Last of the English Archers

    Another slight detour from my painting plan but linked to another recent project. Posting about the wooden stakes for my 100 Years War project got me thinking about the last few units that still needed to be finished. There is still another plastic box set I'd like to buy to complete (?) both sides, but first I have another few units that I already own that need to be done.

   For the English I have 3 units left to do and it dawned on me that I should really get them built and sprayed ready to fit into my plans. The archers (already having been built) were the closest to being ready, so they jumped the queue and got onto my painting table.

   There isn't a huge amount to say about these, they are Perry Miniatures plastics like the rest and I painted them to match a couple of the banners in my stock pile.

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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 

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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. 

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Rock & Rock Pt.II

    Another strange post that doesn't fit anywhere but something I am quite proud of. When I was painting up my English archers for my late 100 years war armies all those months ago, I wanted to do something with the stakes that came on the sprues, but I wasn't sure how to base them. I eventually decided to do them in blocks that could be lined up in front of the movement trays I use, but needed a big enough Warbases order to make the postage worth it.

   The bases are 80mm by 25mm so it takes two to match the length of my trays, but allows for more uses if I'm playing a skirmish game or with smaller units. There are enough to protect 4 units of archers which does mean I have a 4th unit of archers waiting to be painted . . .

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More Yellow Shields

    With a bit of a delay, here are the promised 3rd unit of Roman Auxiliary troops, the same Warlord Games plastics as the last two. I have one more unit of these left to do - but it includes more metal figures and the command elements, so that should break up my routine a bit.

   I'm going to work on the theory that I failed in my self imposed challenge for last week and have succeeded this week instead of trying to rush to catch up, but lets see what else I can get done with my free time as the week goes on.

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How Many Of Them Are There?

    So I missed my self imposed deadline to post my second unit for the week and while I hadn't finished the promised unit of Romans, I had finished another unit of Ancient Britons that I had planned to post after them, as it is the start of a fresh week, lets look at them now and try to finish the Romans for later.

   First up is the unit of regular warriors, a complete mix of models from a chief, slinger, skyclad and more Warlord plastics. There are also a couple of Crusader Miniatures models in here from their Religious Fanatics set to mix a the look up a bit. I also tried some new checks on the fabric in her shameless stolen from the internet, although I have no idea from who, and I've also started to paint the shield rims in different colours to add even more brightness to the units on the table. In time all my units will get mixed in, so it won't end up with a single unit with painted shield rims and other units with plain.

   Next up is the last chariot for the unit of chariots. I had bought 3 Warlord Games chariots, but I've moved one into its own thing - coming later - and replaced it with a Wargames Foundry chariot which mixes in really nicely. The only real difference between them is the length of the shaft connecting the horses to the body of the chariot, but as they are hand made (in different places) I'm not expecting them to be perfect matches of each other.

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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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