Game Night

There aren't many gamers up here on the mountain, so I've recruited new ones.  Some of the local homeschool kids enjoy Settlers of Cataan, Risk, and Axis and Allies, so I thought I'd help them progress from gateway games to something harder. 

Here they are at a recent game night, in our climactic final battle of the night: 3-on-3 DBA, with King Arthur's valiant British on one side, against the rapacious Picts and the treacherous Saxons.   Luckily for the British, their right flank broke the Pictish skirmishers before King Arthur's cavalry could get in too much trouble in the middle.

II/53 Ancient British

These guys have been in progress for a long time.   They started out as five partially-painted chariots I bought on eBay while looking for a chariot for my Picts.  It was a great deal, but I had these four extra chariots, so I've purchased other figures here and there to build an army around them.

Here is the full army, with camp.  The Ancient British, of course, were the folks that the Romans found when they arrived in Britannia in 55BC or so, under Julius Caesar.   In temperament and equipment, they resemble their Gallic cousins across the English channel.*

1xLch (general), 3xLch, 2xLh, 5x3Wb, 1x3Wb or 2Ps, 2xPs

Half of the army is Warbands, and this is where I spent the most time painting.   I used another painter's work (Hour of Wolves and Shattered Shields) as inspiration for these guys.  His are nicer than these, but even so, I like how they turned out. 

These are the psiloi (javelin-armed skirmisher) stands.   both these figures and the ones above are Old Glory 15mms.   I think they may have been from the same pack, and I just pulled out the spear-armed figures to use as skirmishers.   Buying a 32-figure pack of miniatures for 6 figures seemed excessive.

 For a long time the army languished like that, lacking only cavalry.  So when I ordered some Roman cav (see here for images) from Warmodelling.com, I added a pack of British cav to finish off the army.   They aren't my favorite Warmoddelling figures--I like the Romans better. 



DBA also requires each army have a camp, sort of a "home base," but custom gives great flexibility in what it looks like.  The Ancient British were known for "screaming women" and druids.  I combined those in this camp, of a man bringing his sheep for a druidic sacrifice--to ensure victory in the coming battle, of course.  The priestess is actually from a Chariot Miniatures wizards pack, and the man is from a Falcon Figures civilian pack.  The sheep I actually got from some HO railroad aficionado friends of my father.   I wasn't quite sure how the 15mm and HO scales would match, but it turned out quite well.  The altar I made with Sculpey.

It should be a fun army to play, with Warbands for the CHARGE! part, and chariots & Light Horse for the maneuvering part.  Colorful, too.

*I've read linguists arguing that the lack of Celtic words/structures in English suggests that the ancient British were more Germanic than Celtic.

Peninsualar British Artillery (15mm)

When I shipped these to the guy I painted them for, two howizter barrels vanished in transit.  Old Glory 15s was kind enough to send me new ones for free.  Kudos to wonderful customer service!

"The Green Legion" --Polybian Romans II/33

When I first started painting, I decided that I would never do Romans.  There's nothing particularly wrong with them, but they seemed so...generic, like everyone had them (not that I actually knew many people with Roman armies, it just seemed that way).  And yet, when I saw a fantastic deal on several packs of Old Glory Republican Roman infantry, I couldn't help myself.  At least it wasn't Imperial Roman, I told myself.  

Anyway, they languished on my lead pile for a couple of years, lacking cavalry and light infantry.   Until this spring, that is, when they were just the excuse I needed to order some more Napoleonic Spanish guerrillas from Warmodelling.com (nee Fantassin Figures).  The fine folks there were even willing to break up packs so I could get the command figures I needed without buying unneeded lead, and make sure a certain female guerrilla figure that I wanted was in the assortment they sent.  This was my second order with them, and went smoothly.   As a result, the heavy infantry in this army are Old Glory 15s, and the other figures are Fantassin.

This is the first of two legions that I finished this spring; I'll post the "blue legion" later.  In total, there is 40 infantry and 6 cav (1x3Cav general, 1x3Cav, 6x4Blade, 2x4Pike, 2x2Psiloi + an extra stand of pike).  Here is the full army.

