The Spanish Arrive

   The next unit of Carthaginian troops from the Warlord Games epic sprue are the Spanish Scutarii. As these seem to be Celtic in origin, I tried to go for bright colours so that they stand apart from the North African infantry.

I need to find my spare sprue of bases to get much more done, but I'm enjoying how this project is starting to look.

Thanks for reading

The Libyans Arrive

   I've played a few games of Rebels and Patriots using a single sprue of the epic scale American Civil War figures from Warlord Games, with each base counting as a 12 wound unit, which I've found to be a really good way of showing how cheap wargaming can be while still moving "real" figures around a table.

   So when Warlord Games released their Hail Caesar range of epic scale, and then sprues came free with a magazine, it was only a matter of time before I had some painted. I'm pretty lucky that the gamers I have round me aren't interested in these sprues so I've doubled up on numbers without any extra costs.

   My brother and myself are slightly modifiying how we are building armies compared to how I did it for the American Civil War stuff with two bases being a full wound unit. There are a few reason for this; 

1. It helps with game play. In Lion Rampant a unit is either full strength or half strength in terms of how it fights, so being able to take a base off really highlights that.

2. It makes working out unit sizes tidier. It doesn't matter if one army has 5 figures to a base and another is 20, 2 bases are a full unit.

3. It allows the blocks to looks like useful blocks in this scale. 5 Horsemen in 13mm don't look too impressive, 10 ranked up do - then 40 infantry just look really pleasing.

The block of Heavy Infantry. I'd like a second block of these in time, but would need a one more sprue which isn't a priority.

The unit of Cavalry plus their captain/General.

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Tiny Romans

   I started a test 2mm project with 3 units back in 2021 but didn't get any further than the 2 bases of infantry and a bit of scenery, then at Salute one year * I went nuts and bought enough to do two sizable armies for the Late Republican Romans and Gauls. My painting at the moment is still just flailing around and I'm doing whatever is on my mind, with the 2mm project being something that went round in my head one early morning sitting in the dark with an awake baby.

*I want to say 2023?

   I'm not sure why I stopped doing this project at the time, other than I guess it went down the priority list. I know the cavalry and Gallic warbands were intimidating me a bit but the legions are fairly easy to keep moving. I decided to do a legion and try the cavalry to prove to myself they were do-able, then added another legion as I got the first done quicker than expected.

   I have to say, that I enjoyed the cavalry more than I expected and have a real urge t buy more of them, only having the one as it was about the minimum I could get away with. Before that, I just need to finish a project and get it on the table.

A Gallic warband or two next, I think.

Thanks for reading

Yet More Yellow Shields

   It was only as I was working out the sides for the Britannia 43AD (or so) game and having a look at my backlog that I realised I hadn't painted quite as many of my troops as I thought I had. The game itself was only a smallish demo game - 44 points an army, split between 2 players a side - so I didn't need everything, but I was sort a unit of Roman Auxiliaries. 

   Again, like the Skyclad Britons, I had some already built and sprayed, so I grabbed them and started slapping the base colours on to see if they could be done in time*. It was only later that I realised the 14 that I had built and sprayed wasn't everything that I had left, there were another 7 or so waiting in backlog, built but not sprayed . . .

*figuring if the base colours and washes weren't done before bed the day before, there was no point even trying to get the rest of the stuff done the day of the game

   I followed the same recipe that the others on this blog have been painted in, although this batch had the metal command figures that had so far avoided going under the brush. I'll sort the last few out when I next have a moment.

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Fearsomely Dressed

   I've had a bit of a painting lull in the past few weeks - although the backlog of posts might not have shown that - which has been brought to an end* by an impending game. Project Britannia AD43 (or so) is a pair of armies that I just haven't managed to make into a decent game despite a couple of plays - using the Rule Britannia fan made Lion Rampant variant, which mixes Lion Rampant rules and Rebel & Patriot stat lines just meant the Celts didn't stand a chance. The Romans should probably win the games, but when between two games there was only 3 combats, and neither of those went well for the Celts meant they weren't fun games for either side. I've seen MG42's less effective than the Roman pilum machine gun.

*as is so often the case

   This time I've gone back to the standard rules and pointed units up accordingly. This then meant I was thinking about my backlog and while I can't get all the figures for these projects done for the game, I thought I'd better make a crack at starting some and the already built and sprayed Skyclad Ancient Britons met the brief perfectly.

   The main bulk of what was left was the second unit of sky clad warriors - although now the units will be going down to 12 figures and not 16, I actually have enough for three units with the extras I've ended up buying.

