The Last (?) Phalanx

When I ran my Battle of the Hydaspes game at HAVOC a few months, it became evident that I needed one more Phalanx for Macedon. Fortunately, I already had the figures primed, the last of the phalangites from the huge haul of Macedonians that I acquired from Edgar ? 10 years ago now. 

Paint brush was duly applied to lead, and these guys are the result! I believe the figures are A&A.

Once again, Edgar had kindly supplied me with far more than enough Little Big Men Studios shield transfers, gratis, for all of the figures he sold to me back then. 

It took me a while to remember how the darned things worked, but once I looked up my own previous post on the subject, it came back to me!

I was scraping the bottom of the barrel of the shield supply for these guys, too!

A number of those shields had a protruding boss in the center. I wound up needing to pierce the center of those transfers. My initial attempt to do so were spectacularly unsuccessful! Then I recalled that I had a box of 18 gauge needles left over from when I closed my private office (and I couldn't convince my new employers to take, them, for free - Hospitals!  No wonder everything they do is so expensive!).  

Anyway the 18 gauge needles did the job perfectly; the holes were enlarged a bit more using a pin vice (a bizarre term for a small hand held and powered basic hobby drill)... Success!

This Phalanx has a slightly orange theme.

I had a few left over officer types.

I recalled that I needed some additional foot generals for the game anyway, so such they became. 

The fellow with the lavender pteruges seemed designed to take a pike, but that wouldn't work well for my needs. 

A spare (Napoleonic) cavalry sword was trimmed down to fit his hand, and it seems to have worked fine.

Macedonian Phalanx Mávros

Yet another Macesdonian phalanx stands up from the painting table.

This one is the  μαύρος (Mávros) phalanx. 

Once again, Mávros simply means "black".

The rear ranks of this phalanx are by a different manufacturer, but I have no idea which one. 

Any ideas, guys? 

I free painted the black design on the front rank's shields, but used the 16 similar Little Big men studios shield transfers for the 16 figures in the 2nd and 3rd rank. This time they actually went on very easily, now that I understood how to do them! Thanks, Edgar, who provided the transfers as well as the lead. as part of the original purchase at bargain basement pricing. 

Anyway, the rear rankers have some interesting figures - one drinking from a canteen, one wiping his brow, another pointing. For my British readers, that's rankers, not wankers. Although come to think about it, the way they're holding those pikes...

Macedonian Phalanx Kitinos

   Another Macedonian phalanx pushes its way off the painting table!

This one I have named Κίτρινος (Kítrinos)

As with the other units, it is merely Greek for "yellow"

It is yet another raised from the large lot of  bare Macedonian lead I purchased from a local gamer about 5 years ago. 

It has taken a while, but this project is finally moving forward!

Delta CC "Straw" was used for the yellow parts.  I believe these are A&A figures. Very nice sculpts regardless!

Macedonian Phalanx Galázios

Another Macedonian Successor type Phalanx marches off the painting table!

γαλάζιος "Galazios" is once again simply Greek for "Blue".

The shades used for the red tunics and the "bronze" equipment is different from that used for either of the two previous units painted. 

The sandals came out well, I think.

"Goop" was used to attach the shields to the shield arms. 

They are looking formidable enough!

I have the 4th such unit primed, and probably have enough lead on hand for another 4 units of phalangites. 

Macedonian Phalanx Prásinos

More than 4 years ago, I acquired a large set of unpainted 28 mm Macedonian Successor figures from a local gamer who had had them sitting around for years without getting around to doing anything with them. 

I glued 96 figures to my usual tongue depressor painting sticks, primed them, and painted the first phalanx of 24 figures almost a year later.

Thereafter, I made about as much additional progress as the original owner had, namely... nil!

So, after several years where painting some of these fellows was in my plans, this month I finally did something about it!

This red and green themed unit was finished, appropriately, on Christmas Day. These are A&A figures... I think. 

I cleverly named it the  πράσινο ( Prásinos) Phalanx, which is nothing more or less than Greek for "Green" - in the color sense, not lack of experience!

