First painted figures of the year

It's been a while coming but a recent surge in motivation aided and abetted by the new magnifying lamp has seen a few new troops ready to hit the table.

8 velites from Miniature Wars, and from the Xyston Greek pile 16 skirmishers, 12 light cavalry, 27 heavy cavalry and a general. There are also some Xyston Spartan cavalry with hamippoi in frame, but I am not counting those. They were painted last year - it's just taken me six months to flock the bases!

Next on the list is more hoplites. After that it will likely be either Persians or the remainder of my Successor pike. 

But I do have large piles of Crusaders and Saracens and Hundred Years War English and French which could make a change of direction. We shall see!

Greek light cavalry - Xyston

 Another few figures finished. More Greeks, Xyston again.

Next batch of figures

I had previously harped on here about how keen I was to next get stuck into painting some Persians. Well, so much for that: this next batch (due for magic wash tomorrow) is Greek cavalry and hamippoi of the Theban variety. 

Xyston figures. My goodness, they are a treat to paint. I am a workman, not an artist, so am not able to quite do them justice, but even so, they are wonderful to work with. They do take a bit of prepping, mind....

I'm also working on some 3d printed elephants and from the Xyston pile have another 50-odd Greek cavalry and 80-odd Theban hoplites prepped. 

Successor beasts from Potbelly. Drybrushing underway.

With work extremely busy at the moment but without much tangible to show for it it has been nice to come back home to practical hobbying and feel like you are getting somewhere in at least one aspect of your life!

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.

Xyston Greeks and Hypaspists finished

My first batch of 15mm figures for the year has just been completed and flocked. As recent posts have suggested, they are Greeks, with a few extra hypaspists to bring the tiny force I had up to a full unit of 16.

These are all Xyston figures and are intended to provide a force of 'generic' Greeks who can be used as anyone. I have plenty of Thebans and Spartans (most still unpainted, sadly!), but you need a bit of variety and flexibility in your Greeks, and these will go some way to offering that versatility.

There's actually quite a nice story behind these figures. Years ago I'd taken advantage of Brookhurst Hobby's ongoing clearance sale on their early Xyston stock to pick up tonnes of unarmoured hoplites, and lots of Spartans and Thebans. I was dreadfully short of armoured hoplites though as they'd all gone by the time I heard about the sale. Anyway, the figures arrived and all got filed away for use when I got around to painting them.

A few years later by chance I found a chap who had a bunch of Xyston figures he was trying to get rid of. They were painted and based, but not quite to finished standard, and he was letting them go at a very good price. They were just what I was looking for, and this fellow being a great guy to deal with was happy to send them over to me here in Japan with no problem at all. The upshot was I ended up with about 50 mostly painted armoured hoplites, which, when I added in my unarmoured and a few other bits and pieces, were great incentive to get cracking on this contingent.

They are finally done and it's nice to feel that I've been able to do justice to another fellow's project as well as to my own.

Who could that handsome balding hero (albeit no longer in the first flush of youth) with a A on his shield be?

A teeming mass of humanity...

So a most satisfying bunch to have ready for action. This means I now have 13 units of Xyston hoplites of various stripes as well as 5 others from different manufacturers. Almost getting to gameable territory!

Last of the Gauls

And so the last of the Gauls are done. I don't know if people have ever experienced an antipathy build up over a period of time towards a particular sculpt in an army you are painting, but, in this army, it did. There were two particular sculpts - and four others not far behind - that I grew to absolutely hate. It made painting this army a pretty bad experience, and is a large part of why these last few units have taken so long to do. By the end I just didn't care very much (and it shows) - it was simply a matter of gritting teeth, slapping paint on and getting them finished.

But they are done, and that's that.

You may notice the singly-based figures at the rear. I was planning to throw the dominant sculpt you see there out, but decided in the end that I would condemn it to eternal markerhood. But that might change if I could ever bring myself to paint another 50 Gauls to replace them all. I would get a lot of pleasure out of stamping on them....

But that's 300 infantry and 50 cavalry in total now, so enough for my Lost Battles needs.

Xyston phalangites

Phew, the latest batch - Xyston phalangites - is done, and there is now enough pike to cope with Paraitakene for Battle Day 2018.

Oops, looks like a couple of the sarissa need a wee touch up...

W.I.P and other happenings.

I'd been planning on doing a solo game over the weekend, but it didn't happen. Instead, I've been beavering away on a batch of Xyston 15mm pike.

They're almost done, but are proving to be quite a lot of work. It's actually the first batch of phalangites I've painted myself: the first bunch of 200 was done by Fernando in Sri Lanka. I think I'll appreciate this lot more having painted them myself, and I'll also be forever grateful to Fernando now knowing how much work must've gone into the other batch!

So this is why I used a painting company first time around!

