Ventures into the leadpile and other matters

Now that I seem to have got myself back into a bit of a painting routine* and have nearly finished my latest batch of figures, I've naturally started to look at a) what to prep next and b) what next to buy. 

I would dearly like to get my Achaemenid Persians to the point that they could be fielded for a Lost Battles scenario or two, but it would also be an asset to have more Hellenistics painted up. Greek City State and Successor scenarios make magnificent spectacles, but Plataea, Issus and Gaugamela would look fairly presentable as well.  

What to do.

Well, I had a look at the lead pile, or at least the most relevant portions of it.

Hellenistics

Geez, that's a lot to paint... 

The Persians

And so is that... 

For the Persians, ironically enough, what sticks out is what I don't have. There are no Immortals or Sparabara in the pile, and I want to be able to cover Early Achaemenids as well. I've placed a test order with Potbelly Miniatures at the suggestion of Mike, author of the excellent Bucellarii blog, and am also going to look at putting in an order at Museum for some of their Z range Persians. Right at this moment I am probably more interested in gaming the Persian invasion of Greece than I am in Alexander's expeditions (for which I have, unpainted, the Persian figures already). I don't however want to rush in and buy figures that may not fit with the rest of the collection. I will get a few samples and make sure I'm going to be happy with what I do finally order.

As always, the painting focus is on economy of action: the quicker I can get to playing status the better. Coming off painting Libyan foot, more phalangites (for Raphia and the bigger Successor battles) is tempting - it's basically the same colour scheme but with pikes - but that is also the challenge: would painting ennui await? 

While economy of action is all well and good, at some point, with any army, you simply have to knuckle down and do the work. I think that's about where I'm at with the Persians. I have quite a few skirmishers, archers, Egyptian spearmen and cavalry done already, but nowhere near enough to field a Lost Battles army. If I want to make decent progress I need to just sit down and do it.

That said, at the moment I think I will prevaricate, prep some Greek horse, and see what the new orders look like when they arrive.

One of the things I have to be wary of (and seeing the huge amount of lead in the Hellenistic pile above provides proof!) is a tendency towards the never-ending army syndrome. For a variety of reasons, I buy figures for armies that are, by most reasonable measures, finished. A sensible person would be devoting their dosh and time to working on their other armies that are not. 

But who said that you have to be sensible in wargaming? 

State of my 15mm Ancient-era armies.

Complete:

Polybian Romans (x2). Marian Romans (x2). Gauls. Iberians. Early and Later Carthaginians. Macedonians/Successors (x1.5). Latins/Samnites.

Incomplete but fieldable for some scenarios or as contingents:

Hoplite Greeks. 

Fieldable as contingents, or for half-sized games:

Parthians. Numidians. 

Awaiting the brush:

Achaemenid Persians. Second Successor army. Polybian Romans (to replace some figures I'm not happy with). Second hoplite Greek army.

Looking at this, it is clear what I need to do: just get on with the Persians, and throw in some Successors / Greeks in small batches every now and then for a change.

 *at the cost, sadly, of my guitar-playing routine!

Back on the horse(s)

Well, I stopped procrastinating, rearranged the garage, bought myself a lamp, and started prepping some Greeks for the Mantinea battle day project. I've jumped into cavalry and Theban hoplites first. The figures are a reminder of just how lovely the Xyston figures in this range are - beautifully sculpted, characterfully posed, and nicely proportioned; just slightly north of average for 15mm, they are not yet at the giant stage that the Hellenistics became - but also of how much of a pain it is to drill out hands for spears. 

The other problem of course it that they are intimidating. For a limited painter such as myself there is always the feeling that you won't be able to do them justice. 

Garage prep space.

But making a start is the thing. 

In other news I succumbed to an artfully placed ad while browsing TheBookDepository and ordered Undaunted Normandy. It arrived on Saturday (along with my Landmark Caesar, which is just as good as I'd hoped) and I opened it up for a wee test run on Sunday.

