Finished: 15mm Early Imperial Romans

 

A mere couple of weeks of painting has seen me finish this force of Early Imperial Romans. This will provide me with (almost) all the groups I will need to play "Infamy, Infamy!" and also act as the start of an army for Art de la Guerre.

The individual figures I ordered from Donnington arrived earlier this week. I will get them prepped and primed over the next couple of days; they will be my leader/character figures for "Infamy, Infamy!" and I will be painting them to a slightly higher standard than the basic groups I've already done.

Command stands for ADLG:

Legionary Infantry (for Infamy and ADLG):

Auxiliary Infantry (for Infamy and ADLG):

Auxiliary Archers (for Infamy and ADLG):

Didn't spot the grass on that bow until just now...

Roman/Auxiliary Cavalry (for Infamy and ADLG):

Didn't spot the bent spear until just now...

I need to add a few more bases for "Infamy!" at some point.

Engineers (for one "Infamy" scenario):

All the figures are 15mm from Lancashire Games apart from the engineers who are from Baueda (via Magister Militum). the shield designs were hand-painted - a bit rough looking up close, but fine en masse at normal wargaming distances.

AHPC X Day 36 - Ninth Submission

As mentioned yesterday, my ninth submission was just waiting to be posted. Today's minion, Byron, posted it this afternoon: link

This was my fifth different island location and put me in position to make an ascent of Snowlord's Peak.

I am now waiting to find out what dastardly task Curt is going to set me to complete the ascent...

SELWG 2015 - The Lootz

Soooo...

I was up bright and early (for me on a Sunday morning) to head Sarrff ov tha rivver to Crystal Palace for SELWG. I got there just as they were starting to let in the crowd of gamers, having bumped into Clint (link to his loot post) as I was crossing the car park. Within a few seconds of getting in, I managed to find Ray, Postie and Big Lee with his "Young Padawan" Emily (she's actually Sith Master to his apprentice, but we'll let him believe that he's the teacher). After a brief chat, I tootled off to do the rounds.

Usually I make the big mistake of buying lots and lots of lead before thinking to take pics of the games. I didn't make that mistake this time. I even managed to take pics of every game - I'll try to write the post tonight and schedule it to go up tomorrow.

After stowing my camera in my bag, it was on with the shopping. First a quick pass around all the traders to see if anything jumped out at me, then onto the serious business. I think this counts as reasonably serious:

My first port of call was Tole Haven for some Vallejo paints - two I don't have and one I was running low of:

I then got some D20s from Magister Millitum. Yes, these are for Frastgrave, or rather - Junglegrave!

Next stop was Foundry to pick up some Aztecs for Junglegrave. Except they hadn't brought the Aztecs with them! Eeeks! I did pick up some suitable wildlife though for that project:

A quick toddle back upstairs found the Evil Mr Tuffley extracting cash from my purse. I bought some mounted Crusties, some turret packs and a trio of hover vehicles for my NSL force.

He's not really evil though - he knocked a couple of quid off as I'm a regular customer.

My thoughts then turned to terrain for Junglegrave. As it's central America, I knew I'd need some cacti and I'd also want some jungle foliage - long grasses and the likes. I'd seen some of these at Products For Wargamers on my earlier trawl, so headed in their direction.

I'll also need some trees. I thought (correctly as it turned out) that I'd seen some Noch/Gaugemaster ones on the Timecast stall.

You might be wondering about the willows, but they were used around the edges of the chinampa fields to stop the soil washing away.

As I was mooching around after all those purchases, I suddenly spotted something I'd missed earlier - The Assault Group were there and they had their Aztecs (and Tlaxcala). Needless to say, their gain and Foundry's loss. I picked up enough figures to do a couple of Junglegrave bands. They even knocked off 10% so I was an even happier bunny.

I then locked my purse away to prevent any more acquisitions and took a wander around the games to see how they were going. And got roped into a game of "Outrageous Fortune" which was an Agincourt game (and the pedant in me was chafing at the title being from Hamlet not Henry V). Still, it was a fun game with lots of inter-player interference. My battle did make it into melee with the English, albeit with just one out of six bases left but my final base did eventually get killed with two other players left in the game.

