Did You Say You Want More Iberians?

I got a few more of my Ancient Iberians done during the week. These figures are taking me a bit longer than normal because of the shields. Choosing to do them by hand is really slowing me down and making the job of painting them a bit of a chore. I don't usually put a lot of detail in 15mm, I just do enough to make them look good en mass. I wish I had opted to go for decals but... In for a penny, in for a pound. I'm painting them and that's that!

I wasn't sure about the shields on these guys. I wasn't too keen on the cavalry using the scutum (large shield) as it seemed a bit off and I thought they'd be better with the lighter (caetra) shields. Unfortunately, there is very little information available online so I went back to my, somewhat vague, Osprey book.  Reading through that tome of wisdom once again, I read a passage where it stated that the caetra was the most popular shield for all cavalry. So, in my newly enlightened state, I decided to go 50/50 on the shields.

Once again, I decided to base them on 80x40mm bases. I'm not sure if this is a good move or not. I do like the look of them and I also like that they are less fiddly when handling them. But I don't know... Maybe I'm just stuck in the DBA/M mind set. I want them to be versatile for any set of rules and the DB[insert relative initial] style still seems the most prevalent way of basing ancients.

This is a commander. He's from the Iberian Nobles pack. The Standard Bearer set comes with standard bearers (shock!) but no actual standards. To get them I need to put in another order and wait for them to arrive from Scotland. I decided that a bit of greenstuff and some carefully selected swear words were the quicker option.

Because I'm basing the infantry 11 to a base I have left over figures. These come in handy. In To The Strongest you can attach Champions or Heroes (I can't remember what they're called) to some units. They give a unit a one off bonus. Off the top of my head I recall that you can use the champion to re-flip a card to give the unit a combat bonus or to get them motivated and moving. They might also do other things that I can't remember. In any games, I prefer to use single figures instead of tokens where I can. So here you go. A couple of Iberian champions.

So they're slowly coming along. I've doubled my cavalry and next I think I need to make a bit more infantry. We'll see what happens (no doubt I'll get distracted).

It's Time For a Holiday In Iberia

 As implied and mentioned in previous posts, I'm back to painting my Ancient Spanish ~ Iberians to be exact. If you're anything like me, I get excited about a new project. I do a bunch of research and I look up the various figures available. I look at rules and army lists and work out what I want. Then I place an order and I wait for the figures to arrive and then I go on a painting blitz and try to get the whole lot painted and ready for the table.

This is what I've finished up to date:

However, this time around my regular method got stymied by The Plague and my order got stuck in customs and ended up taking over three months to arrive, by which time my enthusiasm waned and wandered off into other directions. Unfortunately this meant that I've been slow to paint this army.

But I started getting back into them and this is what I've recently finished:

Light Cavalry: I intend to make at least another two stands of these if not another four. I think light horse should make up the bulk of the cavalry. It seems right.

Noble Scutarii: Just one stand of these. They are the cream of the infantry and could really be considered the general's bodyguard. I have a few of these figures left over and these will be mounted on single bases so I can use them as "Heroes" or markers, etc...

Balearic Slingers: Just one stand of these for the time being. I could add another stand, I suppose. I have a few left over & I think I have a few standard Hellenic slinger figures sitting in a box that could help make up a base.

I've now have enough of these chaps done to call them an allied contingent for whoever needs them but I have enough figures still waiting to make an entire army. The shields are a pain in the arse to paint and they slow me down considerably. I wish I'd decided on decals but it's too late for that now.

Also...

Just to show that I haven't entirely moved away from fantasy: Here's a giant bug.

I've had this for a while and if I recall correctly it's from Khurasan Miniatures from their 15mm Sci-Fi range. The body is a single piece of resin & the legs and lower mandible of the jaw are metal. For a 15mm creature it still measures up as a pretty formidable foe for a 28mm Barbarian. Although from the angle below, it looks a bit more like a crab than a bug.

More Iberians ~ Alternative Basing

I've painted up a few more Iberians during the week. After doing the initial batch of scutarii I found I wasn't happy with the basing. They looked far too neat and tidy with three to a base in nice neat ranks. As tribal warriors, I felt that they needed to look a bit less regimented. 

After asking some questions on forums and deciding what rules I would be using them with, I decided to put them onto IMPETVS style bases (80 x 40mm) single bases. I did the same with the new figures I painted too.

I prefer this basing. I think it looks better and it will make moving individual units easier too. I expect to be playing To The Strongest and Sword & Spear with them and both sets of rules work well with 4xDBA base size as a standard unit. I will never play DBA/M so it's really quite pointless for me to base my units in such a manner.

I like them and I now have the nucleus of an army done. Next up, I think I'll paint some cavalry before getting back to more infantry.  

Scutarii - Another benefit is that I've only put 11 figures on the base which saves me a painting a few extra figures and makes them look a bit irregular.

Caestrati ~ (light infantry) I only used 6 figures instead of 8 which means I will probably be able to make an extra 2 units with the figures I've purchased. Another bonus is that I can paint a 6 figure unit quicker than an 8 figure unit.

And here is all that I've done so far, including a command base.

It's an Iberian Thing

I bought myself a birthday present (from my wife). I ordered it in August so that it would have plenty of time to get to me by early October because it had to travel from Xyston Miniatures in Scotland all the way to Melbourne in Australia. I hadn't realized the extent of just how awful our Autralian Post had become. Couple that with my suspicion that the UK Mail sent it by sea (apparently COVID 19 affects arimail) and it didn't arrive. 

Until Now!

On Saturday, we came home from a shopping trip and there, sitting on the door step, was a package that looked suspiciously like the same packaging used by Xyston Miniatures. Oh Lordy! My birthday present had arrived - a month late and three months in the mail - But there it was!

So what was this bountiful cornucopia that arrived on my doorstep? It's a bunch of ancient Spanish ~ Iberians to be exact. I took time to decide on my next ancient army and settled on Iberians because they fought for and against just about everyone for a few hundred years. Against Rome they fought with Hannibal, by themselves or along with other Spanish peoples. They fought with Sertorius, they fought in the earlier Sicilian wars, they fought everywhere. And they were good.

So in the end, versatility won the day. I bought enough in one order to make a pretty decent sized army with plenty of infantry, skirmishers, heavy and light infantry as well as command.

I got to painting them straight away and since Saturday I've managed to paint up 8 bases of scucatri (their basic medium infantry). The first few bases were a bit difficult because I wasn't sure what to do with the shields. In the end I looked up some pictures and pretty much just did what I want. They're nothing special but they look okay.

They'll look nice and colourful on the table when I get the lot done. They're 15mm so I can paint them pretty fast and expect I'll have the army finished by the end of the year. I'm looking forward to painting the cavalry but I want to get some light infantry done first.