Thursday 14 April 2016

Once and future king

     Carrying on yet more ramifications from that exact same conversation a week ago and trying to get my painting numbers as far into the positive as I can before Salute in 2 days time (!), I have been going back through projects that have fallen by the wayside and trying to get them off of (and in some cases, onto in the first place) my painting table. The big one of these, for me, is my planned Romano-British - Age of Arthur - army.
     The first thing to say at this point is that I am a massive Bernard Cornwell fan, I am aware that he only has 1 character that he just keeps putting into different historical contexts but I like that guy and I like the way the author writes, so I am happy to overlook this fact. This does mean, however, if I ever do Napoleonics (I have Sharpe Practise 2 on pre-order, so there is a risk) that I will end up with the South-Essex on my desk (although this is helped by the fact I live in the south of Essex anyway), years ago I built a guy who was supposed to be Uthred (and I am pleased to say he looked nothing like the guy from the tv series) and lastly, that I was always going to try and do Derfel Cadarn and his wolftails.
     If you are unfamiliar with Derfel, he is the son of a Saxon noble (trying not to spoil it too much for anyone who haven't read the stories) who is raised as a Britain by Merlin and later joins Arthur and becomes an important warlord (and later a monk but that's not important for this post) from the Warlord series of books about King Arthur.
      A while back I bought a regiment pack and a couple of packs of late Roman archers, from Artizan and Crusader respectively, with the aim of doing a Lion's Rampant force of Derfel's wolftails, but the more I looked at the figures and the more I thought it over I decided I didn't really want to do that, but I didn't know what I wanted to do instead, so into a box they went and that was that. Until that conversation where something just clicked in my head and this is the result.

arthurian britain 28mm romano-british

      I have gone for, what I see in my head, as the classic late Roman look, including the Draco (which I am aware is a cavalry banner but I like it (thanks Neil)) and I am pleased with the result. The spears are my first real foray into wire spears and I have stabbed myself a few times now.


I have got the unit of archers nearly finished and the next unit of spears started, so hopefully this won't be the last post before Salute.

Thanks for reading

8 comments:

  1. These look great Mike, you really are getting some lead shifted at the moment!

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    1. Thanks Michael. I am trying to get some stuff done.

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  2. Very nice dude! Really like the colour of the cloaks.

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  3. Love the Derfel stories and love these. Agree the dark red cloaks look ace.

    I'm a big fan of the TFL Dux Brit rules and plan to build a couple-a-three warbands when I move my Direwolf & Lion Rampant project to four full retinues. (Maybe five...)

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    1. It's dangerous isn't it. Just one little army later . . .

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