Friday, 16 April 2010

Eve of Battle!


Hannibal and Scipio parley on the battlefield of Zama, on the day before the battle.

Tomorrow at the crack of dawn, Muswell Militia and various associated malcontents will be driving up to the SOA Battle Day event in Bletchley to fight our version of Zama.  Hannibal has won every practice battle; but I have a feeling in my waters that Scipio will pip it on the day...

Hope to see some of you there!  

Monday, 12 April 2010

Yet more generals...


Here are some of the figures that Greg Privat painted for me, and I based.  These are Aventine Etruscans, and will be commanding one half of the Roman centre.  I'm still busy trying to finish off basing the Bruttians Greg painted for me; I'll get there!   I very much like the standard, which I think depicts Hercules.

Sunday, 11 April 2010

Towering haystacks and Carthaginians

My mate John has made some more trees and some "Roman" haystacks for me.  There are pictured on his blog
and should help to indicate that the battle was fought in the autumn period. I need to add a small pole coming out of the top of each one, as you see on Trajan's column.

In other news... 15 minutes ago I finally finished the boards.  Now I just have a couple of units to finish basing, the casualty minis to sort out, some counters to make and suchlike....  very doable.

Dr. Simon has also just posted pics of his Carthaginian contingent; I'm delighted to see them ready for the fray!

Saturday, 10 April 2010

No more snowballs...

After a week's reflection, I decided that the white map pins were unbearably... white.   Today my long suffering accomplace Ian came around and we pulled out the 350 pins we hammered in last Tuesday and replaced them with 350 pins I'd sprayed beige.  We then put another 350 pins into the remaining 4 boards, which are substantially complete (they just need a bot of drybrushing on the vegetation).


This is the board with the new pins, which are much less obvious than the white ones.  I'm very pleased with them!  A big thanks to Ian for his help.

Thursday, 8 April 2010

Keith's Zama Legions (B-8)


Aventine-Keith has just sent me this picture of the 2 legions (less 4 units of velites, not shown, which I've done) that he has painted for the Zama game.  Romans left, allies right.  They represent just under 1/3 of the Roman army for the game; can't wait to see them "in the lead"!   Not long to go, now...

Wednesday, 7 April 2010

Carthaginian Sub-General (B-9)

This grizzled veteran of many victories will command the Carthaginian centre.  The miniatures are Crusader or A&A, with the right hand standard from Aventine (I need to paint a design on that!).  Nick Speller painted them very nicely, for me.  I will admit I wasn't keen on the minis, in the lead, but they painted up splendidly and I'm delighted with them.

Tuesday, 6 April 2010

Snowballs in the dust... (B-10)

Now having spent 3 months producing a set of rather realistic-appearing terrain, my mate Ian and I have just spent an evening fixing little white balls all over it....   

The reason for this madness, is that we need to mark out the hexes that are (nigh-on) essential for Command and Colors. Each hex is around 13cm across the flats and will hold one unit (there are c.120 units in the game).  I decided that the minimum we could get away with, in terms of indicatiing the hexes, is a map pin marking the apices. 

To position the map pins, we made a template from a thin sheet of clear plastic, marked the apices out, and cut a 10mm cross at each one.  We then pushed the pins through the plastic into the foam, carefully removed the plastic sheet, and whacked each pin with a hammer, which anchored them in the MDF beneath the foam.  The really nice thing about the map pins is that they can be removed without damageing the boards in the event that we want to use them for non-hex games, at a later stage.

You can just make the plastic sheet out by the glare, below:


Below is the board with the plastic removed, and some punic troops drawn up in line.


Whilst the pins are slightly obtrusive, they are, unfortunately, a necessary evil. There will be around 750 map pins across the entire table.  I'd like to than Ian for his help with the 4 boards we finished!