Tuesday, 18 May 2010

Dipping my toe... Done

Here are the two completed (clickable) units of Spanish caetrati.  The twelve figures without falcata were dipped; the other 8 with the swords I bought on eBay and were (rather nicely!) painted by DPS.  All the minis are Foundry or Companion, except the leader who is Gripping Beast.

I'm very pleased with the dip.  I feel that a base colour, highlight and dip over the top (with overbrushing for whites) gives a better effect than the three colour method, and is quite a bit faster.

Saturday, 15 May 2010

Dipping my toe... Part Deux.

I dipped my first unit last week, some Spanish Caetrati, and I've only just managed to varnish them, as below.

I used strongtone dip.  This worked very well, except on the whites which became rather too dingy.  However, I overpainted the whites and was pleased with how they came out, especially as this means I will be able to up my painting rate.  I'll take a better photo when they are all based up.

My painting table is overflowing with minis as I'm currently working on 4 units in parallel; an EIR cohort in the front, 2 units of 10 Spanish, rear left, and 9 successor pikemen, rear right.  This is part of my plan to finish off most of the half painted units I have lying around.

Friday, 14 May 2010

Ideas for a big Game in 2011

Hi chaps, I think it would be a fine idea to run another big game in 2011, like Zama, and would love to bat some ideas around.  This would be run at Salute and hopefully on another weekend in March, April or May, when we could play it under less pressure, and socialise.

W:e have a few constraints, which will govern what game we can run:-
  1. The terrain must be predominately flat, arid farmland, as I won't have time or money to make a new set of boards.  However I could add one or two boards to what we already have, such as a big hill or river at one end or a town or a camp along one edge, so we could go up to 20' wide by 5' deep.  Indeed, we need something to signal that it is not Zama!
  2. For the same reason, it needs to look rather different to Zama, for which reason we shouldn't use both the Republican Romans or the Carthaginians. 
  3. To cut the painting load, we should use at least one army we have available, so either Republican Romans (if available, as half are oop North and half across the water) Marian Romans, Early Imperial Romans, Gauls/Germans or Carthaginians
  4. The other army should be a recent (or imminent), pretty range (as were the Aventine Republicans), that we will enjoy painting. 
  5. The battle should include some visually interesting troop types such as pikemen, cataphracts, scythed chariots, elephants, camels, ships or similar flummery.
  6. The game has, to my mind, to be somewhat larger than Zama, which had 1500 miniatures; say a round 2K?
I have a few ideas about battles that might fit the above criteria, but I thought it might be good to start off with a bit of a brainstorm... all ideas weclome.

Thursday, 13 May 2010

Perdiccas' Purple Phalanx

Here's another eBay purchase; perhaps a less wise one than yesterday's auxilia.  Each phalangite is clad in a magnificent purple linothorax, and someone has written "Perdiccas" underneath each element.  They are only an average paintjob but look good en-masse.

The reason that my joy is not entirely unconfined, is that I hadn't realised form the ebay photo that the bronze on them is not my usual brass shade, but instead a much redder (and wronger) Dwarf Bronze that is going to look very odd indeed next to my other minis.  I might try a brass drybrush over the top.  Anyhow, plan is to paint 8 more minis to match, replace the guardsman with the hoplon in the front row with a 9th phalangite, and see if I can't get them looking half decent.  I think I'm going to need a lot of pikemen, this year...

Wednesday, 12 May 2010

Coh. I Britannorum Eq.

This is a unit I've been working on since Salute; the third unit of Auxilia for my very slowly expanding EIR army.  I bought 24 painted figures on eBay, painted 6 more to match, retouched and rebased.  I fear that the shield patterns are legionary, but they look great so I don't care.  Have a click; they aren't bad minis!  The Centurion is GW.

It is over-strength compared to my other 24 man cohorts, which represent 480 auxilia at 1:20 scale (so each base is a century).  I'm tempted to add 8 more figures and call it a Milliary cohort, or another 16 and divide it into two cohorts.  Some day I may get around to painting its integral 6 figure cavalry unit.

Sunday, 9 May 2010

Gorgon Etruscan cavalry

Hank from Gorgon Miniatures has very kindly sent me some samples of their new Etruscan cavalry (thanks Hank!).

I'm very taken with the mounts, which are from the same Saleh stable as the Polemarch steeds. They are IMHO very much more satisfactory than the former, having much better necks, and fuller bodies.  There is a tiny bit of flash between the legs, but this looks easy to remove.  These are amongst the nicest horses I've seen in 28mm.
 
Here are the riders.  In all honesty I still don't know all that much about Etruscans, let alone Etruscan cavalry.  They are heavily armoured for Greek-style cavalry.  I have read that one of the intended uses for them is as mounted hoplites.  The armour is crisply executed (scale, lamellar and bronze cuirass respectively). The shields on the right are small and not very curved, and not intended as hoplons. 


Here is a size comparison shot of the horses.  I've always liked the Foundry WotG horses, but I prefer the new Gorgons, which have larger front quarters and are slightly fuller in the body.  The Aventine horse on the right is a little smaller in the body, and I've included it for size comparison purposes.

One last thing (and unfortunately the photo didn't come out, but you can see this from the Gorgon photos); the riders are a perfect fit onto the horses, with the cloaks sculpted to fit neatly over the horses rump, and the legs fitting the sides of the horse.

These are very nice minis; I think I may use these as Tarentine heavy cavalry in my projected Pyrrrhic army.

Saturday, 8 May 2010

Dipping my toe...

These chaps are some Foundry/Companion/GB ancient Spanish Caetrati (small shield-bearing infantry) that I've blocked in, and hope to find time to dip later today.  If it works, they will have been a pretty quick job by my standards.  The Foundry Spanish are very nice, I wish there was a compete range of them.  I like them rather more than their Crusader/A&A equivalents.