Friday, 12 June 2009

Etruscan/Polybian Roman size-comparison shots

Keith at Aventine very kindly sent me some samples of their new Etruscan/North Italian range, which I will be reviewing and painting in a few weeks time. In the meanwhile, I thought people might find it useful to see how they compare with some other manufacturers ranges, and also to see how their horses compare with other manufacturers. All pictures are clickable.

I should at this point apologise that I don't have any figures from the marginally smaller ranges, such as 1stCorps or Gripping Beast; here at the BigRedBatCave, we only stock bigger 28s!


The largest figure of the four is the Renegade http://www.renegademiniatures.com/regrom.htm on the left; it would probably be even taller, if it was standing fully erect. The Aventine http://www.aventineminiatures.co.uk/ is the next tallest; I measure 27mm from the feet to the eyes; 30mm to where the top of the head would be. Marginally smaller is the Crusader mini http://www.crusaderminiatures.com/list.php?cat=13&sub=29&page=1 . The anachronistic Foundry Caesarian is a broadly similar size, and I've included it because the range will be familiar to many viewers.

I'd judge that sizewise Aventine, Crusader and Foundry would match each other well, however the Renegade miniature is in a class of its own, being both taller and different in style (the limbs are very awkwardly posed).

Horse wise, the Aventine mount is slighly lower in the hindquarters than a Foundry World of the Greeks horse, but slighly fuller in the body. At the same time it is not quite as rounded as the A&A horse. In fact it feels to me like a sort of average between Foundry and A&A... and would work well with either range. I really like it...

I'll conduct a proper review later on but would say now that my initial impressions of the Aventine miniatures are very favourable. Here's a link to Aventine in case you should want to see more... http://www.aventineminiatures.co.uk/ranges.html

Thursday, 11 June 2009

Pimp My Nellie 4

Here's where I am with the Successor elephants; I estimate that they are almost half painted (not counting crews and basing). There really is an extraordinary amount of work on these; most of what you see is base coats which still need highlighting and inking. I've decided to up the crew to 5 men on each elephant, and one on each base as a "guard".

Tuesday, 9 June 2009

Pimp my Nellie 3!

Oldbob on TMP unwittingly suggested a new title for this thread. For those (Greg) that believe I'm being too slow at painting my Empire Models elephants, here's evidence of a little progress. They look pants at the moment, but I know they are going to look great when finished.

I keep increasing the amount of time that I expect I will need to be painting these for! There is a lot of surface area, and a lot of detail, which I'm discovering as I paint. I'm very impressed with the way the straps and metal rings that suspend the armour are depicted.

I'm also toying with increasing the number of crewmen on the models to 4 each, as described by Livy for the battle of Magnesia, and adding some figures to the base as "elephant guards".

Saturday, 6 June 2009

Ancient Spanish Cavalry

These are some Foundry Spanish figures that I bought off fellow Muswell Militiaman George and did a rough and ready repaint job on.

I show them here because they illustrate my new policy on basing light cavalry. I don't like the look of LC units where all the riders are two to a base and facing forwards, parallel to each other. Mine are now depicted riding across the front of the enemy unit, with their shielded towards them, and wheeling away. The extra wide base really helps with this. When I find another 6 cheap Spanish, I'll turn the unit into a Cantabrian circle.

This look also works well with horse archers, I'll dig some out next week.

Friday, 5 June 2009

Newly Raised Legions


I've finally managed to finish basing the new legion, which is of newly recruited legionaries. It'll do service either as one of the Gallic legions, or a newly raised legion in one of the civil wars.

Around half of the figures were painted by PoolofPaint but partially repainted by me, and I painted the balance from scratch. My concept was to paint and base them in a more irregular way than the bulk of the legionaries, and I think they look better for it; so I'm hoping to find time to do at least one, and preferably two more units the same (in the summer). The images are clickable.

Tuesday, 2 June 2009

Romans wot I am basing this week

This is my latest Caesarian recently-recruited legion; I'll write them up properly when the basing is finished on Friday or Saturday.

Two days ago I though varnishing was definitely the most boring modelling-related activity; I have to say, though, that applying base texture to 54 figures (as I did last night after this photo was taken) is right up there alongside it.

The seven primed figures at the back are fated to become Tegeans.

Sunday, 31 May 2009

Painting Nellie 2

Not much Nellie related progress, because I'm trying to clear the painting table of the 54 Legionaries that seized control of it around 3 weeks ago. Consequentally, I won't be able to start the elephants for a few more days. However, as a taster, here are some of the primed crewmen (all photos clickable).





The miniatures took a while to prepare, because there is a little assembly required (heads and weapons), and because the metal from which they are cast is fairly hard and needs a bit of work when filing. There are mould lines visible on some of the legs, presumably because the mould-halves are slightly out of alignment, but this won't matter as they will be hidden in the Howdah. Aside from that, they came out very nicely; the detail is extremely crisp. The separate heads (which Mario kindly sent me a small bag of) came into their own, because they enable each figure to be different from the next, and the heads can be posed looking downwards. I sat each of the heads in a little greenstuff and superglued for safety.

I have taken three minor liberties with the elephant models that Mario sold me. The first was to replace the cast pikes provided with wire spears. I did this because I hate cast spears (because they are too thick and yet bendy), and in this case I felt they were too short to enable the crewmen to engage enemy on the ground. The second was to replace one of the crewmen with a spare Empire Model, for the sake of variety, and the third was to swap the shields for Crusader shields, because they are larger and will look more imposing, and because I already have appropriate Crusader transfers.