The cavalry are all from Fantassin.  Apparently the cavalry of this period wore brown-black "cavalry cloaks."  There was no standardized shield design until later, so I decided to do these as laurel wreaths (I had tried this on a Hoplite shield in my Athenian army and liked it--and it seemed Roman enough).  The figure in red is a Consul in field attire, commanding the army.

The bulk of the legion are Princeps (the few figures wielding swords) and Hastatii (with pilum).  These shields are simpler, a solid green with metal bosses.  Black was a common plume collar, and I decided to keep these all uniform.

The Triarii were veterans of long service, in heavier armor and wielding pikes.  These particular figures have spears rather than pikes, but they are armored in chain mail (instead of the bronze breastplate the Hastatii wear), so I'm using them as Triarii.  In keeping with the practice of higher quality equipment, I did their shields in the same laurel wreath pattern as the cavalry.  The official army list calls for 2 stands of these guys, but I accidentally painted 3.  Oh, well.

The velites were the army's skirmishers.  Since they were unlikely to be rich or well-equipped, I painted their shields in a simple pattern of green and white concentric circles.  Roman velites often wore animal skins on their heads, especially badgers.  Getting the white on black stripes right on these figures' badgers took some doing, but I like how they turned out.

Now the question is what to do with them.  Historically, their primary opponent was Carthage, but I really don't want to paint Hannibal's army, with its elephants, Carthaginian hoplites, Spanish cavalry, and Gaulish infantry.    So maybe I'll try to sell them.  We'll see.

More colonial militia

My daughter has been painting some Indians, so I thought I'd paint more colonial militia, maybe enough for a small 1812 skirmish game.

I tried a number of color schemes, since I still have a few dozen of these figures to paint, but I especially like the leaders.

The local homeschool gang had a good time playing DBA and are asking when we can have another game night, so maybe this time we'll do some skirmish gaming.

Sold: Lead Abatement--Minifig Middle Saxons (6/12)

I still have far too many Saxons, so I'm putting an army's worth of unpainted figures on eBay.  These, like the painted army I'm selling, are older Minfigs.

The scary thing is, even if all of these sell, I still have too many left.

Sold: III/24 DBA Middle Saxons

Last month I bought some 15mm unpainted Minifig Saxons from a guy who had them in his garage for decades.  And when I say some, I mean Harold and his whole darn army.  500+ of them.  And they're not even Saxons from the Arthurian period I like to game!  So, off go the first batch up on eBay.  The army is all foot, some 58 figures in 15 stands.  That's about the maximum number of figures you'll find in a DBA army.  And if this army included the 2x7Horde option it probably would hit the record.

The bulk of the Army is the Saxon spearwall, 11 stands of it.  The army includes one Spear general, with a red dragon banner.  There is also one stand of psiloi, the stand in the top left, with two slingers.  It's not visible on this picture, but I experimented with alternating colors in a dashed line around the hem of their tunics to model Saxon embroidery, which was apparently famous throughout Europe (go figure).  The effect turned out even better than I hoped, so I'll keep using it when I paint more of these guys.

At this point in history, most Saxons were Christian, and crosses were a common shield design.  The traditional Sunwheel was even more common, as I've done these guys.   This was the first time I've used an ink pen to outline the shield designs, and I like how it looks, although my hand could have been a little steadier on some. 

Finally, there is an option for King Harold and his Huscarls to be Warband (impetuous foot) instead of Spear, which are represented like this.   For these stands the Dragon standard is painted in Wessex gold, to symbolize Harold's personal banner.

For more information on using this army in DBA, here is the Fanaticus page on it.

I/28 Sea People DBA army

The 13th century BC ushered in a Dark Age for the Eastern Mediterranean.  Established powers like the Mycenaeans and Hitties collapsed, even the Pharaohs struggled to preserve their kingdom.  One constant throughout this cauldron of violence were the Sea Peoples--tribes from the Aegean and Anatolia that ravaged the entire region.  Archeologists debate (JSTOR gated) whether they were a cause or a result of the general collapse, but either way, they fought against every army of the time.

The Vikings of 1200 BC

Most of the information I used painting these figures is from Nancy Sandar's The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Eastern Mediterranean 1250-1150 BC.    They are based on matte board with adhesive magnet underneath (the thin black line visible at the bottom of each base) for safe storage.