Mighty Macedonians

    As regular readers of this blog might recall, a little less than a year ago I acquired almost 300 Macedonians and Thracians from fellow HAHGS member, Edgar. The first of these have pushed their way of the painting table at last. They have been almost ready for about 2 weeks now, but distractions associated with teaching a medical student in the office and boosting the Wizard Kraft Kickstarter delayed their completion. That was compounded by trying 2 new items in my modeling repertoire.

Here's a first view of the "White Shield" Phalanx, composed of A&A 28mm figures. . 

Very nice sculpts as you can see!

Edgar had generously supplied me with a big supply of  Little Big Men studios shield transfers. I approached the prospect of using them with considerable trepidation. This proved to be well founded. My first mistake was assuming that these were decals. Sop I cut them out, soaked them in water briefly, slid off the paper, and applied them. They utterly refused to stick, or conform to the curve of the shields.  Read about applying decals, watched U-tube videos, and thus and it was off to the hobby shop for some Microset and Microsol solutions for decals. Dutifully applied according to the instructions and... nothing - no adhesion, so shrinkage into place. Grrrr!!!

At this point, I of course recalled the first antidote to Murphy's Law - "When in doubt, read the directions!" Unfortunately, the transfers came without any. BY now, I had included these simply were not decals, and that was why my approach was failing so spectacularly. A Google search turned up the LBM website, and with some hunting around on the website, a pdf instruction sheet was found. Unfortunately, the instructions were about as clear as mud. Worse , they made reference to two DIFFERENT styles of LBM transfers, and it turned out that Edgar had thoughtfully labeled the transfers in groups as "old" and new styles". 

So it was back to consult once more with Sir Google. That disclosed some much clearer instructions, and especially a U-tube video of using the transfers. Aha!  Now at least I understood how they were supposed to work. Applying them still proved to be tedious, especially removing the clear plastic fronts/backs on both styles.  

Once figured out, I have to say that they look great. My next unit will be much faster and less stressful. Meanwhile, I have all the stuff I need to work with decals, but no actual decals, LOL!

The dark "Magic Wash" worked especially well on these figures, just needing some touch up of the off white ("Craftsmart Bisque) areas of the capes and vexillum standard. 

I later painted the center of the "bell" of he trumpet black. The other thing I used for the first time was Walther's "Goop" for attaching the shields, and the many super glued pikes that had already popped off during the painting process. I found the instructions somewhat intimidating, but in many ways the stuff is rather similar to my old standby, Duco Cement, although the big tube was harder to control than the small Duco tubes are. Hopefully the bond will be stronger. 

One Phalanx painted, 5 more to go! In glue as in Simon Miller's Ancient rules, victory goes To the Strongest!

A Veritable Forrest of Pikes!

I've spent most of mu hobby time this month prepping and priming quite a few batches of figures before it gets too cold to do them easily. Chief among them were these 96 A&A (armorum and Aquila) Phalangites, along with six British Cavalry units, 4 Spanish Infantry regiments, and some wagons. By the way, I see that A&A has a special discount deal for the month of November, so if you're interested in their products, now is probably a good time to check them out!

I have to say that both the sculpts and castings were exceptionally clean - I think there was minor flash on only a small handful of the 96 figures seen above. Attaching the pikes (made from 18 and 20 gauge Floral Wire  from Michael's; fortunately I had plenty on hand from building my Renaissance armies), and the design of these figures made it exceptionally easy to affix them to their open hands using Loctite Ultra Gel Control super glue. Gabriel turned me on to this product when I had to make onsite repairs to my Spanish pikemen at Historicon this summer, and I love it. It really does allow very precise application of small amounts of the glue, which is perfect for our needs. 

I use Tongue Depressors to glue my figures to for painting (they are in plentiful supply in the office, and very inexpensive). I use clean ones, LOL, but reuse them for painting purposes many times before they are no longer usable. Only a very few of the figures have the shields cast on (see front left, for example). The rest will have to be glued on as well. This leads to a question. Should I glue the shields on now, before priming them?  That will make for a much better bond and more secure attachment. Or should I leave them off, making painting the figure and the shields both much easier, at the cost of a less secure bond when they are glued on at the end of the painting process?  Decisions, decisions!

