Sling Off

   I've got two bigger posts of things I'm painting for another couple of projects that by rights should have beaten this one out, but as these figures are not going to be joined by any friends for a fair while, it was worth them jumping the queue.

   I bought some Mid-Late Roman Slingers a few years back as part of another order, just as a cheap pair of skirmishing units for my 15mm Crisis of the 3rd Century Roman project, although, I think they might be a touch later in their appearance. These models were stuck in their lolly sticks, sprayed and then sat in a draw for going on 3 years at this point. I'm currently having a bit of a sort out and trying to make my man cave/office usable* and, if I'm really good, include a permanent gaming table so I can actually play some games. These figures needed to be painted and put away, so that's what I did.

*not a death trap

   The colour scheme was pretty plain, I kept them in off white tunics as I think it's likely to be the most historically accurate for them and mixed the trouser and hair colours for variety. I have broken my basing convention for these armies with these guys, but I thought as fully skirmishing units I wanted that to stand out on the board, so instead of regular size bases but spread out, I halved the base size.

This project still has another 7 or 8 bases of units to go - mostly for one side addition to the idea - plus some scenery bits, so hopefully that won't take another 3 years to get around to.

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More Tiny Romans

   While I was pushing the Gallic side of this project along, I tried to make sure the remaining Roman elements were also done.

   Initially this meant getting the base of skirmishers done as they were a type of unit I hadn't otherwise done any of. These are a unit type that look really effective in person but slightly odd in picture form.

Then with the Gauls finished, I went back and did the last two bases of Roman Legions.

   With enough to play the planned scenario, I tried to get the cards and command boards at Salute and had no luck, but at least the figures are ready to go.

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Tiny Gauls

   I had an idea a few weeks back that as I bought the vast bulk of my 2mm projects at Salute a couple of years ago, that I should get them finished before this Salute. So I spent a day building and priming all the bases before taking them in batches to paint.

   I plan to do an army shot of this project but for the moment I'll present them in the batches I painted them in.

My Gallic Warband test base. This got repainted a couple of times as it kept looking like a Smarties chocolate bar. I was pretty pleased with this end result.

With a base under my belt, I decided to get the project moving and did 3 bases of warband at the same time. I was pleased with the result, but it was harder work than it looks like it should be.

I then backed down to doing 2 bases of warbands at a time which was a happy medium between ease of painting and speed of project movement.

With a fair few bases of regular warbands done and the hope I could at least get this on the table unfinished I moved onto a "trained warband" which represents a more elite formation and a base of cavalry, which I had positioned to look a lot less organised than the base of Roman cavalry. I said on the Roman post that the cavalry was the base I least looked forward to painting, but its the one I ended up enjoying the most.

I then did another warband base along with a base of skirmishers, again in the attempt to round the army out before I focussed on actually finishing it. The skirmishers look good but the extra surface area on the sides added a lot more time to the painting process.

The last two bases of warbands finished a couple of days after Salute.

   I've been posting these to BlueSky as I've been finishing them and the author of the game, Mark Backhouse has been encouraging me along, which is really nice to see online. While I didn't finish these by the target date, I'm not too upset. 

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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.

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Roman Archers

   I've been meaning to add archers to my Early Imperial Roman army since I started buying it, but while I was happy to place orders for pack after pack of metal Celtic archers and slingers, I wasn't so sure I wanted to do the same for the Romans. Then I saw a scenario in the most recent Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine that called for a unit of them and it made me rethink my plan. A few evenings with a unit of Warlord metals in a basket and looking at the price made me remember that I've seen Victrix did a set instead, so I went and had a look for that. I could do 2 units of plastic archers for less than a single unit of metal archers, I was sold.

I've got the other unit of archers built and sprayed, plus I've sprayed up the rest of the Roman forces that haven't made it onto my desk since I started the project. Lets see how that goes.

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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. 

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How Many Cavalry?

    As I have mentioned before, I have a hobby spreadsheet where I keep lots of different bits of data with all the formulas that I can think of, giving me numbers back out. The formula that is important for this post is how many small scale games I have played this year (4*) and it is too low for being over half the year in.