According to Egyptian inscriptions--our main source of information on the Sea Peoples--the Shardana made up the largest portion.  Wearing heavy armor and their trademark horned helmets, they form the army's core.  We know their shoulder armor was bronze, but archeologists aren't sure whether their cuirasses were made of bronze or cloth; there is historical evidence for both, but not much for either.  I took the liberty of making them bronze as well.

1xLch (gen) and dismounted Bd (gen), 2x4Bd

The next largest group of Sea Peoples was the Peleset.  As Barker states in the 3.0 Army notes, the Peleset seem to have become the Philistines after being defeated by Egypt, but their origins (and that of other tribes) is not as certain as Barker implies.    One distinctive feature was the feathered headdress they wore.  Archaeologists have found bronze circlets that match the base ring of the headdresses, but don't know what color the feathers were, or even if they were feathers.

Another distinctive feature of these figures is the copper equipment. Interestingly, some of the Sea Peoples' swords and shield bosses seem to have been almost pure copper instead of the more golden bronze in most of the region.  I don't know if it's 100% historical, but for variety I've done most of the Peleset blade in copper and the rest of the army in bronze.

6xBd  All blades in the army are on 20mm bases, to allow their historically appropriate use as 3Bd raiders for players using 2.2+.

These lightly armored figures are Shasu, a smaller tribe that seems to have come overland to Egypt, from what is now Jordan.   Temple inscriptions show them as wearing their hair back in bags or turbans, which I've arbitrarily painted red in keeping with the general army palette.

3xAux

These figures are all from a Chariot Miniatures DBA 2.2 army pack.  The draft lists for DBA 3.0 are almost identical, except that they lose the distinction between 4Bd and 3Bd, so this is fine for 3.0, and the 3xBd units lend themselves to being played as "raiders" for 2.2+ players.  It works for everyone!

1/26b Trojans

This is the Trojan side of my Trojan War set (their Mycenaean opponents can be seen here).  I did these in reds, pinks, and yellows to distinguish them from the Mycenaeans, who use identical figures, but painted in blues and greens.  The color scheme comes from the Trojan Archer statue that they have recently recolored after finding traces with ultraviolet light.

1 x LCh/Bd (general), 3xLCh, 5xSp, 1x (Aux or Bd), 2xPs

The flocking for these--and the Mycenaeans--is lighter colored than my usual flocking, and includes more rocks.  This was the result of negotiations between my daughter (for whom I painted this), who wanted more green, and I, who wanted more sand and dirt.  In the end, I added tan sand and extra rocks to my usual green flocking to get this paler color.

Aeneas and his Dardanian Spearmen

 Personally, Aeneas is my favorite character, so I wanted to paint him.  I couldn't much in the way of description, except for his gleaming helment.  You can't see it in this picture, but I used a golden color instead of bronze for his helmet.  I also made a stand of spearmen with similar equipment and colors to represent his followers from Dardania, in what is now Southwestern Turkey.

The loser Paris

My daughter wasn't sure about clothing Paris in pink, but I was. How lame can you get, laying around smooching with Helen while your brother is out there fighting Achilles on your behalf?  I also painted Hector, with his distinctive plume of black horsehair atop his helmet, and Sarpendon in his gleaming armor.  Apparently the tin content (or something) is high in the part of Turkey where he came from, so the bronze from that area appears to gleam like gold--so I painted it that way. 

Next are the Trojan Spear.

A mix of Museum Miniatures and Old Glory 15mm

Finally the Amazons that fought on the Trojan side.  Apparently, they were historically armed with spear and shield like the men, but I happened to have some Black Raven 15mm Amazons with bows on hand.  Since this is a stand of Aux, I decided that it would do fine.

No naked amazons for my daughter's army, though.

Almost the same as the Mycenaeans, except for replacing 1xSp with either 1xBd for more ground-pounder strength or with 1x Aux for bad terrain strength.

1st Cacadores

These figures are for a guy who is doing Wellington's army by brigade, representing the 1st Cacadores during the early years of the war (in later years they changed hat styles and facing colors).

Old Glory 15mm Figures.

These were fun to paint.  Maybe because the top and bottom were both the same color, but they seemed like much less work than British redcoats.

