Sunday, 21 March 2010

Pictures of the Real Zama

I thought it might be useful to show some links to photos of Zama I found on the interweb, which explain why I've made the terrain colours a bit muted (some might say a bit grey!).  

Here's the approach to Zama at sunset:-

http://www.woodbrothers.tv/image.axd?picture=2009%2F11%2FWood+Brothers+-+Zama+sunset.jpg

And this picture, in particular, is very much what I'm trying to capture:-


http://www.woodbrothers.tv/image.axd?picture=2009%2F12%2FWood+Brothers+-+battlefield+of+Zama.jpg

The field is slightly browner than mine, but appears to be an umber-type shade.  I wanted to achieve a very dried out , dusty post-harvest look.  In hindsight, I could have bunged a bit of yellow ochre into the mix when highlighting, which I do with the mix I use for basing.  I'll need to work in some clumps of dark green vegetation.  If anyone could whip up some trees looking like those, that would be very helpful!

The below looks like it is taken much earlier in the year, as it is a lot greener, but appears to include an olive grove (I have one on order):-

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/23/95148729_137d2b6ba9.jpg

Flocking hell...

I started the flocking stage yesterday hoping that it would be a quick job, but one test board later (and that far from completion), it is clearly not going to be the case.  Below is the test board before flocking:-


and after...


The flock disguises the dark brown edges where the base board paint had soaked into the fur, and makes the field edges appear less regular.  I 've also been applying it on top of the fur which makes it seem more natural.  What I haven't done, yet, is to apply flock around the drainage ditches. I intend this vegetation to be greener, to inject just a little colour onto the brown-grey boards.

I'm estimating 3 hours per board, now, to complete flocking.   This should use up all my spare time before I start work.

Saturday, 20 March 2010

4 weeks to Bletchley, 5 to Salute.

4 weeks today we'll be listening to the opening lecture at Bletchley.  Gulp!  I've got up early to polish off domestic duties and try to get a full day in on the terrain.

In other news, my period of "resting" will shortly be coming to an end, as employment (finally!) beckons.  It's a good job that the boards are nearly complete!  Post Salute, I expect that I'll have to become a less frequent (but regular) poster.

Friday, 19 March 2010

Quick Zama update

Last night Ian and I had the best playtest so far.  The game was exciting, and felt fairly balanced.; the Carthaginians were very slightly ahead, but we'll fix that.  I was particularly happy because we have felt able to strip out most of the special rules we had been testing, so it is now fairly close to vanillla Command and Colors.  The elephants, in particular, are now in 5 units of 2 and but a mere shadow of their former stompy selves (although they did stomp my Carthaginians a few times, in blue-on-blue incidents!).

Today I received a package from French Greg Privat including the last of the Bruttians, and some casualty minis, all looking very nice.  All the Generals arrived from Nick Speller earlyer this week, and they look great too.  So with the exception of a few more casualty figures that Nick is working on, and the olive trees band hay ricks currently being fashioned in the Scottish glens by my mate John, I now have all the stuff that I'm responsible for.

This afternoon, I'm sticking fields to the boards; tomorrow, hopefully doing some detailing (tufts of grass, etc.).  And I've put in an order for 700 more 5mm map pins...

Thursday, 18 March 2010

Fields of Zama

Sorry that my hithertoo regular posts have become somewhat sporadic!  I've been very busy with life in general, and some very time-consuming and non-photogenic elements of the Zama project.

Here is one such element.  These fields (and others not shown here) all needed to be cut into shape, trimmed, shaved with my Wahl hair trimmer and dyed with diluted acrylic paint.


The next stage will be to stick them onto the terrain boards.  Then I'll need to dress the terrain boards with clumps of static grass, leaves, weeds and whatever.  The board project is now around 75% complete!  Never again.  ;-)

Saturday, 13 March 2010

4" Drybrush Day

Today I drybrushed the 9 terrain boards, with a mid-brown and then a highlight, using the biggest brush I could find!

 Here's a board drying in what passes for sun around here.

Here are a couple of boards with the first highlight.  I hope to apply a very sparse second highlight, tomorrow.  The colour I went for is a sort of raw umber with a bit of tan in it.  It looks a bit grey in the photos, but it is slightly browner IRL.

The boards will look (somewhat) less austere when the fields and tufts of vegetation are added.  I feel an awful lot better about the project, as they are starting to look like something a man could stick a wargame figure on!

