Project: One Week - One Army. Part 3

To confess a defeat is never easy, but sometimes inevitable. The weekend was filled with work, not just painting, but also making scenery (not for me, so I unfortunately forgot to make some pictures).

At the beginning everything looked good. I deflashed my miniatures and made some minor conversions. Note the red spears of the cavalry and triairii. They are made of brooms and are much more durable than the soft plastic spears. The legionaries kept their pilum, because it's much shorter and is very detailed.

The next step was priming. I primed my miniatures in GW skull white, as one should always work with bright colours when using the army painter dip. The horsemen are missing on that picture.

I decided to start with the main bunch of the army, the legionaries. This meant painting 24 similar miniatures. Although I saved time by working on so many figures at once it was also very exhausting and sometimes frustrating. It took me all saturday and sunday to complete them. The picture on the left shows them in WIP status.

Even though I had a plan, I did not so much on miniatures monday and tuesday. Yesterday evening I applied the dip at last. They need to dry today. After that I'll white their shealds and put on the decal. Then they need to be varnished and based.

I failed my project. It started good, but I underestimated the work and my very own motivation and working speed. I didn't even finished 24 miniatures, not to speak of the whole army. This is of course a bit disappointing.

But I'm an optimist and always look on the positive things in life. The legionaries are nearly finished, the most work is done. I have never painted so many miniatures in such a short amount of time. The army as a whole is pushed a big step forward. And I'm motivated to get the rest done. So, in the end, not everything failed.

Project: One Week - One Army. Part 2

I'm very busy with my project and don't even find any time to write on my blog! So here's a short update:

I removed the paint on some miniatures using oven cleaner. It works well with badly primed soft plastic miniatures, but took some time too.

 

 

 

No paint left

Working space. I sit on the left, my friend on the right.

Cleaning the miniatures after deflashing.

I'll report more later!

Project: One Week - One Army. Part 1

Hello and welcome on my blog!

This time I want to start a project and share it with you. The title is, as you may have seen, 'one week - one army'. To be more precise: I want to paint a polybian Roman army for DBA in one week, starting today the 24th of January 2013. I'll show the whole way, from deflashing, priming, painting, dipping, finishing and basing. First I have to admit that I already cheated because I have done two elements of skirmishers (called psiloi in DBA) in November. 

The background of my project is the following: a friend and I want to present a participation game on a wargames convention (the Do or Dice in northern Germany, 14th April 2013). Our theme will be the (first) battle of Ausculum 279 BC, which was fought between Pyrrhos of Epiros and the Roman republic. We have enough Greeks and Macedonians, but no Roman army! So my will hopefully visit me one the weekend and we both will only do one thing - painting (and probably some other hobby stuff as well).

Romans of the Pyrrhic wars. Picture from Johnny Shumate.

1. The beginning

I want to start with the DBA army list for polybian Romans. It requires: 1 cavalry (general), 1 cavalry, 6 blades (principes and hastati), 2 spears (triairii), 2 psiloi (velites), 1 camp. This means in miniatures: 6 horses, 6 horsemen, 24 legionaries, 8 spearmen, 4 skirmisher and the camp which will be made of 3 tents and 4-8 miniatures (civilians etc.).

My manufacturer of choice is Zvezda because they have everything I need and look very good. For the infantry I take this set. The cavalry is taken from this set. Civilians in the camp are taken from here. I maybe also add some miniatures from this HäT set to the scene. The tents are made from Rusus. I bought them on the Tactica last year (hey are missing in his shop).

The first step will be deflashing. After that I'll remove the paint, as some miniatures were painted before, and wash all of them properly. Then I'll prime them all with GW skull white.

Blowing off the dust... with pictures!

That's exactly what I'll do now - blowing off the dust of this blog. But of course I have my reasons for my neglect. I had to move, because my girlfriend finished her studies and became an assistant teacher in England. So we had to give up our flat and now I'm living for some time alone. Despite that, I'm in a very hot phase of my master thesis and don't have so much time writing my blog or shooting some photos (which, in fact, takes most of the time when making a blog). However I do paint a lot, because I don't have to do much else in the evening, but that has its positive side too - I can eventually finish some stuff. I'll try to make some new pictures, but my girlfriend took her camera with her, so I have to use an older one.

 Besides the things mentioned above, I also took a week off, visiting my girlfriend. We were in Sheffield, which isn't so fancy, but nice though. We visited York, a lovely place with some history and a big church. Of course I'd to check a wargaming shop - you can't go to the motherland of wargaming without doing so! I was in the wargames emporion, which was a very fine shop and offered a good variety of miniatures and systems, even though it was quite small (something you wouldn't find in Germany). And it was also cheap as well, so I had to buy some greek ballistas!

Me, learning new techniques in Clifford’s Tower, the ruined castle of York.

So, what are my plans? Currently I paint a lot of ancients. In the next year I want to play Field of Glory, a system which needs a lot of miniatures. So I have to keep painting. Luckily most of the miniatures I need are already bought. I just have to get it on! I also have some blog posts in the pipeline for months, which I should finish...


I managed to make some photos of stuff I finished in the last month. Unfortunately my girlfriend took her camera with her, so I had to rely on an older one. You'll notice the difference in quality, but I tried to make the best out of it.

First I'll show you my general base for Field of Glory. It can also be used as general in DBA. I used this superd Zvezda set for the cavalry figures. As you may notice I changed the heads, because a barheaded general looks too much like Alexander for me - I want a Pyrrhos! The standart bearer is from another Zvezda set. It has nice miniatures, but the poses arn't really suitable for wargaming purposes. 

Second you can see two bases of velites. These were the skirmisher of the Roman republic. They are the first elements for my Roman army. I mixed  Zvezda and a HäT miniatures to get some variety in poses.