Tuesday, 15 December 2009

Dead Nellie Done


Possibly the best dead Loxodonta Cyclotis (without a howdah) model in the world. 

Probably the only dead Loxodonta Cyclotis (without a howdah) model in the world. ;-)

This is a dead forest elephant, around 40mm to the shoulder, as (probably) used by the Carthaginians.  It's not clear in this photo, but the rear right leg crosses the rear left and rests on the ground.  I'm hoping to get 10 cast for our Zama game, which I'll customise so that each is slightly different form the next.  They'll take the place of the "live" elephants as they are killed.


Monday, 14 December 2009

Dead Nellie II


I'm half way through texturing Dead Nellie.  I've added some very short tusks; I don't know if it'll be possible to cast them.  They may have to be trimmed or removed.  The eye needs some work, too. 

I think it'll look half decent when finished, tonight.

Sunday, 13 December 2009

When the levy breaks...

... Hannibal will need to throw in the Veterans!



These are the last 48 of the Carthaginian second line for Zama; levy citizen spearmen.  Essentially speedbumps to slow down the Roman army; we are going to make each unit fight as Auxilia, but with 2 hits instead of the more usual 4.    Gloarmy Greg painted these for me (merci!!) but most were smashed up in the post, hence the detatched shields, spears and general chipping.  :-(  On the plus side, they are recovering very nicely in the BigRedBat equivalent of Toy Hospital, and I hope to have them ready by Xmas.  So far, I've refixed all the spears, cleaned the old glue off the shield backs and started on restoring the paintwork.

The other 144 levy figures are finished (48 similar minis, 96 Thureophoroi standing in as levy). 

Saturday, 12 December 2009

Dead Nellie

I'm trying to sculpt a dead African forest elephant for our Zama project.  This is because I don't expect any of the actual elephant models in the game to survive past the first 15 minutes!   Ideally, I want a dead model to replace each live one when slain.

It is safe to say that it is an at an early stage... I feel that I have the shape very approximately right but none of the details are added, yet.  It's much smaller than most elephants we see, at roughly 40mm to the shoulder.

Friday, 11 December 2009

Nellie Fever

I'm very frustrated that I have picked up no less than 6 elephants in the last few months, and don't have the time to paint any of them because of my preparations to the Zama game!  To ease the pain, I've treated myself to a couple of nights off Zama to at least stick a few together, even though I know I won't be able to paint them until May.


First (above) is the excellent Aventine Pyrrhic Indian elephant. This is a fine beast; very expressive with his raised trunk.  It went together very cleanly, with just a little greenstuff at the seams.  As with other Aventine minis, there was no flash or mould lines.  I was very impressed with the two part Howdah; so impressed in fact...
                                     

...that I used a spare Aventine howdah on the female Indian elephant from TimeLine, shown above .  I will be using Aventine crewmen, too.  Aventine sell howdahs and crewmen seperately, which is a valuable facility.  I still need to add some ropes in greenstuff to this model.  I wanted at least one female elephant in my elephant "brigade".

        

Finally, above I have a most unusual beast (above).  Mario of Empire Models very kindly sent me one of his African elephants.  I felt it was rather too large a model for an African beast, but couldn't resist the magnificently sculpted armour and so have given it an Indian head donated by Barry at Timeline.  I should say Keith of Aventine also very kindly sent me a spare head (thanks!), but the Timeline head was slightly larger and more closely fitted the large, broader frame of the Empire torso.  I've had to trim the neck of the torso to get the head to look OK; in due course I'll add a crest so that it matches the other Empire elephants I own.  I damaged the crenellations on the howdah, and took them off.  Again, it'll probably have Aventine crewmen.

Other elephants I have not shown here include one each Aventine Sassanind Royal, Pyrrhic and Seleucid.  I'll try to put the Seleucid together next week.

Finally here are the three together; they match surprisingly well in size.  The Empire in the centre is larger, but not unbearably so. 

                

Roll on May...

Thursday, 10 December 2009

Muswell Militia house amendments to the C&C Rules

We play the rules pretty straight, except for two changes which help with armies incluiding cavalry.  We find that light horse aren't a great troop type in the rules.  This is partly because they aren't much good in melee, and run huge distances when they get a flag (often perishing when they reach a table edge).

Firstly, we use a slighly deeper table than the boardgame.  Our Hotz mats have two more rows of hexes than the standard C&C boards, and this extra depth is very useful when armies with cavalry, giving them a bit more space to manouvre (and to run away!).  Frankly, if we had 3 or 4 more rows of hexes, I wouldn't be unhappy!  But my table depth is 48" and there is no space for them.

Secondly, we have amended the evade rules.  In the standard rules, when evading, the attacker rolls a number of dice against the evader depending on his troop type; paradoxically this means that the slower troops, eg Heavy Infantry, with 5 dice, are likely to inflict more casualties on evaders than faster troops such as Medium Cavalry with 3.  Moreover, the potential casualties inflicted on evaders seem disproportionate by comparison with the one or two dice that skirmishers inflict through shooting.

Soooo... the Muswell Hill Amendment is that when skirmishers evade, they take one dice when the attacking troops are slower than them; two if the attackers move at the same speed, and three if the attackers are a faster troop type.  Simple... but it makes a huge difference with battles involving light horse, such as Ruspina.



Here are some Scythian light horse I prepared rather earlier.



We played the Ruspina scenario again last night, with 14 units of light horse, and it worked very well.  I must say that I now feel that Carrhae could just about be squeezed onto our table.  If only I had 80 or so horse archers, rather than two dozen...

Wednesday, 9 December 2009

Command & Colors + Glorantha

Mark Sims of Crusader Miniatures was suggesting on TMP that it would be good if we adapted C&C to be useable for fantasy games with our Gloranthan minis; well we already did!  I thought it might be fun to show some of the photos of a game I put on with Greg Privat of Gloarmy, and friends, at Salute in 2007.


We slightly amended the Command and Colors rules, to permit magic and very large creatures, such as the Crimson Bat and GonnOrta the giant.  We represented some of the major spells with effects, such as meteors for the Crater Makers and a pillar of fire for Cragspider.

Greg's impressive Gonn Orta model was converted from an Incredible Hulk toy.  Another impressive model was Greg's Moonboat (just visible on the right in the photo).

The mine was stunning.  It stood around 5 foot high, with a sound track and a lighting system of its very own.  Its only function was as a backdrop to the game.  If anyone wants to make an offer for it, it's in my cellar (in London); drop me a line and I'll forward it to Greg.


Above left, Gonn Orta and the Bat slug it out. 





And who can forget Nick Speller's Zombie whale?






There are many other photos on Greg's site under Articles, and many of the miniatures are featured on Greg's Miniatures Blog.