Sunday, 14 February 2010

Board

The time has finally come to grit my teeth and start decorating the 8 terrain board we need for Zama, so today, I started work on a test board.  This is one of the 9 mdf/styrene boards I fashioned back in November.

 
Above is the board with patches of tebby bear fur PVA'd to it.

 
Above, my youngest son has trimmed the fur "fields" with electric haircutting shears.  This was pretty quick to do.  The "wolf" fur on the right makes a pretty good crop; the shorter, paler fur at the back, will make useful long grass.  I've also roughly scribed some "tracks" into the board.

I intend the overall look of the boards to be a dry, dusty autumn look, with mostly harvested fields, some ploughed fields and scattered olive trees.  However, none of the terrain will have any impact, whatsoever, on the battle.

Saturday, 13 February 2010

My own Velites Finished

Here are the 32 velites from yesterday; thoroughly finished.  These will probably be my only contribution to the Roman legions in our game (although I have an emergency reserve of 32 part-painted Renegade Principes in case we are struggling; I hope not to go there, though).
 
The shields are a mix of Renegade and Aventines, and the transfers, mostly VVV and some LBMS.  I was particularly pleased with the way the grass came out.

Friday, 12 February 2010

My own velites WIP


A quickly snatched photo; the minis are now repainted, with new shields and mounted on BRBbases covered in BRBgunk.  Hopefully they'll be finished today!  I'll take a proper photo tomorrow.

Thursday, 11 February 2010

Not my Carthaginian Veterans WIP

These are half of the Carthaginian veterans, that Nick Speller is paintign for his own collection.  They are not fully based yet, but are looking very good!  They'll be in 2 ranks in the game, but I love seeing them deployed in 4 as they look even more menacing.

Wednesday, 10 February 2010

Not my Roman Velites!

These are most of one legion's velites for our Zama project, painted (very nicely indeed) by Craig Davey; I really like what he has done with them!  I gather he used a lot of vermillion.

The figures are the new velites from Aventine.  They have 8 different poses so far, and I have heard on the grapevine that more are to follow.  There are 3 different shield types (2 not shown here).  One of the things I really like about Aventine is that is is possible to build large units where most or all of the figures are different from one another.

I'm currently finishing 32 Renegade velites, and unfortunately they aren't a patch on these.  :-(

Tuesday, 9 February 2010

Not my Spanish!

These figures are part of a Spanish contingent painted by Nick Speller for our Zama game.  He's also painting a good proportion of the veterans.  Nick's a top chap who paints a lot of minis for me. 

 
Spanish foot
 
 
Celtiberian Foot
 

Spanish Cavalry

Spanish light cavalry

Nick has painted Masinissa's bodyguard for me; I'm very much looking forward to seeing them!

Sunday, 7 February 2010

Renegade Velites

 
Here are 32 Renegade Republican Roman velites.  I've had them for a year or two; they were going cheap on eBay, and I couldn't resist a bargain.  However it turns out they do need considerable TLC.  Most of the shields fell off, because they have been glued on after painting; don't you just hate that?  

I'm painting them as "insurance" for Zama, in case Keith or Craig can't get quite enough Aventine velites painted in time.  I've given some red tunics so they will better match Keith's and Craig's minis.  They will look OK, when finished, in about a week's time I hope.