It looks like I'll be hosting a big Field of Battle game here the Sunday after Thanksgiving, based upon the Battle of Dennewitz, 1813. Prussians and Russians and Swedes, oh my!

Massive Macedonian Miniatures Madness!

Alexander the Great at the Battle of Granicus, 334 BC

   As readers of the blog might recall, I have been rumbling about perhaps adding to my Macedonian army the past year. A week or so ago, fellow HAHGS member Edgar posted a message to our local group about a desire to unload a substantial number of  Macedonian/Thracian 25/28mm miniatures at an attractive price. The majority of the Macedonians were from a Manufacturer that I had never heard of before, A&A Miniatures. Some others were from from Crusader (a manufacturer I knew of but had never purchased figures from) and the Thracians were Old Glory. A few email exchanges, a Paypal funds transfer, and some swift packing and mailing on Edgar's part, and the figures were on their way to me pronto!

As a last minute bonus, he even threw in some Little Big Man Macedonian shield transfers. 

Such a deal!  :-)

The large, very heavy (12 pounds!) box arrived 2 days later - indeed, one of the heaviest wargames figure packages I can ever recall!

On top were Crusader figures - Thracian Cavalry with command, 12 in all.

HUGE BAG #1  of unlabeled figures. 

On unpacking and sorting, contents as seen above - mostly A&A phalangites and some A&A Macedonian Companions. 

Next uncovered were a ton more extra shields, and 3 "heroic 28mm" Gorgon Studios Hoplites (yet another manufacturer I'd never heard of) - these will likely become "heroes" for "To the Strongest!"

HUGE BAG #2 of figures...

and its' contents - large portion are Old Glory Thracian Peltasts and Greek  Peltasts, and some OG ? Thracian cavalry. 

4 smaller bags, unpacked showed contents as above - more OG Thracians, more phalangites, etc.

Once all of this was then re-sorted and reorganized, the total contents of this Macedonian Multitude worked out to be (more or less)

A&A

26 Phalangites with Bronze "muscled" Cuirass (4 with pikes leveld)

18 Phalangites with Linothorax armor

41 Phalangites, unarmotred

4 trumpeters, 4 Standard bearers, 8 officers (2 variants)

9 Macedonian Companions

4 MacedonianCommand

13 Horses

TOTAL: 101 Infantry, 13 Mounted

Crusader (? uncertain about all but the Thracian Cavalry)

12 Thracian Cavalry w/ Command

38 Unarmored phalangites

5 officers

2 Trumpeters

2 standards

4 Hoplites/Heroes

8 Thracian Archers

TOTAL: 57 Infantry, 12 cavalry

Old Glory

49 Thracian Peltasts

27 Greek Peltatsts

23 cavalry (? Thracians plus command/Generals)

TOTAL: 76 Infantry, 23 mounted

Gorgon

3 Hoplites

? Mfr

1 ? Persian cataphract rider and 1 mounted rider wearing Turban (these may become generals/heroes for other armies)

Little Big Men Studios

12 sheets of 24 shield transfers each

GRAND TOTAL: 237 Infantry, 48 Mounted!

So, what to do with this veritable mountain of lead?!

It looks like a Phalanx in TTS the way I'd organize it will have 6 stands of 4 figures each = 24 men each.  That would would work out to 4 A&A and 2 Crusader units.

A unit each of 12 Companion and Thracian Heavy/Medium Cavalry

2 units of 12 Old Glory Greek Peltasts

plus some heroes, generals, etc

The Old Glory Thracians could easily make a  small Thracian army of their own:

4 units of 12 Thracian Peltasts

1 unit of 8 Archers

1 unit each of 12 MC and 8 LC, plus Leaders. 

With my existing Thracians (18 peltasts, 8 LC, all Minifigs), they could ally with or fight the Macedonians. 

Regardless, it could take me a while to paint my way through all of these. Thanks, Edgar... I think! :-)