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.