Cleopatra is a harsh mistress...

I'm plugging away with my Ptolemaic phalanx, but it is proving quite a job! 

Above are batch 4 (blocked in, not yet stained) and batch 5 (half painted, right), which, when finished, will give me the 96 phalangites I need for my second and third pike blocks (of 11!).  I'm going for varied bright colours for the tunics based on the new Stephane Thion Lagid Army book.

I've fired off 100 pikemen to Dr. Simon's painter, to get them blocked in and will be getting another 64 painted ones from Raglan, so I think I'm slightly ahead of where I need to be at this stage.  No room for complacency, though! My mate Nick is going to paint Ptolemy and his bodyguard, too, which is a result.  I'll be using Aventines for these.

I've also been amending my draft rules to include heffalumps and long pointy sticks.

Finally, my mate Ian has lent me his treasured Bar Kochba account of the battle, which looks like it will be invaluable for understanding deployents and what actually happened on the day.  Already I've decided that I'll be drawing up parts of my phalanx 6 deep, perhaps even deeper...