Thursday, 12 November 2009

Always look on the bright side of life...


These are the completed Numidian riders for 21 of the horses in the earlier pic. They rather remind me of a notorious scene in a Monty Python film. 

I now just have 6 or 7 horses and riders left to paint....

Zama Bruttians

Mon ami Greg has painted Hannibal's Bruttian veterans for the third line at Zama.  Bruttium is a region in the toe of Italy that allied with Hannibal, and many of the Bruttian veterans accompanied him when his army was recalled to Africa to fight Scipio.  These will form the three units on the right of the rear line at the SOA battle day http://www.soa.org.uk/, and at Salute 2010.



(Photo shamelessly nicked from Greg's website).  The minis are a mix of Crusader Oscans and Aventine Etruscans (the ones in the Italo-Corinthian helmets).  I'll do shields and spears when the minis arrive here, later this year.

Greg's website is below; always worth a visit!  I hear rumours that he is working on a large, secret project...

http://gloarmy.blogspot.com/

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.