*although, I don't think the 4 is within the spirit of my aim

   Then in a separate fact, I also added all the major battle dates from the same spreadsheet into a new calendar that I have then linked to my personal calendar, so that if at the end of a club night we aren't sure what to play the next week we can see what anniversaries are the next week and see if that inspires any games**. The reason I mention this now is that with the thought of having another 15mm game at some point soon, I noticed that the battle of Adrianople (Goths vs Romans) is in early August . . .

**which has inspired a big project rethink that might be something to do with the 25th October

   The first batch of figures up are the rest of my regular Gothic Cavalry, another 4 bases bringing my total up to 6 bases (48 mounted men). These are more Forged in Battle figures from my last big splurge on their site***. I've mixed in a few more horse colours this time as I have more in my repertoire but nothing exciting beyond that.

***Although, I have just seen they have a summer sale on

   The second thing is a unit of Noble Cavalry and some commanders. The noble cavalry seem to be based on the same figures as the regulars with, I think, 1 extra rider sculpt(?) and chainmail on the torsos so I've added some white horses into this batch to try and make the easier to pick out on the table top as from 3 foot away, you can't tell the difference.

   The commanders are all Forged in Battle as well and are mostly Germanic commanders from a few hundred years earlier, I just avoided ones that were obviously the wrong period. The general is Theodoric 1st himself, although, again, I doubt I'll actually be using the figure as himself.

   Then I have some scenic bits for the project. The campsite is from Baueda and was bought in a semi-recent Magister Militant test order. I just wanted to try and bring a bit of life to the back of the table and I felt like the Goths would have some of that. 

   While the wagon is from Essex Miniatures and I'm not sure why I didn't paint it in my last big batch of 15mm wagons.

   The vineyard was a test piece copied from Setting the Scene Volume 2. I probably need to add at least one more base of a similar size, but a double sized one would be better.

Figure for scale

   The last things are two Alternative Armies 15mm War Mammoths with crew from Forged in Battle (extras from my other packs). I bought these in a sale on a bit of a whim when I was thinking about adding little fantasy bits to my historical armies. I'm sort of tempted to add one more if I do another order but for now they will do. They are mounted on half sized horde bases, so if I need standard base sizes, I can add them together as a unit.

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15mm Gothic Infantry

    One of the things that I stopped to work out, once I realised that my new job would mean less painting time, was not which projects were more urgent and should be prioritised but which projects gave less little wins. One of the biggest ways of keeping myself motivated is splitting projects down into 'little wins', usually in the form of limiting the number of models in a painting batch so that I can finish, for example, 5 models in an evening instead of 10 half finished and then once a model is complete (inc basing) I add it to my notebook with a date*.

*and then a spreadsheet but lets not go there

   So by looking at projects without these little wins I was trying to avoid hitting the project when there wouldn't be much spare time and killing what motivation I had. My 15mm Goth army was the thing that came to mind immediately. Unlike my 15mm Romans, who I could paint a whole unit, base and count as a win, my Goths wouldn't be in a uniform, as I had been sticking them to wooden sticks in mixed batches so I could paint a whole row of identical colours, then mix them in units later on. The downside of this is that as I don't count a model as complete until it's based, I could have weeks of painting without a 'complete' model. Effectively I would be completing 6 units of infantry on the same day even if I had been "finishing" batches every few days over the course of weeks. So this became my biggest priority even though there are other more urgent projects.

   The infantry I painted was mostly from Forged In Battle, but the slingers are from Essex Miniatures. There are 3 bases of regular infantry that I can use as the base of an army or auxiliaries for my Romans, then a unit of archers and 2 half sized units of slingers to add some skirmishing elements.

   Early in to this mass batch painting I remembered I had some civilians from Essex Miniatures**, so they got added to the ends of a few sticks where there was space as it made the most sense for getting stuff moving. Then*** I remembered my plan of having at least one of the civilians on the base of a cart, so two carts got built**** and added to the queue along with some dogs and a cat that I bought at Salute from Pendrakon as I wanted this army to look like families on the move rather than a professional army.