   Like the last unit, the bulk of the figures are from Warlord Games - I've bought a lot of packs of metal from them now, but there are a few figures from else where. I'm pretty sure at least one figure is from Crusader Miniatures and the woman is from Colonel Bills, just to add some variety. 

Thanks for reading

The Last Of The Egyptians

   While my New Kingdom Egyptians are a project that are on my list to finish this year* the influx of Ancient Egyptian tv programs to coincide with the 100 year anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb mean I have ancient Egypt on the mind. So to finish this project off, here are the stragglers from my New Kingdom Egyptian army, a unit of Medjay Nubian archers and the Pharaoh himself.

*for multiple reasons**

**It also helps I'm working on desert scenery for another desert based project next year

I've got no plans to get these on the table any time soon, although I think one of my mates has an appropriate opponent for them, but it is useful to have them done ready for a game whenever it happens.

Thanks for reading

Egyptian Chariots

   Carrying on with the same project, here are the two units of finished Ancient Egyptian Chariots. As the new edition of Lion Rampant suggests and following on from mods I've seen online, I'm using units of 2 chariots, so that each model is about 3 'wounds' to give a reasonable strength breakdown for the unit itself. 

   One of the things I've noticed in my research is that most of the chariots depicted in wall art aren't very colourful at all, with the odd exception, so I've gone for a middle ground of having colours but not being colourful*. And in complete disregard to the photos, I am more likely to have mixed units of chariot (a lighter and a heavy in each unit) than the single types I've photographed, but my point stands.

*I think

   I've still got to finish the Pharaoh's chariot (almost finished) and the last unit of infantry, but this is now a playable army, so I'll need to get a game lined up for them and hopefully push myself to finish the last few bits off.

Thanks for reading

The Kingdom Of The Sun

   With my big planned games for July/August out of the way and any potential games coming up not needing any major painting efforts it's allowing me to stop and re-evaluate my painting for the next few weeks. I have a few projects I'd like to be getting on with but with the Lion Rampant 2rnd edition released and with it having official rules for chariots, I thought it might be a good idea to have an ancient army ready to test these out.

   My New Kingdom Egyptians have suffered from being a fully metal army that I've just built and painted a unit at a time in between other projects, this has meant that there is never a second unit ready to go the moment I finish the one I am on and feel like keeping going. So, this time, I've built and sprayed nearly everything I have for them - will it help? Lets find out.

Egyptian Axemen

2rnd unit of Egyptian Spearmen

   With these finished it leaves only a single unit of infantry - which is built but not sprayed - and the all important chariots . . .

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What, More Romans?

    I've said it before this year and I'll say it again, smaller scales are starting to fascinate me. The idea of playing those big famous battles basically one for one and seeing how the tactics worked (or didn't) just feels like an area of the hobby I don't see enough. I've basically fallen in love with 15mm but have hit a bit of a painting block on it as you really need to finish a unit in a sitting or at least be able to leave stuff out between sessions. Then I saw Mark Backhouse was writing a 2mm game, which inspired a few companies to start doing blocks of 2mm armies, while I'm unlikely to buy his rules, the figures do interest me.

   At Salute I picked up 2 bases worth of Roman Legions and an Alae of Roman Cavalry* (although I bought the wrong base size for the cavalry) and decided to give the idea a test.

*and some buildings but that's another story

  I also wanted to test some of the terrain ideas that Mark has been using and the cheapest and quickest was forests made from bath mats. Actually really impressed with it.

I'm not sure how quickly this project will progress, I need to do a bit Warbases order before I can carry on but I've been really impressed. With very little work I can get two massive armies on the table to try out ideas.

Thanks for reading

The Battle of Wattling Street (ish)

    I've had a few weeks off from painting now, but I've managed to get one of my lockdown projects onto the table and I thought it was worth blogging about. As of (I think) Saturday 22rnd May, Wayland Games has reopened it's gaming side of the business to those who prebook a table, so on the first Wednesday after that, my club arranged our first proper club night since the start of March last year. In the end we booked 2 tables and had 5 members turn up, with one of the games being my attempt at a small version of the Battle of Wattling Street with Boudica vs Gaius Suetonius, with only the Roman occupation of Britannia at stake.

