Essex phalangites

Another batch from the recent US deal. These are Essex phalangites which were quite nicely painted already. The pikes needed straightening out and tidying up, then it was a white highlight on the linen armour and a dose of the dip. I needed to paint up and add 7 other figures from my Old Glory command set (the gift that keeps on giving!) to make up the numbers.

And here's a wee size comparison to some other 15mm ranges.

Black Hat 15s:

Xyston 15s:

These guys will be handy for big Successor battles, even if they are a lot smaller than the Xyston...

A few more hoplites

More hoplites done. This batch is Xyston Spartans (you can see they have frosted a little under the matt varnish. Will need to hit them with the gloss to get rid of that), a few Old Glory command and 64 Black Hat later hoplites.

Black Hat are nice figures (and are cast with shield and spear), but are a bit smaller than the Xyston, as you can see here.

You can see from these photos that there's a bit of a drop off in quality paint-wise from the last batch. I think I'm a bit tired of painting hoplites! I might come back later and tidy up a few things.

Gifts from abroad

There was a lovely surprise that came with the postman today - a package from Mr. Hunt, all round good guy and blogger of Dulce et Decorum renown.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned here that an army I'd thought was finished was probably going to need a few extra reinforcements. Mr. Hunt very kindly got in touch, asked for my address, and has now sent me some 15mm Saxons to make up the numbers.

They are just the ticket: a nice variety of animated poses, and they will work very well as hero figures for my Saxon and Viking armies for Simon Miller's To the Strongest rules.

It was a very nice gesture, and I have a feeling that these are going to get a lot of table time.

Thank you Mr. Hunt!

Persians

Next off the painting conveyor belt is a bunch of Persian horse. These make a start on the Late Achaemenid army I have had languishing in tool boxes for about ten years.

These should really be fancier, but I can always come back later and add a little bit of decoration to the tunics.

For now I just want to make some progress in reducing the number of the boxes I have full of prepped and undercoated figures...

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These are mostly Old Glory 15s, with a couple of Essex in there as well.

It wasn't all plain sailing though - I managed to knock over and spill my decade old bottle of magic acrylic stain tonight, so I'm going to have to head down to the local hardware store tomorrow and see if they still stock any of the same brand, and hope that if they do, the formula hasn't changed!

#firstworldpaintingproblems...

As an aside, I've noticed that in the last calendar month I've managed to knock out 170 foot and 27 horse, which must just about be a record for me. I still have a couple of days to go, so might have to pull finger and get something more finished, just to make sure!

Roman Civil War armies review

I decided tonight for kicks to set up my Roman Civil War armies and see how they look on the new(ish) terrain tiles I've been working on now and again.

Worth a game, I reckon!

Samnites

Samnites. These guys have been a long time coming. They started out as some Strategia e Tattica figures I grabbed to make a unit or two for Sentinum, but after thinking that two units is a sad lot I ordered more from Old Glory to fill them out into a decent host.

Although I usually like the figures of both companies, for some reason these packs just rubbed me the wrong way. The Old Glories have an odd 'hoplite, forward!' pose where our man is head down, shield off to the side, and bursting forward eagerly. Naturally, his is the dominant pose in the pack.

Both sets are clumsily sculpted (or at least come out of the moulds in that way) and the greaves in particular are tricky to do without missing some bit you have to go back to later to touch up.

So, a bits and pieces mob, and a bits and pieces paint job. I've had these in some stage of go for about two years, and each time I opened the box and did a little bit I would get severely brassed off and then leave them.

There were also issues with colour choice and shield decoration policy that I couldn't quite settle.

They were like a stone in my shoe.

But I finally decided to fix them up, give them the dip, and just finish them, no matter how bad they looked. So here they are.

I'll do a proper shot after they are flocked, but this is my little celebratory signal to self that, to paraphrase Sir Edmund Hillary, we knocked the b******s off.

Whew!

A host of Romans

...and the painting is finally done. 16 units of 18 - with a few other bits and pieces as well - just waiting to have bases flocked. There aren't many better feelings in wargaming then getting an army off the painting trays!

Right, time to sit down with a beer and listen to a spot of cricket...

Speed Painting results

Here's a bit of a follow up to an earlier post inspired by the very talented  Monty, who blogs at 'Twin Cities Gamer', on experimenting with priming troops in a useful undercoat shade.

To recap, I'm painting up thorakitai (who I will also use as eastern levied Roman legionaries when needed) and went with a spray-primed brown - rather than my usual gray or white - as the base colour.

First step post priming was to colour the armour with dark iron and dry brush with silver (figures are Old Glory 15s, for reference).

Next I blocked in the base coats for the tunics (cream here) and the helmet plumes (a darkish red). Other figures in the unit use different colours, but I'm showing this one lot for consistency.

Next up was flesh (a mixture of peach and raw umber) and then the greening of the bases.

After this the scabbards and the baldricks were done and the helmets gone over with bronze and a Devlan Mud wash. 

Spear shafts were tidied up, shields drybrushed with both a base and a highlight, and the helmet plumes highlighted. The shields shown here are a muted brown, but others are done in purples, reds, yellows and greens.

It's now time for the finishing touches: spears are tipped with old silver and highlights are applied to tunics.

The lot is given a wash of Klear and Devlan Mud on the shields, tunics and flesh areas.