**In another case of project creep

***See above

****I'm not really sure how much time I thought I was saving by not doing the 3rd in this batch

   The downside of this and in an attempt to make real ground, I painted the clothing in small batches, then went back and did all 126 figures skin, hair, wood, metal and shield in one go over for each colour, and I have a new found respect for those people who paint in big batches, it might be faster but I am never doing that ever again.

   I've got at least another 5 units of cavalry, some generals and another cart to paint for this project which I'd like to get on with at some point soon but first I'll be looking at getting some other projects without little wins, or for more immediate games, moving before my hobby time dries up. However, saying that, as I typed that it has very much dawned on me how stupid it would be not to get on with the last bits of this project . . .

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Small Romans

    One of my main targets this year was to play some 15mm games to test my theories to do with the scale, which meant I needed to organise said games and paint some more models. With time to organise games being difficult so far this year - nearly a 6th of the way through the year and I'm a game and a half into my targets - so I got an opponent in place, booked a table and with the deadline looming, I got painting.

   With the last bits that I needed for the game being two units of auxiliaries (regulars and archers to balance sides), a general for each side and some scenery was a nice to have. Ultimately, as I started getting the last few units that I needed for the game moving, I got a bit carried away and started on what it may be said* was too many other figures, ending up with every flat surface within arms reach with a 15mm model in some stage of being painted**, so this post is what I actually managed to finish. . .

*by those with too much sense

**Most of which weren't strictly important

   The first units are the last Middle Imperial Roman Auxiliary and Auxiliary Archers units as these would allow a fairly even game with about 6 units a side and now mean all my Roman Infantry is painted**. Like the rest of the project these should cover me for the early 200's, but with a few allied units I don't see why they can't get me as far as the late 200's as well, so that I can play all the battles in the crisis of the 3rd century. As I think I have mentioned before, this might be one of the best periods for a wargamer to build armies around****, not only do you have constant Roman on Roman fighting, you've got the Palmyrenes, Goths and later the Huns all to add as allies or enemies depending on the period or game.

***Until I buy more?

****Plus it's historically one of the times the empire probably should have fallen which makes it interesting

   Next up and not hugely exciting but really useful are the Roman Generals. The figures are from Essex Miniatures and are all the same sculpt (although I added Forged in Battle figures to the big general's bases). These are not only to give each side a leader for Lion Rampant games, but also to future proof the collection for games like Sword And Spear (for later this year?) where you need a lead general and smaller Captains to relay orders. Again, I'll be adding 'captains' or generals for my allied/enemy armies so I doubt all 6 will be in the same game very often, but I figured it was better to be covered than missing a single figure later on.

   Weirdly, these 8 figures have been sitting on my painting table for about a year and have been in the category of where do I even start painting these, but, as it turns out, they've been a really nice mini project.

   The next thing I started painting, and I suspect it was because they were easy and I wanted quick stuff to put at the edge of the battle, was a flock of sheep with shepherd and some wagons, pack mules and associated workers. The small wagons and sheep are from Forged in Battle along with the shepherd, while the workers, big wagon and mules are from Essex Miniatures.

   Last for the actual romans is the start of my 15mm Roman scenery collection. I've still got another 5 or so buildings to do, but this was the point where the deadline really started to loom, so I've got together what I felt was a minimum villa complex to put on the edge of the board and more buildings will be done in the future.

   Lastly I have two units of Gothic cavalry. I could gush for hours about how interesting I find the Goths as a race, but that can wait until I start on that army properly. Suffice to say for the moment that in this period they are both the biggest external threat to the Roman empire (if you treat the competing empires as a single unit) and, arguably. the biggest source of man power with whole tribes fighting as mercenary armies and Goths being inducted into the legions themselves. So I wanted to get a couple of units of their cavalry painted for this game, partly to get their presence in early and partly to bulk out my cavalry and make the game a bit more interesting, with 7 units a side instead of 6.

Now all I need to do is play a game . . .

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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.

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Where I claim painted models that were mostly painted months ago

    I've not done much painting for a couple of months now, and its starting to show with my backlog. As a shark has to keep swimming to stop itself drowning, so wargamers have to keep painting to stop themselves drowning in their backlogs. Therefore, I have been working on getting my 3rd century Roman project one step closer to the table with a few units of Auxiliaries whenever I can sneak a few minutes of painting time - although if we are being honest, the vast bulk of these were done in times when painting was easier. 