   We used a modified version of Lion Rampant that I had found online and got playing. About turn 3 we noticed that there was something wrong with the modifications made and it was only on the drive home that it dawned on us what it was. The author had modified the test rolls to match Rebels and Patriots (so 1 ability score rather than separate ones for Move, Attack, Shoot and Courage) but left the morale rules the same as base Lion Rampant. While not major, this meant if a Ancient British unit lost 3 guys to the Roman shooting (pilums) they needed a 10+ on 2 dice or else they got a Battered marker. In Lion Rampant a Battered marker means the unit can do nothing the following turn but Rally, so the next turn they would be shot at again. If they lost 2 more guys they now needed a 12+ to pass, with anything below a 7 removing the unit from the table. As you can imagine, this got brutal quickly, so that the Ancient Britons only got to the Roman lines to actually attack on one occasion.

   Suffice to say the game did not go well to the Brits, although the chariot unit did manage to wipe out a unit of Legionnaires with hit and run shooting attacks. We have some modifications to make to the ruleset for next time, but it was still a really fun game and it was great to see real people at a gaming venue to chat about games, plus who doesn't like seeing projects get onto the table for their first outing?

   While I haven't managed to get any painting done, I did have a few bits for this project that were waiting on a varnish, so I thought this was the perfect time to add them to the bottom of a post too. They are from a few different ranges, the first wagon is from Fenris and I think has been on this blog in a different form a few years back, the Ancient Britons are Warlord Games and the Roman Wagon is from Warbases.

Thanks for reading

A Walled Village

    My mate Neil always says that ideas are dangerous and should be stamped down, but I had an idea that I left to grow - sorry Neil. A few years back when I was playing a lot of Lord Of The Rings the guy I played against and me starting chatting about creating some scenery for the scenarios that needed something to work a bit better. For example there is a scenario that I am sure was called King of the Hill, where you measured out a 2 foot circle, which was the hill, and you got victory points for having the most models within the circle at the end of the game. So I asked my dad to cut me a circle of mdf about 2 foot wide and I got as far as drawing on it what I was going to build before I put it down to carry on working on another day.

   Fast forward to November and I had an idea for a walled village for my Ancient Britons - a defensive wall rather than defendable wall, which was an important difference in my head. This isn't a fort, its a walled village. I decided it would be a nice project I could get on with once my son was born, but in the end I got carried away with it before that could happen, but as I needed to clear some space to get a photo of the model, it didn't make it onto this blog.

   The basic structure is pink foam on an MDF circle, covered in plaster and painted. The walls are made from wooden cuticle sticks snipped to slightly different lengths. The fences are Renedra and the buildings are Hovels.

    While the end result is historically suspect at best, I wanted something big to put on the board as the project it goes with was getting out of hand. I just need to get some games in with it now.

   Lastly, and very much tacked onto the end is a quick stone circle. Not a huge amount to say about this, other than the stones are from an Arcane Miniatures order I made a few years back, on an MDF base.

Thanks for reading

Building Up The Strength

    I'm on the home stretch with my Ancient Britons now, with the two units in this post being the last full units of their type - although there are another 2 full units of other types and some stragglers left but that's a different problem. It was only as I waited for my laptop to warm up enough to open Chrome that I realised this army has outgrown the boxes I bought for it and will now need extra storage, so the temptation to add more units is overwhelming, something to have a stop and think about I suspect.

   This post is the last unit of regular warriors and the second (also last - for now) unit of horse. I gave the warriors a couple of flaming torches while I was building them as it occurred to me that I would like the option to play an attack on a Roman town as a scenario, as I have Roman buildings for Gangs of Rome already. In hindsight I should probably have made more than 2 with torches. All figures are Warlord Games still and I've included the guy from Boudica's chariot in this unit too.

Thanks for reading

Last Of The Legion

    I've set myself a bit of a deadline for project Britannia AD43 (or so) that I suspect I am going to fail to achieve but I'm still getting a fair few figures from it moving to do my best. This post is about the last unit of Legionnaires inc the command elements, while I have a few stragglers coming along and I'm not going to rule out another unit one day in the future but we are done with legionaries for now.

   With just a couple of units of Auxilia left to paint for this half of the project, I had better get back to the painting table.

Thanks for reading

British Laager

   I've definitely mentioned this before, but my Wagons, Carts & Civilians* label is probably my favourite option in my blog side bar as it lets you do some really fun things, although it was in writing this post that I realised I have a lot less wagons than I thought I had - something to rectify. This post was particularly fun to get ready and will hopefully address the balance a bit..

   Laager was not a word in my mental dictionary until I sent Simon Miller from TheBigRedBatCave a message asking where he got his Celtic Wagons from as I couldn't see any mention in his Celtic label search of manufacturers. At the point I asked, I'd bought 3 wagons from a couple of different sources** but wanted a bit more variety and my google-fu was failing me. Simon's very helpful response included where he thought they had come from but also told me to search Laager on his blog and it was an eye opener.

