Wednesday, 16 October 2013

Fame at last!

I was pleased (and surprised) to make the Miniature Wargames cover for November. The photo was taken at Newbury, and is of my Thapsus game, which has happily turned out to be quite photogenic. 


Those Zama boards are the gift that keeps on giving!  I intend to start work shortly on a new set of boards in order that I can "ring the changes" in 2014.  

Monday, 14 October 2013

SELWG, or Ally Pally to Crystal Pally

I like within sight of Alexandra Palace, and yesterday made the epic journey through the rain, "sarf of the river" to Crystal Palace, where SELWG is held.  Mate Ian Notter very kindly navigated, generally lifted and ported, and helped me set the game up.

Here are shots of the game; I'm afraid I failed to take pictures of anything else, because time was at such a premium...  Happily Ian took some great closeups.  One helpful thing, there, is the light, which is better than most shows and made the photography easy.






Thapsus seemed gratifyingly popular as a participation game; we ran it twice, with novice players both times. It was larger than the colours game, with perhaps 1300 miniatures on the table. There were lots of positive comments about the look of the game. Strangely, the first game took over 3 hours to play and the second less than 90 minutes! I've fired off copies of my "To the Strongest" rules to half a dozen interested gamers. C

All in all, I had a very enjoyable day at SELWG. The event was very well organised and there were some great games on display. We came in in the top 3 participation games. It was great to see some familiar faces, including, amongst others, Big Lee, Guy Bowers, Phil Steele and Richard Lockwood.  Trevor Halsall very kindly delivered the "Best Participation game" trophy I missed at Colours. Many thanks to Nick Speller for bringing an mate and his legions, and helping to pack up at the end, and Jay and mate for playing so enthusiastically, and indeed all who dropped by for a chat.

This was Thapsus' final outing (at least for a year or so); today I need to start work on the Salute 2014 game!

Friday, 11 October 2013

Legio X Equestris


Legio X Equestris were one of Caesar's small group of elite legions. They picked up their nickname when their legionaries provided Caesar with an impromptu mounted bodyguard for a parlay with the German King Ariovistus.

I've just extended this (extremely clickable) elite cohort, from 2 stands to 3, with the help of painter mate Andres. It is built around a dozen figures that I picked up in a swap with Andres (mostly on the left), with my less well painted dozen miniatures (mostly on the right). Andres recently painted another 10 stunning shields for me so that I could finish the unit. The shields are little gems, and I love the small variations between the designs, just like a real unit must have had.

They will be in the thick of the fighting in my Thapsus game at SELWG on Sunday.  If you are comingalong, why not sign up for a couple of hours military service?

Wednesday, 9 October 2013

Hail, Caesar!

No not the rules but the man.  Caesar was painted for me by Andres at Einar Olafson, who has done a stunning job!  Please have a click.


Caesar himself is an interesting piece.  His horse is Foundry, his body Aventine, and his head Warlord.  


I painted the standard bearer.  In the heat of the action, he is carrying his shield the wrong way up...  The Aventine vexilla is really useful, I must have used 2 dozen of them, so far..  

So... Caesar will be leading the action on Sunday at SELWG.  If you are coming along and want to play in the very large Thapsus battle I'll be running twice (once each AM and PM), please drop me a line at the email address on the front page of my blog, and I'll book you in!  

Tuesday, 8 October 2013

The other Numidians...

The remaining 2 units of Numidian warband.  No elephants were harmed during the basing of these units.


During Caesar's African campaign, Numidian infantry were numerous, if not particularly effective.  I tend to mix them in with my Numidian skirmishers for games with my "To the Strongest!" rules.  


The figures are a mix of Foundry (Greek and Numidian), Companion and Crusader, I painted around half of them, and finished others from eBay and that I bought from Stephen Hales.  

I have lots more of these unpainted in the loft, and will return to this army again.  BTW, if anyone has any spare Companion imitation legionaries, I'm after some.  Juba apparently had 4 legions-worth, which would be around 190 minis in the scale I'm doing, and so far I only have 40.

Monday, 7 October 2013

Poor dead nellie


I've finished a few more Numidian units, which I'll post during the course of this week.  To make these (clickable) skirmishers a little different to the previous four units, I have deployed one of my Aventine dead nellies.

Friday, 4 October 2013

A few Romans more

I've been trying to match Andres's style of painting and finish a Roman unit that he mostly painted, some years back.   I'm nowhere near as good, but they look OK from 12" away, and that will have to do.  Andres is sending me shields for them.


I'm also about to complete one further unit of Numidians, and Caesar's personal standard bearer, to go with Andres' Caesar model.

A huge thanks to Caliban Paul for sending me a rare Companion Roman Command pack last week!