Thursday, 11 March 2010

Scene of Devastation

Here's the gaming table after the latest play test of the Zama game (mentioned yesterday), using Command and Colors blocks.  When we packed up at 11:30, the game was getting near a conclusion, with Carthage (far side of table) somewhat ahead on account of the over-powerful elephants mentioned in the comments on the previous post.  Each of the blocks represents 2-4 figures, and the board on the day will be three times as long.

Wednesday, 10 March 2010

Numidian Elephants

I realised today that I haven't posted a picture of the elephants that will stand (possibly all too briefly!) before the Carthaginian front line in the Zama game.  Here are 6 of the 10; a mix of Essex, Gripping Beast and (converted) Renegade.  The other 4 are in the collection of Dr. Simon.

Monday, 8 March 2010

Board 7 of 9

My increasing gaps in posting have been caused by the need to break the back of the Zama terrain, which is proving to be very time-consuming.  I'm trying to get all the Zama boards textured and base coloured before I go on to the next stage, highlighting.

Here's an iffy pic of board 7.  You can see gaps I've left for the teddy bear fur fields; these will be trimmed, coloured and added later on.  The base colour doesn't show up well; the boards are a dark chocolate brown.


I've designed the tracks so that the boards can be combined to make either a 4' by 18' table surface, or a 6' or 8' by 8', so hopefully they will be useful for a variety of other projects in the future.

I still need to find a way to indicate the apexes of the hexes; I'm thinking that I may use pins, pressed into the styrofoam.  These could be removed if I recide to use the boards for something different and non-hex based, later on.

Friday, 5 March 2010

100Kday!

I'd very much like to thank all the people who have visited this site since last March, and who yesterday took my page load numbers past 100,000 hits, with just over 51,000 unique visits.  I've hugely enjoyed your feedback and comments, and hope to meet some of you in person at Bletchley and Salute.  Here's an old pic of some happy Germanic cavalry, in celebration.


 In other news,  I played my first game of Flames of War last night with some local gamers from Dark Nights and Bloody Dawns in Wood Green.  It was very enjoyable; how did I  manage to completely miss FoW until now?  The 15mm WW2 figures were both numerous and beautifully painted, and I'd very much like to use them again.  We used Western Desert minis, and I will hopefully show DNBD how a Memoir '44 Western Desert game would compare.  Might even try their minis on a big hex grid.

Finally, I will be starting board 7 for Zama, today.  Joy.

Thursday, 4 March 2010

Numidian Royal Bodyguard

These miniatures were splendidly painted by my mate Nick Speller, and based by me.  They form the Royal bodyguard of my Numidian army.  Numidian Kings often recruited Spanish cavalry "with bridles" for this role (at least in Caesar's time).  They are also the final unit my the Numidian army, which now has just under 300 minis.

I've used whatever figures came to hand; some (late lamented) Companion miniatures, sent to me by Mike Adams in the US, two Crusader Spanish and a couple of A&A Numidians.  The horses include some Aventines, and the splendid standard is Aventine.  I added rosettes and fringes to the horses to give them a Spanish flavour.


 And here they are from behind.  This shows the irregular basing style I favour on all my cavalry.


These'll be Masinissa's bodyguard at Zama.  

In other news... I hope to start the 6th terrain board today.  We also have a table number at Salute, but I don't know exactly where in the hall it is, at the moment.

Tuesday, 2 March 2010

Hellenistic Bodyguard Cavalry

 

This is a unit of  cavalry that I've just refurbed (it is clickable).  They were originally painted as Thessalians for an Alexandrian Imperial army (see photo below).  I bought them, mostly completed, from Andy Bryant; finished the painting, then based them in rhomboids.  But I was never happy with the basing, and also realised that Alexander released most of his Thessalians when he issued purple cloaks to his cavalry, so they would be rather limited in their use.

 

Sooo, I've issued them with shields and crests for their helmets, and now they will be the bodyguard for various later successor generals.  They will see a lot more action, that way, as I'll be doing Hellenistic armies after Salute!  They will also substitute for Carthaginian cavalry at Zama (I have no shame!).  Later I shall paint 6 more to make two full units.  The LBMS transfers worked very nicely...

Sunday, 28 February 2010

BigRedBat's War Cabinet

One of the younger scions of the BigRedBat clan has laid claim to the room where I've traditionally stored my legions.  Accordingly, as part of a negotiated withdrawl, it was agreed that I could put a storage cabinet in another room.  I found a fantastic one at Ikea; the Bergsbo.  My son and I assembled it today, and this afternoon my troops marched to their new home with banners flying and flautists piping.