   A few of orders later (that escalated somewhat) and I had bought another 9 wagons from various sources for this project and for a couple of other projects. For this project I ended up with; 2 from 1st Corps, 2 from Front Rank, 1 from Redoubt Miniatures and 1 from Wargames Foundry along some screaming women for heckling purposes. This ends up being just less than 2 foot of Laager if you are using the Simon Miller method of counting wagons - must try harder.

*Slightly amended  

 **One of which was later requisitioned by the Romans

Front Rank

Redoubt Miniatures

Front Rank

Wargames Foundry

1st Corps

   I am now in the weird position where I can rank different companies wagons in a single post and while I don't think there are any bad kits in this batch, some deserve a bit of praise. 

   The 1st Corps wagons are my go to place when I first decide I need a wagon, but I do think the lack of variety is a bit of a shame, saying that they go together really nicely. The Redoubt Miniatures wagon was a dream to put together but the other wagons I picked up for my ECW project - coming soon - were a bit more of a puzzle to get built, although, as some of the cheapest wagons on this list, they definitely rank highly. The single Foundry Miniatures wagon went together fairly easily and is a really good basic wagon, but it is the Front Rank wagons that I want to really single out as they were a dream to put together and left me wishing I had bought another one or two**.

   The figures are a mix of the Foundry Germanic women (heartily recommended to me by Simon), a couple from Crusader Miniatures and one or two from Warlord Games. The woman holding a baby in one hand and a Roman helmet in the other was a limited edition figure from Warlord, I think you got free when you placed an order, and I knew I had one somewhere - it turned out I had a few of them. I've still got a few more non-combatant type figures to do for this project but if I keep waiting for everything to be finished I'll never post this up.

**I did but that's a story for another day

Thanks for reading

The Dreaded Praetorian Guard

    The Praetorian Guard is a unit that I had no plans to include in this project, but a chat with a mate on the best source of replacement shields for GW's Minas Tirith troops* reminded me that Wargames Illustrated had two free Roman sprues in a row, I've already used the Veteran Legionaries (mixed into my Legionary units) but I also had something else. A search through my Pile of Potential and I found it was a sprue of Praetorians. So, on my last (so far) Warlord Games orders I added a couple of packs of decals for their shields and an extra sprue to make them a useable number, figuring if I didn't paint them as part of this project they would languish in my sprue pile forever.

*If anyone has any ideas we are still stuck

   Then a couple of weekends ago my Podcast mates decided to do a hangout and hobby session to have a catch up during Lockdown 2 and I decided that instead of doing the next thing in my painting queue, I would use the chance of being 'forced' to paint to get on with a project I wasn't looking forward to, a few things came to mind, but a full batch of 20 models won. I don't like painting in batches bigger than 6 (which allows me to do a Lion Rampant unit in 2 batches rather than 2 and a bit of most people's 5 in a batch) but as my Romans had already been worked in batches of 12, what I really wanted to avoid was painting the 12 I needed then leaving the rest of the unit in my painting queue to catch up with later.

   While painting 20 models at a time is horrible and I don't know how you people that do it, actually do it, doing the boring bits while having a chat was a better experience than I expected (damned with faint praise?) and it meant the project was well on it's way by the time we called it and got back on with our weekends.

   I've also given them pretty bad stats, instead of making them an elite unit as other games seem to, for Lion Rampant and at this point I'm sort of looking forward to another player finding that out mid game . . .

   Then with the Praetorian Guard being painted the next obvious thing was someone for them to guard. As Claudius only got involved in the invasion at the point where it was basically a photo op and Nero had other problems on his hands during Boudica's uprising (fiddling while Rome burned?) I didn't want it to be an emperor, so I went for a Legate or Tribune. I'm pretty sure this pair are from Warlord, although I have got a bit lost in where bits are from at this point. I only plan to use a single one in a game, but it's nice to have options. The extra figure is a mob figure from Gangs of Rome that I have spare and I plan to use him as a freedman of some sort to give the leader some advice during the battle.

Thanks for reading

Hit And Run

    I'm at that awkward point in what I have started dubbing my Britannia AD43 project (just because it sounds flashier than Britannia somewhere between AD43 and AD60-61 but with the option of AD83 - sorry Boudica) where I can see the end of the project looming and that means it's easy to take the eye off the ball and let the last units drift down the painting queue (like pretty much every other project I have done in the last year or few). I'm trying to show a bit of self discipline and make sure everything for this project is built and sprayed, then close to hand so painting carries on with as few distractions as possible.