I/26a Later Mycenaean

I painted this army for my daughter after she read the Iliad.  Between waiting for figures lost in the mail during the great blizzards of 2010-2011, and not wanting to deal with the chariots, it's taken almost a year and a half to finish--far longer than it should have.  At the same time, I also painted their Trojan opponents, which I will hopefully post soon.

After much searching, I found very little actual evidence of what color the Greeks or Trojans might have been wearing.  Since the army make-ups are almost identical, I decided to distinguish the two with color:  Greeks are in shades of green and blue, Trojans in shades of red/pink and yellow (in part I based the Trojans on the famous statue of a Trojan archer on which archeologists recently discovered the original colored paint.  In any case, here is the full army in battle array.

1xLCh/Bd (general), 3xLCh, 4xSP, 2x(Sp or Pk), 2xPs

For the four stands of Light Chariot, I wanted to use my daughter's favorite Homeric heroes.  Tracking down descriptions in the Iliad took a long time, but eventually I found something for each.  The first two are Ajax (her favorite) and Meneleus (not such a favorite, but easy to find an identifying characteristic).  Chariots and riders by Old Glory 15mm.

Red-Haired Meneleus and Ajax with his towering shield of bronze

Here is Diomedes, arguably the second best fighter in the Greek host (after Achilles, of course).

The bull on his shield is distinctive, but sort of googly-eyed.

Finally, here is Achilles (or Patroklos) holding his famous shield.  I painted this in abstract fashion: a blue stripe marked with white for the "river of ocean" around the outside, green with brown for the grazing cows layer, green with yellow for the layer of growing grains, gray for the layer of cities, and black with stars and a planet for the interior.

The bulk of the army are these stands of spears--warriors in the heroes' retinues.   These figures are split between Museum Museum (the similar looking ones with figure-eight shields) and Old Glory 15mm (the other ones).

Posing these guys was a challenge.

The army also includes two units of skirmishers, for which I used Museum Miniatures slingers.

Technically, the army only contains 2 stands of them instead of 4, but a mail mix-up left me with extra.

Here are the optional units.  The first one is of the dismounted option for the general's stand, converting it to a stand of blades.  The unique figure is Old Glory, the other three are Museum Miniatures.  Those two brands sure are a good fit, size-wise.

I took this from the back to show the well-sculpted musculature on the Museum Miniatures figures.

Finally, there are two stands which can be played as either Spear or Pike.  The Museum Miniatures figures in Dendra armor had extra-long spears, so I decided to use them and let the player decide which type they are in-game.

The colors are entirely fanciful, but that's the fun of doing such ancient armies.

Some of the local boys have read Homer, so maybe they'd be interested in using these for Game Night next month.

10mm Ancients: Early Swiss (IV/41)

A few weeks ago, I posted about my new 10mm Renaissance project, to begin with a few packs of Pendraken 10mm Swiss that I picked up on Bartertown in January.  Unfortunately, they are early Swiss, before they switched from halbreds to pikes, so these aren't properly Renaissance troops.  Still, I enjoyed painting them--and looking at them afterwards--that I've given the green light to buying more 10mm.  This is how they came out. 

Early Swiss DBA army (1V/41) done with Pendraken 10mm figures

The bulk of the army, of course, are units of halbrediers.  I did most of these in Swyz colors of red and white, with a minority in the blue and white of Lucerne.  Both cantons were part of the original confederation when they were fighting the Hapsburgs.  You can't see it in this shot, but on the solid red tunics I also painted a white cross on the back. 

The general's stand in the middle still needs his triangular Swiss Cross battleflag.   The standard bearer figure is actually an artillery crew member, but I thought it looked appropriate here.

The army can include up to two stands of skirmishers.  Historically, these were crossbowmen.  With 15mm figures these would only be two figures per stand, but doubling it seems to work well.

As you can see, I still haven't added magnetic strips to the bottom of these matte-board bases.

The final element of the army is a unit of Light Horse.  On first reading that may seem strange--Light Horse conjures images of Cossacks on the Steppe, not Swiss hiking through the Alps--but it actually was mounted crossbowmen.  Since they didn't stick around for melee combat, DBA models them as Light Horse elements.

The dude on the left is wearing an awful lot of armor for someone who doesn't intend to enter melee, don't you think?