The first scenario in the game booklet

The first thing you notice is that the components look a lot nicer on the table than they do in photos. I was impressed enough to almost go and order the expansions on the strength of the look and feel alone. Better sense prevailed however, and I decided that I would force myself to discover whether I actually liked the game before ordering anything more (radical idea, I know!). 

How is the game? Well, I must preface my comments with the caveat that while I love the idea of squad level WWII games, in practice I mostly find them ho-hum. This one might turn out to be all right. It has a card management aspect to it that I think could be quite enjoyable with the right opponent. Solo it lacks a bit, but then that is true for most games. 

The essence of the game seems to be to build up the cards in your draw deck so as to allow you to string together move and fire sequences (or fire and move sequences, if you prefer) that will put your opponent under pressure. Interestingly, when you fire and hit an opponent's piece, you don't remove the piece, you remove one of the cards which could activate that piece. The piece is only removed when there are no accessible cards for it remaining.

So there is a natural attrition there, but it takes place in the card decks, not on the board itself. Your pieces become less able to act the more they are hit (i.e. there are fewer cards left in the deck left with which the piece can be activated), and the more pieces move, the more undesirable cards are introduced into the deck, thus making it less likely that you'll be able to pull the cards you want when you want them. This is presumably a mechanism to represent the difficulty of coordinating effectively over longer distances.

Pleasingly, Undaunted doesn't have those overpowered 'heroic leadership' pieces which seem to drive so many tactical WWII games. Leadership is abstracted into allowing you to choose cards to put in your deck, and is not the old '+2 to hit when Sergeant Skegg is stacked with your MG squad' type arrangement. 

Not an heroic NCO in sight!

I only played through about five or six turns, but will do a proper review when I've had the chance to mangle my way through a couple of games. 

A good weekend, then! I hope any readers who've got this far also had a productive Saturday and Sunday.

Cheers! 

Aargh! It's that time again...

I really, really, really hate painting fancy shield patterns. Not only is it time consuming and labour intensive, but I'm pretty much hopeless at it.  Probably the only thing I'm worse at is applying decals.

It's one of those things though you just have to sit down, take a deep breath, and do. 'Character-building' as they used to say...

Speed painting ancients experiment (1)

I'm trying out a new painting technique espoused rather convincingly by Monty of "Twin Cities Gamer" fame. Basically, the technique involves undercoating the figures in a useful shade that will form a decent proportion of their final colour.

I've done this before, but only for horses; this will be the first time to actually try it out on the men.

Let's see how it goes, but please accept my apologies in advance for the dodgy photos. I'm using the iPad and haven't really worked out how to take decent shots with it yet.

1) I've gone for a desert yellow for these chaps and their mounts. I think a nice mixture of wash shades over these will put the C in camel.

2) Brown for these thorakitai which I am going to paint up in Roman colours so I can use them as eastern recruits for my Roman Civil War project (yes, you've guessed it - I'm about 30 figures short, and I don't really want to put the project off yet again while I wait for more figures to arrive!).

3) Basing up the camels immediately. This has already shaved two steps off my normal method.

It will probably be a few days before I come back to these as I'm doing a big push on the Romans you can see in the background, but I think we've made a reasonable start - three steps in already for the camels, and two for the thorakitai!

Gauls and cricket...

With the test match on at Lord's tonight I've been finishing the prep for the last of my Gallic infantry as I don't want to leave the computer for the painting room.  Shame that New Zealand has thrown away a good chance to build a first innings lead, but credit must go the the English bowlers and to the approach of their batsmen in the second innings.

Anyway, the Gauls must be getting annoyed with me talking about cricket, and I do want them to perform on table for me, so I'd best shut up!

Work in Progress - Seleucid Cataphracts

I've finally started work on these Seleucid cataphracts I got from QRS in 2011.  I have 32 of them to do but am starting off with 16 as I hope to get a unit finished in time for my game on Friday.  They are lovely figures, but need quite a lot of flash removed to make them so, which is one reason it's taken me so long to get around to prepping them.  I have sussed out a system for the flash now though, so each one takes only three or four minutes of chopping and slicing instead of ten!

