Monday, 9 November 2009

Not my Numidians!


These photos are are of a Numidian army painted by Gordon Smith, whose photos I'm helping to put up on the Web.  Most of the minis are Crusader, although some of the cavalry must be Foundry.

The above/below elephant is an Empire Models African painted by Tim (AKA Aargh) from the WAB Forum, and now owned my Gordon, I believe.  It is rather fanciful IMHO, what with the armour and it's heavy build, but what a lovely modelling job!  Tim owns a similar-sized Numidian army, which is also a fine sight.



Some of many Numidian skirmishers...


More...


Even more...


Big units!


Trained Infantry...


Imitation Legionaries and more trained infantry...


More Numidian light cavalry than I have at the moment...


What a nice army!   It has struck me that these two armies, together, would sort most of the Carthaginian and Roman Numidian allied minis required for Zama.  If they could tie up with a gamer with a big Roman army, they could put on a most impressive game.

Friday, 6 November 2009

New Aventine Nellies

Keith at Aventine has sent me some very exciting pictures of their beautiful new elephants.  He's posted a couple on TMP, but not this one, which I like best:



Really excellent painting...  the cloths, shield designs and the painted armour are very frothworthy.  The Aventine shop is at http://www.aventineminiatures.co.uk/catalog/ ; I shall be wending my way there, later this weekend!

Ancient Spanish Light Cavalry



This is a lousy photo of the germ of my projected Ancient Spanish army.  I have most of the minis I need, but they won't be painted for some time yet! 

I do like these Foundry minis, which I bought off my mate George and repainted.  The fringes on the horses' harnesses are a nice feature.  I'll probably use them for Zama, on the Carthaginian side.

Thursday, 5 November 2009

... and here are some that I prepared earlier.



The 30 Numidians I'm working on at the moment are taking forever to paint, so in the meanwhile I thought I'd show the wing of 36 Numidian cavalry I painted last year (the pic is clickable).  These are just painted to a good tabletop standard; I'm more concerned with getting an impression of mass, than a perfect paint job.


The closeup above shows the 12cm wide base I've adopted for light cavalry, so that I can get a better impression of movement.  The idea is that the riders are coming forward on the right, presenting their shielded side to the enemy and then turning away on the left.

The figures are a mix of Foundry, Crusader and A&A.  Just after I finished them last year, I dropped a box of 30 on the stairs; I was rather cross!  I managed to get them looking OK, again, in the end.

Wednesday, 4 November 2009

Command and Colors Plataea

Tonight we tried the new Epic rules out with the Command and Colors boardgame pictured in the previous post (sorry took no photos).

The new 100 card deck is excellent, and makes it rather easier to play the big games; the cards tell you exactly what you can do with moves, and it is easier to understand what combination of cards you can play.  This should help in games where novices are involved, as with Zama.  The rules have changed slightly from the previous Epic set.  I think they are improved (not that there was much wrong with them before).

We played the Plataea scenario in roughly 2 hours (I was in slooow mode).  In the final move, I was the Persians, and we were both 8 blocks down out of 10.  Because of the way the units were positioned, I knew I had to win that turn, or Persian hegemony of Greece would fail as Ian hit all my weakened units in his turn.

I launched multiple attacks against the 3 nearest (full strength) Greek units in a desperate attempt to seize victory from the jaws of defeat; one succeeded, but two failed and left me short the one block I needed for victory.  In the next turn I would certainly lose as my units were all down to single blocks and were vulnerable to a counterattack.  However, in my final unsuccessfl attack, I had inflicted a single hit on the Spartan General's unit, and there was a 1 in 36 chance that he would fall in combat.  I rolled my final pair of dice of the game, and we both dissolved in laughter as I got the required two "General" symbols!  Pausanias fell and Greece became yet another satrapy... it is amazing how almost every C&C game goes right down to the wire.

Ian and I discussed the game afterwards, and agreed that we really prefer the feel of the larger epic games, to standard C&C. 

Tuesday, 3 November 2009

New Games

Over the last few days I've been very busy with some work and other things... I have been delighted to receive the new C&C expansions.  Expansion 4 contains a new bunch of battles, and 5 the revised Epic rules, for playing larger battles, with a huge new deck of playing cards.



I'm very much looking forward to giving the Epic rules a run through, tonight...

Friday, 30 October 2009

Numidian Horse III


I thought people might be interested to read how I paint horses.

Essentially, I paint them with acrylics as described in the previous post, then lighly varnish them to protect the paint.  Over the varnish I paint a mixture of oil paints (brown and Paynes's grey) and Linseed oil.  I then selectively rub this off with the little foam sqaures that come as packing with miniatures; I have plenty of them!  This is similar to the method described in the Foundry Painting and Modelling Guide, except I do more painting of detail up front, and use acrylics rather than enamels.

The oil paint settles into the lower areas of the horses.  It takes a week or so for the linseed to evaporate.



When thoroughly dry, I'll return to the horses to add white socks, on some, and paint in the metal bits.

The observant will note that quite a few of my Numidian horses have bridles; this is because I have rather more riders than horses, and had to steal a bunch of Native American horses.  Bridles and feathers aside, they look great!

Above are the riders, primed red.  The figures are a mix of Foundry, Crusader, A&A, Gripping Beast, a Renegade mahout and a couple of Foundry Greeks.  It is safe to say that I am scraping the bottom of the barrel of suitable miniatures in my lead pile.  The pins on which they are currently impaled, will eventually be cut done to 2mm length, and located in the holes on the backs of the horses; the shields will be added at the very end.