Friday, 9 October 2020

Boar Spears

 

I need to model some spear heads for the bulk of my Italian infantry. These will be plastic Perrys, and I could probably fit spearheads onto the spear-shafts they come with. But from whence can I source the spearheads? They are an unusual shape and rather large - I'd estimate at least 8 or 9mm long - and I believe they are a sort of boar spear, without the cross bar. Any suggestions would be much appreciated! Plastic would be perfect since they could be glued in place, but I could drill and glue metal. 

Thursday, 8 October 2020

Venetian Spearmen II

 

There was a lot of interest in my last Venetian post, so I thought I'd show a second WIP shot.

All of the minis are finished and based. The eight new minis (painted by Shaun McTague) are mostly on the right, but I mixed some in with the original minis, and vice versa. Similarly, I included some of the shields with Ian's Venetian transfers on each base- this helps the unit to look homogenous. I'm very pleased with the amount of variation in the clothing, colours and shield designs in the unit. It looks pleasingly non-uniform.

Just need to grout and flock the base- might take a week or two to get around to that as I want to do a batch of units together for flocking.

Tuesday, 6 October 2020

Venetian spearmen

 

Recently, I've been busy modelling things but failing to post pictures, so here is an image of a unit of Venetian spearmen that I'm currently working on. I'm retouching and expanding my old 17-man unit to a 25 man unit on a 19cm frontage for the 20cm grid. All the minis are Perry plastics, with a few light conversions. The shields are pavises* decorated with Venetian lion transfers designed by my talented chum Ian Notter. I made up rather too many of these, and plan to use up the spares on a unit of crossbowmen. The background colour is "Venetian Red", which is pretty much a brown, in my books!


*If I was starting afresh, I'd give the unit oval shields like the one carried by the halberdier.

Monday, 5 October 2020

Updated Army List books

I’ve recently (30/9/20) published updated version of the army lists for To the Strongest! There are now a total of 242 different lists, many with additional content, and some now including images. The newly published lists are:

  • Bithynian, Bosporan, Commagene, Illyrian and Tribal Hebrew lists in the Ancient army list eBook.
  • Nanzhao Chinese, Kamakura Samurai and Muromachi Samurai lists in the Medieval army list eBook.
.If you haven't received a download link, you can download the eBooks, for free, from 

Sunday, 27 September 2020

Birthday and Rules Sale


Since it's my Birthday, and a significant Birthday at that, I've put the To the Strongest! and For King and Parlaiment rules on my traditional Simon's Birthday sale, whilst I settle down, with a war film and a cuppa, to address at least some of my epic basing backlog (currently I have several hundred minis and around 30 elephants part-based).

I had hoped to run a huge Birthday game to celebrate, but clearly that's not going to happen before the spring, at earliest. But I will, at the earliest (safe-ish) opportunity next year, declare an "official" birthday and get a load of lead on a table. This might be at Salute or a local venue, we'll see how things are looking after Christmas!

Monday, 21 September 2020

Italian knights take #2

  

I've discovered (courtesy of some research, confirmed by asking Simon Chick) that all my Italian knights are on the wrong hosses, at least the wrong hosses for the late c. 15th. Apparently the pesky Italians almost invariably rode leather-armoured hosses, not at all like the metal ones that my current Italians ride. Also the pesky riders wore a distinctive sort of tabard called a giornea; who knew?

Essentially, I find that I need to convert 80 or so knights to form an entirely new army, and convert the existing 50 or so knights to become a different army of an early c. 16th nature. Such is the hard life of a mildly OCD gamer.

The upside is that the leather horse armour was richly decorated with heraldry and I can give them great big plumes. Simply ginormous plumes, in fact, from Mirliton in Italy. Onwards and upwards!

Thursday, 17 September 2020

Dungeon Level, explored

 


...since there was so much interest in the hatch, I thought I'd post some images of the new dungeon level at the BigRedBatCave. Above is the larger end of the space, with the old, damp, clinker floor removed. This will, shortly, be covered with a concrete slab.


Here's the area under the hallway, before painting. 


...and after, now coated with a damp-resistant slurry, in a dungeon-friendly battleship grey. I may add some manacles.


Next step is for the concrete slab to go in. In the coming weeks, I plan to get the pipework tucked away and put in some ventilation.