   Nothing hugely special here. Two of the units were from my kickstarter haul from a few years back and the other is from my top up order when I decided to make sure I had enough to split the army in two for civil war games and have been given a pretty basic paint job. Historically accurate or not, I want to make sure my Legionnaires and Auxiliaries look different at a glance on the table, so the tunics being white or red should be an easy thing to spot quickly.

   Again, in an attempt just to get figures off my painting table quickly, this skeleton crossbow unit was next and as there is little on the models bar bone, they were a quick paint job.

I've still got an unhappy amount of units left to paint in the project, so I had better find some time to get on with it.

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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.

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Smashing Through The Rank And File

   This week has been a bit of a breakthrough in terms of getting bulk loads of figures done, the long weekend is what you are expecting me to say, but mostly it's the fact my son has learnt to put himself to sleep, which has freed up an extra hour in the morning before work and untold hours afterwards, and that's not including weekends.

   With that in mind and still waiting for my Old Glory Napoleonic's back order to arrive I went back to my neglected 15mm projects - Middle Imperial Romans and Undead. I still plan to split my Romans in half for their first proper game, before I really get on with buying and painting an enemy for them, but I've also had half a thought that they might end up fighting my Undead army in the short term as well. Using Lion/Dragon Rampant means it doesn't really matter what is on each side. With a unit of Legionnaires being 6 points to a regular skeleton unit's 3, I'm going to need to get cracking with undead, but as a quick reward for each Roman unit finished, I think they will make both projects move fairly quickly now.

   So, this is what I managed to achieve this weekend:

   Firstly, I finished the remaining two units of Legionaries, this time with shield transfers that I discovered that Forged in Battle had added to their range since I bought my army - this now leaves me the issue of going back to the two units that I painted shield designs on, which I am not looking forward to.

   Next are my Medium Cavalry. I had already finished one and a half of these units - which was when I found out my plan of 12 cavalry to a base wasn't going to happen, however, this has the happy accident of meaning that I get 3 units out of 2 packs of models, which is nice. Thankfully, sorting out the transfers on the finished models was a simple process. I have half a plan of buying another couple of packs and giving them a different shield design but that is a problem for later.

   Lastly, the the Romans, is a unit of Auxilia. I got 3 units wearing similar gear to my Legionaries as part of my kickstarter, so when I wanted to round the force out, I purposely picked something different. A bit of a shame I can't get printed shield designs for these guys, but they are supposed to look a bit like a rushed raising of local militia rather than a standing unit.

   As I was on a roll, I decided to get some undead units moving too, just to keep myself a bit more refreshed. Nothing particularly exciting here as its a lot of quickly painted mass infantry but I've got two more units of regular skeletons, a unit of skeleton archers and a mass unit of zombies off my painting list. The regular skeleton warriors are made up of a slightly better mix of figures than the first unit I did, as on my second order I realised Alternative Miniatures have a pack of skeletons with swords. I probably need to put a small pennant on a spear in each unit, but I'm not too worried at this stage.

   I've put the zombies on a base 50% deeper 80/60 instead of 80/40 with an extra 11 figures to try and make the unit look like a cheap horde - in game play it won't make any difference but I like the idea of fantasy zombies being so easy to kill that units need to look intimidating - I also think Sword and Spear uses bigger bases for horde units, so it will allow them to work with that ruleset too.

As always with my 15mm stuff, I apologise for my photos. 

As this whole 15mm thing is a bit new to me and 15mm fantasy ranges seem to be the worst for websites that don't have pictures of the product, I've had a bit of a splurge and bought a single unit for a few different fantasy armies with the plan of seeing how they look next to other models in different ranges and whether my 24 infantry and 8 cavalry fit on a base - I don't want to place an order for an army and find I'm a few figures short and I really don't want to be buying a whole army and finding I really don't like the look of the models - so expect to see a few projects appearing that don't seem to go anywhere for a bit.

Thanks for reading