, etc. The metal mini is thinner and a bit smaller, and while it's nice, it'll be just enough smaller that it will bother me, especially since he'll be the leader.

Solution? Give him some elevation by way of a more dynamic base.

Here he is:

The white texture will be earth, while the beige texture is a sand finish that will be the bottom of a river that he'll be leaping over. The water will be done after it's painted of course. 

How he stacks up alongside a Conquest plastic Norman:

The difference in size isn't as easy to spot now I think. 

And now I have a more dynamic leader so he'll be easy to spot out as the commander.