1898 Miniaturas Releases Detailed 28mm Visigoth Infantry in Metal

1898 Miniaturas put two new waves of 28mm Visigoth infantry up for sale, completing an infantry core that historical painters have been building toward since the Spanish manufacturer first introduced the range. Both armoured and unarmoured variants are now live on the webstore, alongside a command group that brings a Champion or Bodyguard, a Standard Bearer, and two Musicians, one rendered in mail and one without, preserving the range's visual continuity across unit types.

The packs follow 1898 Miniaturas' established four-figures-per-pack format, which drops neatly into SAGA warband building. The manufacturer has also bundled the full infantry range into a four-point warband set for new starters, giving painters a coherent project from the first order. The range spans the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo from the 6th to the 8th century, covering everything from Leovigild's era to Rodrigo, the last Visigoth king who fell at the Battle of Guadalete in 711.

For painters, the released photos do most of the groundwork. The armoured figures offer tight chainmail rings and layered fabric underneath, both of which reward a brown undercoat, a black wash into the recesses, and successive highlights in a mid-iron tone. The unarmoured warriors carry more individual character in their sculpts, spears, axes, and swords varied across each pack, and the faces have the kind of surface area that makes wet-blending or careful layering viable even at this scale. Shields across both sets are flat enough for freehand geometric patterns, and the painted examples shown with the release demonstrate exactly that with banded and divided designs that read clearly at arm's length.

Because these are white metal, budget ten to fifteen minutes of prep per figure. Mold lines on metal tend to run across raised detail, particularly over faces and mail skirts, so a sharp knife and a file are mandatory before primer goes down. The upside is density of detail: metal takes a sharp undercoat edge, holds washes cleanly, and the tactile heft makes finished models noticeably more satisfying to handle and display.

A historically-grounded palette for the range sits in the earth-pigment zone: undyed wool in off-white and ochre for the unarmoured figures, deeper madder reds and woad blues for armoured warriors who could afford dyed cloth. Iron grey, not silver, is the right starting point for the mail, with a warm brown filter over the top to push it toward aged steel rather than bright plate. Leather straps and shield rims work in raw sienna washed with dark brown. Avoid bright greens and synthetic blues; the Visigoths operated in a pre-industrial dye economy and the palette should reflect that.

The range fills a gap that most larger manufacturers have left entirely open. Sixth-to-eighth-century Iberian subjects in plastic simply do not exist at this scale, which makes 1898 Miniaturas the only realistic option for SAGA Age of Invasions players building a Visigoth warband from scratch. The four-point bundle is the most efficient entry point, and with painted reference photos now accompanying the release, the color scheme decisions are already halfway made.