Thursday, 14 January 2010

Bring out yer Dead!

I've started work on the casualty figures for the Zama game.  I'm going to paint the elephants (except for the ones I've sent to friends to paint), and later, when I have enough of the infantry casualties prepped, I'll send them to Greg to paint.

Each elephant will be a bit different; the first has a victorious Aventine Italian on it:




The second is really gutted..
Below are two from Gripping Beast.


...and here are the first (of many) infantry casualties, mostly Etruscans kindly donated by Keith at Aventine, and lightly converted.

The first dead elephants (but not the GB ones) are available from Aventine, and profits will be donated to "Help for Heroes":

http://www.aventineminiatures.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=128&osCsid=f598b15086bef29d4dd842caabf32a84


Monday, 11 January 2010

Numidians Done'n'Dusted

I've finished the bulk of my Numidians (most of which were painted by Greg) and I thought it might be interesting to run through what I have, and how I store them.

2 generals; Juba and Masinissa
96 citizen levy, troops raised from the urban centres
36 tribesmen from the hinterland
4 dead horses below:-


40 tribesmen with javelins
10 tribesmen with slings
10 tribesmen with bows
6 elephants (cohabiting with my Macedonian phalanx) below:-


66 light cavalry without bridles (mostly below):-


Other Numidian troops I need for Zama:-
2 more elephants (hopefully the Aventine Africans will be ready in time)
9 cavalry with bridles; mostly Spanish mercenaries.  Nick is painting these, and I'm really looking forward to them as they will be very distinctive.
6 more cavalry without bridles... just so that I have a round 12 units, or 4 "wings" of 3 units as I think of them.
8 elephant casualties
Sundry other casualty figures

And at some stage in the next year I will want a couple of units of Imitation Legionaries, in mixed Roman and Greek successor gear.  I'm hoping that I may be able to work it so that they can also serve as Pontic and Judean ILs.

The storage boxes (below) are the "Really Useful Boxes", which I store all my minis and terrain in.  I line them with steel paper from Coritani.  I chose them because they are fairly cheap, rugged, waterproof and because they stack neatly.  I am, unfortunately, running out of places to put additional boxes; I may have to sell some minis from armies I'm less passionate about, so that I have room to store the Roman and successor armies that I'll be painting over the next year or so.



Sunday, 10 January 2010

Converting catholics?

Last year I posted an image of my celtic army , and I've been puzzled to observe a small but regular number of visitors to the page, coming via Google Images France.

Yesterday it dawned on me that they've been coming via the image searchwords "celtic" and "masse".  The original post was entitled "Celtic Army En Masse"; a celtic mass is apparently a particular form of the religious rite.

Many have gone on to click the image, and even to visit other pages of the site. I find myself wondering whether I've inadvertently lured any French catholics into the world of gaming...

Saturday, 9 January 2010

Carthaginian Militia Completed

These are the Carthaginian Levy miniatures that Gloarmy Greg Privat originally painted, and I've gone on to highlight and base.  There are 96 of them here; I've just finished the second 48.  Please click on the image for a better view...



They will form half of the Carthaginian second line in our Zama Project  (and represent only 7% of the total miniatures in the game!).

 

Most of the figures are Crusader, with a few Foundry mixed in for variety. Next, I have 48 Bruttians that Greg has painted to highlight and base...

Friday, 8 January 2010

Elephants' Graveyard!

Dead Nellie has arrived, with her sisters!  I designed her because I wanted a dead African elephant marker for our Zama game (n.b. there are 2 Gripping Beast resin dead elephants with howdahs, at the back of the photo, for size comparison purposes).  This thread shows the progress of the green.  As far as possible I've tried to make it look like the small African Forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) that we believe the Carthaginians utilised.  It is perhaps 40mm to the shoulder.


I'm going to use 10 Dead Nellies (and the 2 GB elephants) for our Zama game.  This is beacause I don't expect that the Carthaginian elephants will survive much more than 20 minutes into the game!  I intend to customise each one slightly, making them into little dioramas.
I'd like to offer a huge vote of thanks to Keith at Aventine, who very, very generously moulded her for me for free with the metal at cost.   As ever, Aventine's production quality is absolutely excellent; no flash and only one small vent to be trimmed away.  Aventine have said that if anyone wants one, to drop them a line and they will sell them at a modest price, with any profit on the minis going to a worthwhile charity.  If you want one, contact Keith via http://www.aventineminiatures.co.uk/contact.html
It's hugely exciting to see something that I have designed, cast professionally!

I'm a Dreadnought!

I was surprised (nay delighted) to hear this morning that the Galactic People's Republic have named their latest Stalingrad Class Star Dreadnought after me.  There's a lot more about it on Gregs's Blog:-

http://gloarmy.blogspot.com/2010/01/arsenal.html

I'm very much looking forward to seeing Greg's game; it should be stunning.  It'll need a large table to play on, though!

In other news...  I've not posted for a few days because I've been breaking my back trying to finish the basing on my Numidian army.  It has been a tough job, not helped by the fact I mistakenly used PVA, last night, instead of ScatterGrip and most of my flock has fallen off.  :-(

Tuesday, 5 January 2010

For a Fistful of Pesos II- the Battle


Before Xmas I showed some shots of the deployment for the Muswell Militia Xmas game.  A brief account of the game follows...

The game broadly split down into two separate battles; the French assault on the village (below) on their left wing, and a holding action on their right wing.



A couple of turns in, the French left rush towards the village which is their objective.

 

The brave poilus reach the buildings.  The red dice with the 6 shows that one unit has taken a terrible pasting from revolutionary artillery fire.

 

Above, the Legion occupies a building which was subsequently assaulted by the revolutionaries.  Although they repulsed the first assault, their supporting troops were driven back and General Georges, their commander, started to look rather concerned!

 

On the right the infantry element of my holding force (above) advanced...

 

And then was shot to pieces and ran away!  Dave roleld some fantastic shooting dice...   My blighters wouldn't rally.  I found myself facing 7 revolutionary units with my three squadrons of cavalry.  To my left, the battle for the village looked lost.  I broadly had two options; "charge of the light brigade" or...

 

..."discretion is the better part of valour"; I legged it!  I couldn't see much point in the senseless effusion of more French blood.

At the end of the previous game we'd made some changes to firing and morale, which made firing more effective and morale more challenging.  Taken together, these made the firefights extremely bloody and also made it very difficult to rally units.  Now we need to tweak the rules to reduce the effect of fire before giveing them another go.  We did learn some useful lessons about turn sequence from this game.