I've also discovered an online retailer called Great Hall Games who carries all three 10mm lines I'd like to purchase: Pendraken, Old Glory (no, the other Old Glory), and Magister Militum, so I can avoid multiple shipping charges.  Currently I'm thinking of getting Italian Condotta and Hapsburg armies to fight my Swiss before I charge into the Renaissance.

By the way, observant viewers might have noted the base sizes are all identical. I used 40x20mm bases for all units so I could port them to a game of Warmaster.  With the Italian and Hapsburg armies I should just have enough to make a 1000 pt. Empire army.  Maybe some of the GW fanboys around would be interested in Warmaster, too.  Maybe.

SOLD: FIW or AWI Frontier Militia

These are 12 Old Glory 15mm Frontier Militia figures, mostly wearing floppy hats and hunting coats, but with a couple in jackets and alternate headgear.  As with the Indians I posted earlier, these are intended for skirmish gaming, individually mounted and each figure is unique in some way, either the pose or the color mix.  This is looking at the lot from eye level.

I really like the facial sculpting on these figures.   Mrs. Higglebottom is standing at the back, making sure the boys don't cause trouble. 

Here is a shot that shows figure backs a little more clearly.  While they aren't all identical, this gives you an idea of what they look like from all angles.

Not the best picture, I agree, but it shows what it needs to show.

In any case, I'm going to inquire with the person who bought my matching set of Indians, and if that doesn't work, put them on eBay.

UPDATE: Sure enough, he wanted them, so out the door they went. :)

British Guard Infantry

This is the first installment of British Peninsular War figures done on contract.  As royal units, guard regiments had blue facings and their drummers wore red coats instead of reversed colors.  The buyer will be basing them, so these pictures show the figures still on the paint strips.

Here is a closer shot of an officer, with his brass buttons.  :)  

In general, I like the paint job.  The only thing I might have done differently is use a different shade of red.   My old standby--Ceramcoat's Bright Red--ran out, and this shade has much better coverage than some others I tried.   It's good and red, but I figure that in practice, campaign uniforms would be duller.

UPDATE: On further reflection, I like the color for wargaming figures.  Normally when you look at 15mm figures from tabletop distance the colors sort of fade together, especially when they're packed close on a stand.  When I look at these guys from that distance, the red stays vivid, making good contrasts with the black and white of other parts of their uniforms.

10mm Renaissance

My newest folly is assembling a Renaissance-era army in 10mm.  Everything I've done so far has been 15mm, but in the course of trying to flesh out some 1980s era true-15s (as opposed to the 18mm figures in vogue now) these 10mm caught my eye.  From what I can see on the Internet, the 10mm scale offers both a "massed soldier effect" and a lower price--much lower, in some cases.

So when a poster at Fanaticus offered some leftover 10mm figures for the 15th century Italian Wars, I figured that would be a good way to put my toes in the water, so to speak.

The first thing I noticed was how small these figures are.  the picture below shows a comparison between a 15mm figure (a Dark Ages lancer by Essex) and a 10mm figure (a mounted crossbowmen by Pendraken).

The challenge will be downshifting the level of detail when painting, relying more on bulk than on individual figures for the desired effect.   Pictures to follow (eventually).

Big Blue Romans

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw this on ebay today: an Imperial Roman DBA army painted in Michigan maize and blue:

What a fun idea.  Technically it might work better with early Republican Romans, when there weren't uniform colors yet, but this guy's work is far too cool to pick nits with.  :)   Nicely painted, too.

SOLD: Leadpile Abatement 1/12

If I'm going to part with some of my beloved miniatures, I guess I can sell some unpainted ones too.  I'll start with this assortment of pre-AD Chinese, bits and piece that I'll never, ever get around to painting.  I saved the Tang Dynasty packs because I almost have enough for a complete DBA army, and I found some extra Sung packs that I could add to my current Sung army, but otherwise, out the door they go.

Ebay link here

SOLD: Painted 15mm indians FIW AWI 1812

My first ebay listing is up.  :)    I originally bought these figures and some AWI militia unpainted to sell, but the longer I hold on to them, the more reluctant I get, so there they go...

 

To visit the auction, click here

 

Some closer shots...

Anyone who followed my previous miniature blog might notice the better quality pictures.  Thanks Santa!

UPDATE: These went for $26--well more than expected.  Must be the new camera.  :)