Just for my own records, this is the painting process (please feel free to skip to the next section!):

1) Prep, drill out hands, attach shields, undercoat in light grey.
2) Wash metal bits with dark brown ink wash or Tamiya smoke.
3) Block in flesh and do bases green.
4) Undercoat linen armour in Turner Acryl Gouache Grayish Green.
5) Do tunics in Turner Light Blue.
6) Do back of shields, belts, scabbards in Turner Burnt Umber.
7) Do waist band with Turner Crimson
8) Do shields in Steel.
9) Highlight linen armour with Turner White.
10) Do helmet feathers for officers in Crimson or Mixing Purple.
11) Highlight Crimson with Permanent Red.
12) Do metal areas in Turner Antique Bronze.
13) Wash flesh and metal with my brown dip.
14) Nervously attach pikes (previously undercoated and sprayed brown).
15) Highlight shields and spear tips with silver, helmets with gold.
16) Give a gloss / semi-gloss spray varnish.
17) Klear / Future wash.
18) Matte varnish.

Other things I've been doing include finishing off an overdue book review for Slingshot and doing the odd turn for a couple of ongoing play-by-email games using Vassal.

The games are the Age of Sail game Flying Colors by GMT, which I'm playing with my Italian mate Andrea, and the WWI Tannenberg game A Victory Complete by MMP, with my mate up in Kobe, Pat.

I don't really know a great deal in depth about either period, but am certainly learning a bit more through the games.

Anyway, that's all for now.

A few more figures finished

And some more painted up from the leftovers box. This time a mix of Tin Soldier and Xyston 15mm Gauls (with one Old Glory figure in there as well, I believe). These are from a long-stalled project. Still five more units to paint, and it's hard work, because, a) I don't like painting Gauls b) my painting style has changed a bit since I did the first eighteen or so units of these and this latest batch is an unhappy compromise between the old and the new and c) I'm becoming less and less of a fan of the Tin Soldier figures.

Oh well, only a few more units to go. I wonder if I can get through them!

I think the thing might be to do a Caesar in Gaul game and see if that can't motivate me for the last stretch.

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!

Painting spree: Crusaders and Thebans

With 2016 winding down there has been a flurry of hobby room activity as I frantically try to improve my painting total for the year.

Crusaders of the Miniature Wars range from Italy:

Easy to prep and nice to paint. Spears were a little spindly, but life's too short to bother replacing them with wire (MMV, of course).

Xyston Thebans:

A bit of a mission to prep, and I had real painter's block with these. It was the shields that were the problem; I just couldn't paint a satisfactory club for love or money. In the end, I decided to mix symbols and just get them painted. A few snakes, a few goblets, a few minotaurs, some clubs that were less atrocious than others, a few plain coloured, and there they are. I'm not very happy with them but a bit of flock and a game or two and I'm sure they'll grow on me.

First Spartans

Have finally completed a few more of the many hundreds of 15mm Greek figures I have about the place. Here we have the first 48 Spartans. This is a gray undercoat, block paint, acrylic dip, highlight job. Pretty quick and easy. I do have decals for the shields, but after considering the amount of hassle it would take to apply them I thought doing the lambda freehand was a better idea.

Figures are Xyston. Very nice to paint, though a bit of a pain to prep.

For my own records, here is the painting process.

Spartan unamoured hoplites:

Undercoat gray.
Do hair and beards with dark brown.
Tamiya smoke on helmets, spear tips and any greaves.
Use Tamiya black line on shields to bring out edging.
Block in tunics with crimson or carmine.
Block in flesh.
Shield backs and footwear brown.
Spear shafts in a different shade of brown.
Base green.
Clean up any spills on flesh or tunic areas.
Do belts and scabbards.
Antique bronze on helmets, shields, greaves.
Antique silver on spear tips, swords.
Brush on brown acrylic 'dip'. Clean up excess with kitchen paper.
Highlight tunics with bright red, highlight flesh on faces, elbows, knees.
Three step lamba on shelds: Deep red, red, bright red.
Highlight bronze areas with gold.

Armoured hoplites:

Use the same process except that the linen armour is highlighted white, washed with a black dip, and then highlighted again. I wasn't happy with how the linen came out; I really need to find a better white.

A little painting progress

It's been a while since I've had the brushes out, but as the year winds down (and after an invigorating tidy of the hobby room) I've pulled finger and tried to get a few things finished up to boost my 2015 painting tally.

At the moment I've got a selection of Companions, Thessalians and Xystophoroi (all Xyston 15mm figures) on the go. I can't quite remember the reasoning behind trying to put them all together in the one mass, but I'll worry about that later...

Anyway, these are still in a reasonably early stage of completion, but as I'd used a brown undercoat, I am using this bunch to experiment with the colours that will work best with it. So far I quite like the results, though the Coat d'arms chestnut wash has not worked well at all. This is not poor old Coat d'arms's fault though: in my zest for experimentation I simply forgot that a wash needs to be darker than its base-coat to be effective!

But enough blathering. Here are a few work-in-progress shots.

Red gray with a lilac highlight (central figure) seems to work quite well on a cloak.

The lion skin is almost there; needs a little more dapple, but the Coat d'arms flesh wash does a great job.

Attempt at a white horse. It will probably almost do.

The chesnut wash on the horse. Almost, but not quite right... It's become an inverse highlight, so I'll need to drybrush with a red-brown to fix that (or else do over with a darker wash)

This chap is pretty much done, but I still want to do a little more on the animal skin.

I've enjoyed it and have worked out a few useful paint combinations. Hopefully I'll manage to get these and the other twenty-odd in the batch done before the new year, but I've said that kind of thing before!