What excites me about the Bergsbo cabinet is that has the perfect dimensions to take an unfeasibly large number of the "Really Useful Boxes" in which I store all my minis., with almost no wasted space.  It is deep, and all the shelves are adjustable.   In (and above) the cabinet are no less than 68 storage boxes, of various sizes, containing roughly 3000 28mm miniatures and almost all my terrain.

Another benefit of the new cabinet is that it is now a lot easier to access the miniatures I need for a particular game, and I can see the labels on the end of the boxes.  Oh happy day!

Saturday, 27 February 2010

Completed Republican Roman Triarii


Craig Davey has completed the command stand for his Triarii; I think they are absolutely splendid!  The figures are all from the new Aventine Republican Roman range.  I particularly like what he has done with the standards and plumes.  The detail is beautiful, have a click!  Jealous, I am!  

Friday, 26 February 2010

On the Painting Table

In the brief intervials between slapping gunk on boards, I've been trying to base some of the last units I'm contributing  to the game.  Below are some Spanish cavalry painted by Nick Speller, that need matt varnishing and basing.

 

And below here are some Foundry Thessalians painted by myself and Andy Bryant, that I'm in the process of converting to shielded Hellenistic cavalry.   They will stand in, on the day, as Carthaginian heavies.

 

Thursday, 25 February 2010

More Boards...

 
So here's my life for the next month; these are boards 1-3 of an eventual 8 or 9, for Zama.  The furthest two boards are 60% complete; they still need a lot of highlighting and will need some selective  flocking (although the final theme is going to be brown).  

The nearest board is perhaps 25% done.  The next step will be to trim the fields using my Wahl.  Then I will apply texture, and finally a basecoat of Chocolate Brown Sandtex (which trick I picked up from the "Touching History"  books).  

I also need to check that my plan to use a template to superimpose a hex grip on the finished boards, will work.  It occured to me, yesterday, that the standing crops may prevent the template from lying flat on the boards.  Gulp.  I'll test it before I start board 4; on future boards, I may need to apply the crops after the grid. 

The scale of the venture is daunting...

Wednesday, 24 February 2010

Carthaginian Relief Column!

I am indeed considerably relieved to see the arrival of these Carthaginians., into the collection of fellow Muswellian, Dr Simon.  Aside form the 200  Aventine Romans we still need to paint, these are pretty well the last major units required.  The pikes on the spearmen will be replaced in due course...

There's more about them and additional photos on Dr. Simon's Blog.

Tuesday, 23 February 2010

A Little Board

This is the first of eight terrain boards for the Zama game with basecoat applied (the final colour will be a dustty light brown).  I've tried to break up the flat terrain with fields, ditches and tracks; I'll probably get more ambitious as I move along the battlefield.  The cream-coloured fields will be dyed or painted in due course.  I've tried to avoid making the texture too rough, so that we can move the pieces across it, with relative ease.  I hope that the ploughed fields will look good when finished.

When it is complete, I'll attempt to add a hex grid to it...

My take on Zama is that the battlefield is essentially flat, agricultural land, with a few scattered trees (olives and a type that looks a bit like a cypress), in autumn.  There is going to be a lot of brown, and dried grass.  If anyone knows any different, please let me know ASAP!

Monday, 22 February 2010

Not my Triarii!

In fact these are Craig Davey's new Aventine Triarii,  for his Roman legion.  The command pack isn't painted yet, but I'd hazard that they are under the brush, right now.  I really like the painting style and the bold vermillion ed he has used.  The crests are very jaunty; I'll do mine the same (eventually).



 
 Fabuloso!

Sunday, 21 February 2010

Mission Statement

I suffer from mission creep, more than most collectors.  I have decided that I had better focus, at least within broad limits.  For ancients, I'm therefore going to concentrate on:-
  • The time: Roughly 400BC to 400AD; Peloponnesian war to the fall of Rome
  • The place: The Mediterranean basin, France and Britain (and later Germany/Dacia)
  • The next army: Pyrrhics (and finishing off various part-painted units from the EIR and Polybian eras).
Once Zama is out of the way I'll therefore flog off some non-core bits, such as my Viking army, which is little used for lack of an opposing army.  Below is an old pic of some of the Vikings, next to their fjord:


I do also have a small Assyrian army, which I'll keep because I think it'll look great once completed, and because I recently bought some great Biblical-era terrain.