Last year (I think?) I picked up a set of what were either Wargames Atlantic's "generic dark age dudes",, or their "Goth Warriors" (bonus points if you can tell the difference.. as clearly I can't!) in 28mm, to use as Frankish Foederati mercenaries in a Very Late Roman army I've had for quite some time.
The reasons for picking up these Franks were twofold - first so that I could stop using Old Glory Scottish Vikings as "Foederati" foot, but more importantly because I had finally worked out how to do two-tone horizontal stripes on tunics, which meant I could make some almost "onion round the neck" French Franks to brighten up my admittedly rather almost-in-the-dark-ages Roman army.
I'd done one test base earlier this year, and now, as a big change from the legions of 15mm horsemen who had been clogging up my painting table recently, it was time to go full stripey and get some football-kit-wearing Franks onto the painting table.
Because the figures have been assembled in reasonably dynamic poses, waving axes around and the like, I mounted them on 60x40 bases in sevens rather than eights, with 4 in the front rank, and 3 in the back. This did allow me to usesome "filler" figures to pad out the rear ranks without being seen, as the striped guys really grab the viewers attention.
And, finally, here are the two more fully-finished bases of "Franks".
These guys are mostly the WA Dark Age Geezer/Goths set, with a few stragglers from a Warlord Resin bargain bin show purchase making up the rear ranks.
The shields are a mix of Victrix Gallic round shields (those with the metal spine down the middle) which I had in the bits box, along with some LBMS transfers for them, and the rest are waterslide transfers from Battle Flag, aka wargametransfers.com's Viking range.
The Battle Flag transfers are a smidge too big for the WA shields, so I've trimmed them down slightly to fit before applying them.
The WA shields are also somewhat convex, which makes applying waterslide transfers a real PITA - the solution I've adopted is planty of MicroSol/MicroSet transfer-softener, and sometimes also slicing the transfers in a dark-ish part of the design so the transfer can overlap a little as it "shrinks"/"curls" around the convex face of the shield without it being too obvious.
From the back you can see the un-stripey Warlord figures more prominently.
The trick with the stripes is embarassingly easy - a fat darker stripe with a narrower lighter stripe within it.
Blending the edges of the transfers into the edges of the actual shields was a bit tricker than I hoped with these transfers, as the colour blocks all seemed to have a lot of "texture", and the transfers were also a little translucent too - a difficult combination to match even with a range of paints and a wet pallette to use.
But, at normal distances they seem to have come out OK - and a layer of gloss varnish on the shields prior to doing the matt varnish coat also works wonders.
Here they are with the other base I did earlier. I have been looking for some more of the Gripping Beast plastic Late Roman shields in my bits box, as I still have a good number of really nice LBMS "Late Roman Chi-Rho" oval shield transfers, and I like the way they make this unit look like it's sort-of half integrated in a Roman army - but so far no luck in finding any more spares!
One issue I did have with these figures was that they tended to get a little boisterous during the painting process, and getting the little b-ggers to stand still whilst I painted the double-lines on their tunics was rather challenging at times, as you can see here...
Never mind the overalll AI stuff, it is still quite clever how their puddle bases spin around and move a little under their feet as they are jumping!
