Norman Saga Warband

Over the last 2 weeks or so I worked up a 5 point Saga warband of Normans for a buddy from the club in exchange for a copy of the CCA Spartan expansion. Nice figs - these are Gripping Beast 28mm with LBM shield transfers.

Punic Wars commanders

The last of my Punic Wars stuff is here, 28mm command stands for Carthage and Rome, based for DBA. Figs are by Gripping Beast, shield transfers from VVV.

Punic ancients

Some miscellaneous stuff here, not a lot done in the last week while I was in Ottawa for grant selection duty. A few more stands of hastati, one of caetratus and a couple of stands of Italian allies. In the background is EvilCat.

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Triarii

Here are 6 bases of Gripping Beast Triarii for the MayDay game project. I've decided on a historical battle to base the scenario upon - Metaurus (207 BC) from the Second Punic War. A very important battle which saw the Romans defeat Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal Barca with his reinforcement army in the north of Italy. Hasdrubal's defeat (he lost his head too) spelled the eventual end of Hannibal's campaign in Italy.

28mm Principes

The Punic Wars project moves on, here are 18 Republican Roman Principes by Gripping Beast.

Hastati

First batch of Republican Roman heavy foot - here are 6 bases of Gripping Beast hastati. Shield decals by VVV turned out nice I think.

Italian allied cavalry

Here we have 28mm Gripping Beast allied Italian cavalry for my Punic Wars project. These were nice simple sculpts that painted up easily enough, shield transfers from LBM (again). To complete this project I still have to do a large number of Roman foot plus some elephants. Gettin' there!

Romans and Greeks

Thebans for a Plataea scenario I plan to run next week at the club, these are 1/72 Hat:

And some more 28mm Gripping Beast Punic Wars era Roman cavalry, as this project trundles along:

Casualty markers and Hannibal's veterans

I painted 8 stands of Carthaginian veterans for the Punic Wars project, and also dabbled with some ideas for casualty markers for Sword and Spear and perhaps other games.

The circle and square are the same idea - use numbers like a dial to record hits or strength remaining, the color coding dot could be used to signify heavy / medium / lights in Command and Colors. Shown here beside some 1/72 hoplites.

 Not sure which I like better - need to use larger lettraset characters on the round one.

I also considered using the marker as a dice caddy for Sword and Spear to mark both hits and activation dice status.

Then I noticed that bits of plywood leftover between the round bases were a nice star shaped - so I painted them red and put a number on them - presto casualty markers, shown here alongside just completed Gripping Beast 28mm African spearmen

And here around 3 bases of Hannibals veterans converted from Wargames Factory Caesarian legionnaires.

I'm leaning towards the red markers - any thoughts?

Sudanese and a new project: The Great Northern War

I finished a combined bow and spear unit of Old Glory Sudanese for the El Cid project- I am close to finishing the Almoravids and just need to finish off a few units of Christians.

And on a trip to Banff last week I stopped in at the Compustore in Red Deer where Will was having a big 1/72 sale. So I bought his entire Zvezda Great Northern War range to start a new project for Maurice. I'm starting with Swedes, here are the first batch of figs which I think came out very nicely. Mark wants to use 40mm frontages, which in my opinion will work better with 6 figs per base, double ranked. I based these first few figs 4 and 6 to a 40mm square- what do you think? Remember that a unit will be made of 4 bases (either 16 or 24 figs)?

Spanish knights and next DBA campaign map

I worked up 15 Gripping Beast Spanish knights and jinetes, I like these figs. I went with a red/ochre/blue colour theme (very Spanish-looking) to represent liveried otherwise organized groups of Hidalgos. El Cid gaming is still a few units away, but in the meantime they will serve as two additional units of Norman knights in next week's Hail Caesar game

I quite like this sculpt:

I also assembled a new map for our next DBA campaign (1/72 classical era) using Mighty Empires tiles. This is such a great product.

Next up: some ECW command stands to finish off, maybe a DBA battle report after we kick off our campaign at EDBAG tomorrow night.

Mercenary Turkomen

I just finished a unit of mercenary horse archers for the El Cid project. These are Turkomen from Gripping Beast that were lovely to paint.

They will likely serve in a Moorish army led by this dark chap in the foreground who is a Almoravid general or emir:




Likely will be quiet on the blog for a couple of weeks while I am off to Switzerland and Germany for some seminar and conference travel. Just when the weather here is finally nice... :(