Tuesday, 9 April 2013

Salute?

I went to buy my Salute 2013 queue busters earlier tonight, and found that the ship has sailed; apparently they stop selling them 2 weeks before the event.  Doh.  

I could still buy at the door, but I now find myself in two minds about whether or not to go this year, partly because of the expense, and partly because there's nothing that is really saying "you must see this" or "you must buy this", to me.  I don't tend to play in the participation games at Salute, either, I prefer to do that with friends, or at more intimate venues.  

Shall I have a lay-in and paint some minis, instead?  Hmmm...

EDIT- I have now located a ticket, and thought of a couple of good reasons for making the trip, so I'll be there, Saturday week!

Sunday, 7 April 2013

Ghost phalanx...

...being the final 80-something phalangite minis I need to paint from scratch for the phalanx, by the end of April.  There are another 200 minis off with painters, too, that will need to be finished and based in May.

Saturday, 6 April 2013

Aventine African Elephants WIP II

Since my last post, I have finished the howdahs, stained and varnished.  I was very pleased with how the howdahs came up, Rawhide!  Now they just need crews, and escorts...


I based the trapping colours on those of a rug I bought in Marrakech 10 years ago, that is on our lounge floor.  Post Raphia, when time permits, I will probably go back and add some more detail to the trappings.


When the crew are added, I might add a very fine dry-brush of dust to the completed models.

Friday, 5 April 2013

Agemata Basilikoi

I've not had a chance to photograph these until now, these are the Ptolemaic guard, with the Agemata on the right, and the Peltastoi on the left, they are clickable.  


The peltastoi are the junior unit.  There is some controversy about how they were equipped; whether with a full length or shortened sarissa, or even as light infantry.  I went for the full 100mm.

A lousy photo, I'm afraid, I'll take a proper one when they are finished (they aren't flocked yet).      The minis are a mix of Foundry (mostly) and Polemarch.  Flocking will have to wait, as I want to focus on painting all the remaining pike minis, first (6 down, 5 to go).  Then I'll have a week or two of flocking hell, to face.

Thursday, 4 April 2013

Aventine African Elephants WIP


A quick WIP shot of my new Africans.  The beasts and the cloths are painted and stained.  I've added padding under the howdahs, as suggested by Olicana Lad.  Hopefully I'll finish the howdahs tonight, and then the project can wait until Nick can do the crews for me.  At the moment I'm not going to bother with shields, we'll assume that the rawhide towers offer sufficient protection to the crew.

Monday, 1 April 2013

A change of scale...

I've been painting 28mm pikemen for my Raphia project, continuously for the last four months, and have rather reached the end of my tether.  In fact the whole 28mm thing is starting to pee me off: I've at least 4000 unpainted, most of whom will never get painted, the whole house is full of lead, and I've been fighting a rearguard action for space with the family for the past decade.

I have plan "B" in mind; sell all my 28's and shift to 2mm, instead.   

Here's my Alexandrian 2mm army, all from Irregular Miniatures.  


On the left (below) are the Companions, in 8 squadrons, including the larger Royal squadron with the man himself, screened by Agrianes.


In the centre of the army, the Pezhetairoi (below).  Each of the 12 blocks has 240 pikemen in it, giving a much better impression of mass, than 28mm do.


On the right, the Thessalians, and Prodromoi.


Here are some pike blocks I've modeled as deeper formations of less well drilled Machimoi, for Raphia.


Fianlly, below, the elephant and Cretan skirmisher screen.


The entire 2mm army fits into a large matchbox, unlike my 28mm collection, which would fit into a shipping container, (just about!).   

So there we have it, plan "B"...

Sunday, 31 March 2013

Nelliphants II

These will be the "tanks" of my Ptolemaic army,  Unfortunately, as they are relatively small and skittish African Forest elephants, they are fated to be M13/40's to the Seleucid's Matildas.


These are Africans from the excellent Aventine range.  I'm falling behind in my painting plan, so will need to work out a way of painting these VERY quickly... luckily they are relatively simple models.

Friday, 29 March 2013

Elephant Brigade

I've recruited 5 African elephants from Aventine into my Ptolemaic army, to represent the nellies at Raphia.


These are lovely models, with 2 head variants, and two bodies.  The howdahs look particularly convincing, and depict rawhide stretched over a wooden frame.  My only slight reservation about them, is that they feel just a bit on the large side for how I picture an African Forest Elephant.  Still, though, they are noticeably smaller than the Indians Craig will bring.  Some are temporarily propped on Irregular Miniatures 2mm Pike phalanx.

There was next to no flash or vents, and it took me four sessions to assemble them.  

Here's one from behind.  The tail is a separate piece, and plugs up into the elephant's posterior.  This assembly process very much reminded me of an episode of "EuroTrash", I saw years ago, which featured a "Pony Club"....   The most challenging element of assembly was fitting the small bell under each elephant's neck.  I'll paint the pachyderms, and I'm hoping that Nick will paint the 15 crew.

Tuesday, 26 March 2013

A new BatCave

Our bathroom still looks like Stalingrad, on a bad day.  However, out of the ashes, like a phoenix, is rising the carcass of a new wargaming storage cupboard.  This will be plastered, painted, shelved and illuminated.  It's about 8' tall, by 26" square.