WIP: Medieval Camp #1

Ooops - meant to post last night but forgot. Never mind, here it is now.

It's just as well that this is essentially just a temporary camp. Last night I decided to do an ink wash (Magic Color "Earth Brown") and it went horribly wrong, which took me an age to clean up. Once I have my 3 games in the club tournament out of the way (NB - could be more games if I somehow do well enough to go through to the 2nd round), the pavilion will go into the pine disinfectant to strip the paint off and I will start again from scratch (not making the mistake of gluing it in the middle of a 80x120mm base.

The permanent camp for my eventual medieval army(ies) will have more than just the one pavilion. I'm actually considering mounting camp parts on separate smaller magnetic bases, which can then be combined together to make a full size camp by sticking them onto a 80x120mm steel base. This will make them much easier to transport.

Piccy time!

This afternoon and evening I will be doing some more work on:
the Old Glory 30YW cuirassiers
the 24 Sarmatian "Other Cavalry"
a second post for today....

WIPS; Goodies; Styrofoam Hills #4

It's lovely having a day off work. It was all very quiet in the office, so yesterday I decided to book today off as annual leave. Just as well, as I had plenty to do before heading off to Milton Keynes tomorrow for Campaign

WIPs

Done this morning:

• Matt spray varnish of remaining painted Sarmatians
• Khurasan "Space Demons" - received spray undercoat of Humbrol Metallic Black 201

After letting them dry, I discovered that the back of the King had not got much coverage, so I'll have to respray him at some point.

Next step for these is to use some of my ink washes to add some colour. That will be followed by silver/oily steel on the mouthparts, paint the basing texture (mix of greys) then a final Klear/black ink wash. I may tone down the glossiness by spraying with satin varnish; the base texture will get a brush-coat of matt varnish.



Goodies

After doing all the spraying and having had the windows open for a couple of hours to disperse fumes, particulates I headed into town to get some scenic cement and a spray bottle from ModelZone in Holborn. I also spotted a tool that would be useful to have, so I bought that as well.

As I was nearby, I took a walk down to London Graphics Centre and bought some more brushes (W&N Series 7 size 2; W&N Series 7M sizes 0 and 00) and a colour wheel.

I then headed home via the local Royal Mail depot where a package needing a signature was waiting for me. After picking that up, when I finally got back home I had 2 nice bits of post - Miniature Wargames #350 and a package from Donnington.

The box before opening - oooh, it's my order from Magister Militum!

The contents - some 15mm buildings for my 30YW project, some tents and a fortified camp piece for FoG. Plus a flyer for Colours 2012 and a new releases sheet from Magister Militum. There were also some polystyrene packing ships and bubble wrap around the resin pieces, but you don't want pics of that crap do you?

The Donnington goodies. Back Row (L to R): horse casualties; human casualties; 18 musketeers; 24 carbine/pistol cavalry; 2 cavalry. Front Row (L to R): animals and herders (pigs, sheep, goats, chickens) for ambush markers/camp pieces; some more pikes/flagpoles

Styrofoam Hills

Having purchased scenic cement and a spray bottle, I got on with sealing the flock and gravelly stuff on the hills and gully. I also decided to spray the pieces I'd made on the foam sheets. These are now pretty much dry and will be ready for me to take to Campaign tomorrow.

Anyway, here is a pic of one of the sealed hills with some figures on it:

As I'll be away almost all weekend, I won't be posting tomorrow. I will try to post on Sunday evening when I get back from Campaign, even if only to let you know how atrociously my Early Alans suffered at the hands of Foederate Romans. 

Ooooh, I just realised that I hadn't told you that - all three of my opponents in Division 2 at Campaign are fielding Foederate Roman armies. For those who know the FoG army lists, you will know that it can be helpful to know in advance what army/ies you will be facing as it gives you an idea of what troop types you are likely to be up against. However, with Foederate Romans it doesn't help in the slightest - they could be all heavy foot, all light horse, almost all lancers or balanced foot/cavalry. I suspect that most of my opponents will be including Western Hunnic allies (one of the few lists with Superior light horse).

Wish me luck!