   That is where this post comes in. I have made no qualms about my dislike of painting cavalry in the past, and as this project only has 2 units of cavalry a side (actually really small numbers all things considered) they could so easily become the casualties of my end of project drifting, so I'm aiming to make sure I have some horses on my painting desk at all times now.

   I finished the first unit of Roman cavalry a couple of weeks back, so this time it is the turn of some British cavalry. I've mixed horse colours as I normally try to I've basically just been adding a horseman or two each time I've painted a batch of warriors to try and keep a mix of clothing colours and patterns.

Thanks for reading

Boudica

    This is the first chariot that I've given it's own post to, rather than hiding it behind a full unit and that's because I've got a few bits to say about this model.

   The model is the Warlord Games Boudica Chariot and I bought it to be one of the chariots in my only planned unit, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted the option of whether Boudica is involved in the chariot charge or not. In some games I think she makes more sense as a command element at the back of the board, while in other games she shouldn't be on the board at all - Mons Graupius for example - so being able to swap her in and out made more sense.

   Then the model itself, the way Warlord sell the model with Boudica at the front and a big bloke with a Roman standard behind her pushes Boudica herself into second place on her own model, looking more like the driver than the queen of the Iceni. So the obvious answer to that was to make the bloke at the back fight on foot and add a new driver to the chariot, giving Boudica pride of place again.

   Lastly, paint jobs. I've purposely given the chariot two different colour horses which is something I've been avoiding doing so far - I have a weird memory from a tv program that reckoned horse siblings make a better team than two unrelated horses, whether this is true or not is a different matter, but its been a guideline I've worked to. But with this chariot, I wanted something to make it stand out even if* I get more chariots, plus I'm reading the Boudica series of novels by Manda Scott and in the first her two horses are grey and brown, so that's what I did. Also going with that series of novels, each tribe wears a different colour cloak, with the Iceni being blue so, again, I made sure I included that**.

*when

**ignoring the fact Boudica wears grey in the books 

Thanks for reading

The rambling post about warmachines and distractions

    I've been building up to this post for a while with multiple bits needing to be finished to make it work. 

   It all started when I had a bit of a tidy up and found I had bought two Black Tree 100 Years War ballista*, these were added to my spreadsheet of unbuilt models and pushed to the top of my to do list, but didn't get any further than being sprayed before they got left on the side.

   I've painted them pretty roughly to match the rest of the collection - it turns out my painting style has got a lot better since then. I doubt these will ever see the table and I still have no idea why I bought them but they are nice to have.

*Still not actually sure when these were actually bought.

   Then just before lockdown I had placed a Gripping Beast order and I added a Scorpion for my Arthurian-British army partly to get into the free postage bracket and partly as a nice stand alone project, this didn't even get to the building stage before I got distracted. 

   The extra character on the left with sword and round shield turned up in my pile of potential a while back, I suspect he is from a Gripping Beast Roman-British command pack I bought a while back but I'm not sure, made sense to paint him at the same time as the crew for the scorpion, though.

   Lastly, we have the plastic Warlord Games Scorpions for my Early Imperial Roman army and it was at this point when I was sitting in my man cave building them ready to slot into my painting backlog and I saw the ballista on the shelf behind me and this weird thought in my head told me to do a post with all 5 warmachines in.

   So off I went and got on with them, until another thought jostled in for attention. One of the things I wanted to do with my projects this year was make these small armies look more like they could be able to move through the landscape, so my cannons (nearly) all have limbers now** and are starting to get ammunition wagons too etc, and the early imperial Roman scorpions shouldn't be an exception (he says ignoring the other 3 weapons for the moment). I've been buying wagons for a Celtic wagon train (Laager) / battlefield obstacle (think Wattling Street) since the first order I placed while in Northumbria and one of those wagons was the Warlord Games Roman/Celtic wagon which looks like a perfect fit for a Scorpion, so the Roman army requisitioned the one I had and got a second in my last order, with a suitable replacement wagon found for the Britons elsewhere. 

**More sitting on my painting table

   I added the auxiliary instead of a slave on the first base as I wanted to emphasise the Roman feel of these units and not make it look like I'm just using a few of my Celtic wagons on the Roman side for a game and while it is a legionnaire unit, it felt more appropriate to have the wagon guard be auxiliary than legionnarie. I plan to paint a few extra auxiliaries to have scattered around the wagons too.

   While the second wagon I left a bit plainer and left a bit of the wagon off to make it look a bit different. I had planned to put a pack mule on the base but found I just didn't have the space, so that will end up being painted at a later date - I have a new plan for it now anyway. 

Thanks for reading