Skyclad and Ready To Fight

    As mentioned in the last post, I had a couple of units for my Ancient British army either finished or very nearly finished, which has made the start of this week a little bit easier. The unit that was finished and is being counted towards this week is a unit of Sky Clad Warriors or Fanatics. In the variant of Lion Rampant I plan to use, they have the similar rules and stats as regular warriors (as even the regular warriors are still nut jobs compared to the troops in most armies) except for 1 lower armour (understandable) and a rule that lowers their enemies armour to 1 in the turn that they charge. This guys are going to be taken off the board so quickly, but they should do some serious damage before they do.

   The models in this unit are Warlord Games with a few slight conversions to give a bit more variety and a command unit from Crusader Miniatures, again to mix up the low number of sculpts. I'm not sure how I plan to make the second unit more varied, but that is a problem for future Mike.

I really need to get the next unit of Romans painted pronto.

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If you are a Roman, you'll want to duck

   With barely a few hours to spare the second unit in my 2 units a week of Roman Invasion self challenge has been completed, and there are a couple of other Ancient British units right on it's tail. A 12 man unit of slingers to give the Britons a bit of missile fire but is unlikely to make a huge difference to their game plan. The figures are Warlord Games as per everything else so far and are one piece castings which is a delight after armies where I've had to stick slings into hands, my only negative with these is how few sculpts there are to give a bit of variety.

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Not yet a Roman

    After that minor diversion, I've jumped the gun a bit in my self imposed sequence of finishing units for the two armies for my ancient Britain project but looking at my painting table there should be two or three British units along next in quick succession so I'm letting myself off.

   This is the second unit of Roman Auxiliaries using the Warlord Games plastics with a 3rd full unit waiting in the wings for its turn on the desk. Nothing that different from the last unit except I tried painting a couple of bits in a different order so I could be messier for a bit longer as I think it speeds the job up and makes it a bit more enjoyable.

   I've also finished the first unit of Roman Auxilia Cavalry (I have two planned) which I thought fitted nicely into this post. Again, I'm using the same shield decals on all my auxiliaries except ones that obviously come from a different unit.

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Playing with Ratlines

    In a slight break to the promised schedule I have a quick post on my Dutch 1:1200 fleet. After finishing all the models I had in my backlog for this project, I knew adding a few more ships at some point soon would definitely be on the cards and I found a gap in my outgoings to squeeze an order in*, which arrived early last week.

*Thanks to Carol for correcting my order, again

   While the order includes extra ships to bulk up my fleet in a few different ways, the big thing that I have added to this order was Ratlines for all my ships - old and new - and it is at this point I want to say, Real friends don't recommend ratlines to their mates, naming no names, Neil. It is worth saying before I accidently tank the Langtons sales, the brass ratlines they sell are gorgeous but its just one more fiddly detail to do on a model that would test the patience of even the more laid back stoner. 

   The first ship to be finished and receive it's ratlines is the Hercules a 64 gun Dutch ship.

   I also added some pinnaces and rowboats to the order** that will get added to the painting desk in batches over time. I'm not sure what I plan to use them for, but I have no regrets.

**Somewhere a Neil is calling me a stupid boy . . .

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Fighting For Rome

     Carrying on with my push with this project I have swapped tacks slightly and instead of doing the last unit of Legionnaires, I have jumped to the first unit of Auxiliaries. Like the legionnaires I have avoided the red tunics that seem to have gone out of fashion with academics and gone for an off white, but the warlord models are also wearing knee breaches and neck scarves, so I have gone with a light brown for the breaches and red (because they are in the Roman army) scarves.

   The one big change I have been doing when painting Romans is that I have been breaking my rule of small batches and I'm not really sure why. I am now 3 units into this side of the project and while I'm painting the British side in batches of 6 (or sometimes smaller) during the week, I always seem to settle down at the weekend with a full block of Romans and start on all 12 at the same time. Not sure why but it seemed interesting to me at least.

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More Angry Natives

    I've given myself a bit of a painting target of uploading 2 whole units to this blog a week for the next month or so to try and get some projects (but mainly the ancient Briton and Rome projects) moving as best I can. I don't know if I can keep it up as it's going to be a minimum of 24 figures a week plus odds and sods, but it will help if I can, especially at a time when I am no longer gaming.

   This week's addition to the challenge is another unit of Ancient British Warriors - another 16 strong warband - and the second chariot from the unit of 3. This time I have mixed in a couple of slingers to build up numbers (I've bought 16 and the unit only needs 12) and I want the regular warbands to feel a bit disorganised and more of a rabble than the nice, ordered Romans they will be facing. 

   The chariot has minimal conversion work done to it, with the driver becoming the warrior on the back and a spare driver added - the old driver is in the second unit of warriors. The more I'm thinking about this project the more likely I am to add more chariots, so getting minor changes in now with extend the uses I can make of the 3 versions Warlord games sell (one of which is Boudica herself).

Next up (should) be a unit of Roman Auxiliary, so let's see how that goes.

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A 40k Detour (and another new project)

    One of the last games I placed recently, was a game of 40k 9th edition as I previously threatened I would. 40k will always have a soft spot in my hobby heart and its nice to scratch the itch once in a while, except this couple of games didn't so much as scratch the itch but make me find a whole new gnat bite I didn't know I had*.

   I wrote two quick lists out of models I had to hand - Primaris Space Marines vs Sisters of Battle, using points from the Indexes released at the start of 8th but using 9th rules (as stats etc will carry over but the points didn't) and we had a blast. The rules were simple enough that it took us a couple of turns to get our heads around and the rest of the game and following game, were spent chatting and eating snacks while we played, exactly what you want in a game.

*Did that analogy go too far?

   This game got me thinking. I want to have an easy small campaign I can from my front room in the new year that I have all the figures for and can be kept fun, simple and cheap. I'd picked up the new Recruit starter set to get the assault marines (more on them another day) and the Necrons that came 'free' became an obvious enemy for an Imperial army (which I am swimming in).

   The campaign will be based after the events of the Battlefleet Gothic campaign I played a few years back. The Aurora Knights home world has been destroyed, leaving a lifeless rock in space but something that was dormant below the planet's crust has been awoken and the Knights can't have a xenos force on their homeworld and monument to their failure.

   Step forward the first batch of Necrons. . .

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Keeping the natives down

    I'm painting my Roman Briton project in batches as I normally do, but I am also trying to get both sides moving at the same time. I think I have about the same amount of units for each side, so I've given myself a bit of a rule that the two armies alternate what is on my desk, two units a piece in and it is working so far.

   I only have 3 units of Roman Legionnaires planned, as the rest of the army is going to be made of Auxiliaries (6 - 8 units depending how you count them), so I am now over half way through this element of the project. I plan to have all Legionnaires with the same shield designs as I want to give the feeling it is the same century of a legion split and not be separate legions as some rule sets want to represent.

   The unit above is the same Warlord Games Legionnaires from the last unit but I've added a few bodies and bits from a sprue of Early Roman Veterans I got a year or so ago with Wargames Illustrated. I also found a sprue of Praetorians from the same period which I am looking to get a few more models for to make a unit of, who knew free models on a magazine could be so dangerous?

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