Anyway, enough grumbling.  Here they are:

You can see that they have some nice detail and I think they will be very nice to paint (even if they aren't much fun to prep!).

Getting back into the swing of things

With summer and its excessive humidity fast approaching time is running out for my annual spring priming session.  I did however manage to sneak in a couple of hours with the file, pin vise and glue this afternoon, and have made some reasonable progress with my Xyston Gallic cavalry. 

It took a bit of work to get them to fit neatly on the horses but I think they'll look quite impressive once painted up.  There is a nice variety of poses and they should do the business for the Punic, Gallic and Roman Civil wars.

Well, back to the workbench!

Bits and Pieces.

Summer is just around the corner so with what little hobby time I've had recently it's been a race to get as many figures prepped and primed as possible before the humidity sets in.

I decided to get my 'odds and ends' out of the way first, mostly extra Spanish tribal types and Punic citizens for my Carthaginian army.  Figures are from Chariot (Magister Militum), Corvus Belli and Old Glory.  As it turns out, there were about 200 of these extras!  I needed to give the Carthaginians a touch up anyway as some of the original painting I did on them was pretty rough, so this will give me a good chance to improve them as I expand the army.

Also prepped are the remainder of my Strategia e Tattica Romans, while a start has been made on the Old Glory/Xyston Persians and the Xyston Greeks.  The first batch of hoplites can be seen in the top box.  It's fortunate that I'm a beer drinker, or there would be nowhere to put all these fellows...

I'm also quite pleased to have picked up some bargain boardgames recently.  Hopefully I'll be able to convince my wife to give them a try with me before the new baby arrives...

The wargamer's spring

Spring weather is starting to settle in here in Japan now and it is my favourite season of the wargaming year - prep time!  This not-at-all-onerous process involves sitting down in a cramped airless space to cut and file excess lead off a huge pile of figures, then to wash them - making sure that those which require horses can sit upon them fairly comfortably and that those which require shields and weapons affixed have them so affixed - and finally to put them on strips of cardboard in readiness for spray undercoating when I can get some time and good weather.

So far I've cleaned and prepped a hundred Xyston Spartans, a hundred Old Glory Persian archers and slingers, a hundred more Strategia e Tattica Romans, twenty-odd horse archers from OG and Essex, and there are a number of large boxes and full carry-cases to go. 

Well, it's the price we pay for buying so many figures throughout the better part of the year, I suppose :)

It little profits that an idle hand
At this grey desk, among these loaded shelves,
Matched with an aged knife, I cut and carve
Unequal lengths out of a leaden race,
That bend, and break, and fall, and know not me....

(with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Prime horseflesh

Today dawned bright and fine, but I felt a little on edge.  How early would my wife want to hang the washing out?  How long should one reasonably leave superglue to dry?  Would I have time to spray some test figures, and could I get away with taking out the rubbish after lunch? These questions and more were on my mind.

I went back to sleep.

An hour later, with my wife taking one girl to preschool and the other toddling around in the living room, I got out the superglue and affixed riders to horses and shields to arms as needed.  When finished, my little beer box of goodies looked like this:

When my wife returned, I hurried outside with a few cans of spray paint before she could start pulling singlets and socks out of the washing machine. 

With test figures in the foreground (who says you don't need 24 Old Glory slingers?) and no classes until mid-afternoon, I was all set to go.

I took a little moment to reflect.  The time had finally come - a whole four months after my last spray-priming episode - to farewell the nightmare humidity of summer and welcome some perfect priming weather . 

It didn't really matter what the figures were, but just for the sake of completeness I'll include the list: horses and drivers for some Magister Militum scythed chariots, and a recently acquired Essex Norman DBA army. 

Fifteen minutes later, my beer box looked like this:

And what a beautiful sight it was.

A short while later I managed to sneak into the little hobby room for an hour to clean up another Essex DBA army which I hope to prime tomorrow.  And yes, the army was Saxons.  Who else could round out such a fine hobby morning so appropriately?