This will hold my gaming boards (including a new, deeper size intended to permit cavalry and tank maneuvers) and will take the surplus boxes of minis that no longer fit inside my War Cabinet.  I reckon there will be room for a couple thousand more minis, which should keep me out of trouble with Mrs Bat, for 3 years, or so... after that, god knows what I'll do. 

Monday, 25 March 2013

Final Agemata WIP


A titanic effort this weekend, has seen the Agemata Basilikoi (Royal vanguard) completed and stuck to their bases, ready for gunking.  They will be brigaded with the Peltastoi (in red, on the left), to form a single unit, on the left of the Ptolemaic phalanx.  Figures are mostly Foundry, but there are a dozen converted Polemarchs amongst the Agemata.

I can happily report that I now have more than half of the phalanx units painted and on bases  (1.2m out of the required 2.2m); it's all downhill from here!

Thursday, 21 March 2013

More Agemata, and Bathroom WIP


I've been plugging away with the Agemata; the whole unit is now on the painting table.  These Foundry minis are such a delight to paint, and are coming on very quickly!  The current batch (front) need another 3 or 4 sessions, so I should be able to start basing in around a week's time.  I really want to paint their plumes red, right now, but am saving them to last because there is a danger that the red will come off in handling, leaving white windows.  

I've also been working on the rules and Raphia army lists in the background... 

On the domestic front we have been getting our bathroom rebuilt.  Unfortunately this has revealed problems with our old house, and the entire interior wall of the room has been demolished (below), so we now have a unique and interesting open-plan bathroom.  The disruption means no gaming for a week or so.  A plus, though, is that I will have additional wargaming storage built in when it is all put back together, and there should be space for some 5' terrain boards, which I've long coveted.


Friday, 15 March 2013

Polemarch Agema


... a quick WIP shot of the Polemarch Agema, that I converted earlier, by adding huge crests.  They now waiting for inking, Klear, matt varnish and highlights on the metallics.  And for me to paint another 21 mates, to join them...

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

Peltastoi WIP


I finished painting the above peltastoi.  They are now in a holding pattern, waiting for their agemata colleagues, with whom they will be brigaded, to be painted.

Saturday, 9 March 2013

Primed guards

A brief footnote to yesterday's post; the weather is finally good enough, for priming!  Here are the agema, showing how well the Polemarchs, with their enlarged crests (left) match the equivalent Foundry figures (right, with shields).


Friday, 8 March 2013

Starting the guards


Above, I've mostly the figures that will be the peltasts for my guard phalanx, and below are some Polemarch figures who I've lightly converted, and who will join some similar-looking Foundry Successors to form the agemata.  Chap on the front right, is a Foundry Perseus; note the winged sandals!

Monday, 4 March 2013

Soldat Lagide


I received this book by Stephane Thion, on the various Egyptian Macedonian armies, in the post at the weekend.  Stephane is a French author and gamer, with whom I've occasionally corresponded; he seems like a very nice chap.  The book has 64 pages and is and packed with simple but beautiful colour reconstructions of Ptolemaic uniforms, from the founding of the kingdom to the arrival of Caesar.  Many of these illustrations are taken from grave stelae (handily naming the deceased under each drawing), and others are hypothetical.  I found the colours very useful, in particular there's one chart showing the colours from the grave stelae, all together.

Everything is there, from the agema, through the phalanx, to the exotic Galatians and Sudanese.  There are even some cavalrymen with horses and riders fully covered in textile armour... which I recall described in an old Slingshot.

There is a good deal of text, in French.  My reading French is poor and it will take me quite a while to work through this, but I'd recommend the book on the strength of the colour illustrations, alone. They are beautiful, and so very useful to a gamer/painter.  I bought my copy on Amazon.

Wednesday, 27 February 2013

After the battle


We played another game between Caesarians and Pompeians, tonight, using the rules I'm developing (with lots of help from friends).  These shots are of the devastated battlefield at the end of what turned out to be a particularly bloody battle (especially for the Pompeians!).  The game lasted about two and a half hours, and the mechanics worked very nicely, although the elephants were a little pedestrian and need to be "sexed up", somewhat.  Of particular note is the iPad; this was the first time I've ever run a game from one, and I must say it worked very well, indeed.  Also of note are the two empty wine bottles, which lubricated proceedings.  A jolly session!


Saturday, 23 February 2013

Forming up



The 96 miniatures required for my first two (of four) "white shield" units now have their shields, and are all "piked-up".  This stage of the process of building a unit is always the worst, as the figures look awful viewed from the side, rather than the front, and un-based.  The night is darkest just before the dawn, they say...

Monday, 18 February 2013

New Jenga phalanx WIP


A quick WIP shot, of most of the phalangites for the 4th and 5th pike blocks for Raphia, mustering on their Jenga painting blocks.  Most of these were painted (very nicely) by Raglan, but I needed to replace his pikes with my blunt pins, re-base and repaint most of his crests from black to the red I'm using for my phalanx.  I spent a very long evening yesterday, painting the 60-odd required pikes.  Yawn...

In other news I've been plugging away with my draft set of Ancient rules, which are now 9,300 words long.  I reckon that they will be more than twice that, when finished.  I managed to work out how to upload them onto my iPad as a pdf, and they are now stuffed to the gunnels with hyper-links, so it should now be possible to navigate around them easily.  I'm going to try running tomorrow's game from the iPad... 

Out of curiosity, does anyone use iPads or laptops at the wargames table?