As a last step the spear support struts are cut off and the figures put onto their bases. A final coat of Klear and matt varnish will follow prior to flocking.

So, how did it go?

Well, I do like the results. I don't know if I saved a huge amount of time with this batch because there was a bit of trial and error - especially with the metallic areas - that I haven't shown in the write up. The key for me (as a very limited painter) is to pick a couple of things to emphasise and try to make them pop with highlights. I chose plumes and tunics for this bunch, and I reckon they came out all right. Another important thing for me is to think about the overall effect. I'm not sure that I got the shields quite right in this respect, but the predominantly white tunics and predominantly red helmet plumes will hopefully do enough to unify the lot as a group.

I was worried over the first wee while that they were looking a bit boring, but once the washes did their job and the highlights were on I was converted; so thoroughly in fact that I quickly sprayed up my next batch of figures in brown before the sun set!

Thanks to Monty for the example, and while I've a fair way to go to match his mastery of the technique I hope to use this method a few more times yet.

Getting back on the painting horse

Well, it's that time again. With the amount of painting I need to do matched only by an increasingly epic capacity to procrastinate, I need to pull finger and get started.

First thing to do is finish my Roman Civil War project. The cavalry and the blue army are done, so we're over half way there. All I need to do is paint up about 70 figures and touch up another 170 odd and all will be completed.

There's really no excuse not to do it!

But still, to concentrate on the trees rather than the wood, for the ordinary legionaries we should go something like this:

1) base coat the flesh areas
2) block paint shield backs, pila hafts and footwear brown.
3) give the armour, shield bosses, helmets and pila heads a black wash
4) do belts in a lighter brown and use this shade to also highlight other browns
5) base coat tunics, helmet crests and shields red
6) wash the armour again, this time in a mixture of black and Tamiya smoke
7) drybrush armour with silver
8) touch up and highlight belts
9) paint scabbards red-brown
10) paint sword hilts and shield bosses bronze
11) paint helmets - some bronze, some silver
12) highlight tunics and helmet crests
13) highlight shields
14) highlight flesh
15) paint pila heads silver
16) paint stands green

Then it will be two coats of Future/Klear followed by a matt varnish.

So, 19 steps to glory and a triumphal parade!

I hope to be able to report back with some progress in a week or so...

Pompeians done.

Well, it can be done - even after all motivation seems to have been lost and all inspiration gone, something can for some mysterious reason click!  The quick pace was mainly due to the fact that all but 76 of these were already painted, and so most just needed touching up and bringing into line.

The basing is to allow 16 'average' units of 18 men for  Lost Battles. They will be matched for Civil War battles by Caesarians having 16 units of 'veteran' units of 12, with a few extras to top some up to 'average' size as needed for larger battles against a common foe.

Nice to have another army done.

The cavalry will be drawn from my Gauls, Republican Romans, Numidians and, once they are painted, my Greek/Eastern types.

I'm going to be away for a month after this and don't expect to be able to blog much in that time, so will probably see you all in November at some stage.

Until then, cheers, and many thanks for all the encouragement you chaps have provided as I try to get back into the swing of things again.

Pompeians continue apace.

Am now a quarter of the way through the Pompeians (or, as required, the blue army). Still need to be flocked, obviously.

This is what's left to complete the blues. I hope to take advantage of my recent good run and get through them before I take off for NZ next week, but that may be a little optimistic. We'll have to see how the stocks of gin and soda water hold out!

And the Caesarians (or, as the case may be, the Red army) still to do. Pshaw! Almost finished ;-)

Breaking the duck

Well, it's been a very long while, but I've actually got a bit of painting done. Nothing to get especially excited about, but it's a start.

These are from the first batch of my late Republican Romans made up of Old Glory figures bought some time ago already painted from a TMPer, touched up, with command figures from the Quick Reaction Force range added in, and (eventually) to be brought up to strength with a few more OG figures I'll paint myself.

As you can see, the effect is intended to be one of mass rather than of superbly skilled painting. I'd like to say that is by choice, but I must face facts: I'm more workman than artist!


They've been sitting in a box for a long time. This is what they looked like before:

There is actually quite a bit of work needed to get them ready for basing. They were roughly done originally, with most having some obvious flaw (eg, flesh not painted on the arms, bottom of the tunic not painted, cheek guards of the helmet flesh and so on), but with flaws different on each figure. Also the small details were not done (belts, boots, scabbards, sword handles etc) so to standardize them takes quite a lot of time spent checking, sorting and touching them up individually to make sure that they all end up looking similar enough to go in the same unit.

The good thing is that I don't have to worry about cleaning them up or undercoating them, so on the whole it was worth it getting them like this rather than starting completely from scratch.

And this is how many are left from the original batch.

It feels good to have made a (small) start on them!

Shots of Sentinum

I was looking through the camera today and found some shots from a solo game of Sentinum I played in January.  It's a slow news day, so why not post some?

Game was, naturally, Lost Battles.

15mm Minifigs here, with command stands from Magister Militum.

Mix of Lancashire, Magister Militum, Old Glory, Tin Soldier and Xyston for the Samnite and Gallic foot

Miniatures Wars (from Strategia Nova) Romans, Miniatures Wars and Old Glory Samnites.

Old Glory Chariots, Xyston Gallic horse, Magister Militum Romans. 

I think we can see who won this!

Some notes on the whiteboard...