An upcoming possible big thing at the second Partizan show has kicked my backside into gear and I've spent a little time tidying up the Arthurians that I had re-based a while back.
Quite a few figures had lost their spears, and the bases were a bit messy. These figures have been re-based so many times, and this will definitely be the last for them. They are all Gripping Beast figures, mostly purchased ages ago (probably more years than I think) after reading the Cornwell Arthur books.
They were originally based up for WAB and organised to the 'Fall of the West' supplement before James and Steve released their Arthur book.
They are all on 120mm unit bases, great for games of To The Strongest! and also for Hail Caesar or Dux Bellorum (most of the units have integral dice frames).
Some skirmishers to finish off.. but these others are pretty ready I think.
(I'm not going to start re-painting shields and try to touch up too much)
Something a little different this time. I do occasionally post videos relating to model rail stuff.. However, this evening whilst I had my Romans out for a little box-shuffling, I thought I'd video them..
At the back of my mind as I've been putting my Roman army together, has been the need to provide some baggage, or camp. We haven't used these in our games at all yet, but perhaps ought to. On a practical note - it's a good place to keep your spare ammo chits and perhaps victory medals for To The Stongest! I thought I'd start with a single camp 'unit' which in TtS! is a 'deep' unit. I knew that I would want to fortify this (we are Romans after all!), so decided to combine the camp base with three sides of fortifications. I had considered building the two parts separately, but figured this would be more practical and I can always make up some more field fortification pieces later. The base, therefore, was a piece of hardboard cut to size - 180 x 150mm. This will fit fairly neatly onto the 150mm grid we use. In best bodgy blue peter style, I took a sharp knife and glue to some foamboard, a load of cocktail sticks, applied wood filler and paints and finished up with this. The groundwork is painted up to blend with the arid look on the rest of the army.
I think field fortifications cost 2 points per grid edge, rather than per square, in which case this would cost 6 points, plus the 1 point for the camp.
it does remind me of a DBA camp element.. in fact I'm sure I have one just like this in 15mm somewhere!
Although I have been busy painting figures (Romans mostly), and playing the odd game with wargames chum Scrivs lately, not really been keeping the blog up to date. Must try harder! Lately we have been enjoying trying out Simon Miller's upcoming new Ancient rules; 'To The Strongest!' However, today I played the part of an honorary Irregular, joining Steve Jones, James Morris, Matt Moran and Dave King in a big game at the scout hut in Newark.
We pooled together a variety of troops (including Scrivs Gauls on loan) to play out a game loosely based on Thapsus, one of Caesar's battles against his Pompeian foes. My newly painted republican Romans were standing in as Marians. We used Hail Caesar and after a fair bit of time spent organising our commands, laid out what felt like a fairly plausable battle. Although the Pompeians had the advantage of numbers, Caesars legions were of decidedly better quality. Dave and I joined James and we faced off against Julius Steve Jones Caesar and Matt. As can happen with these big games, we did not fight through to a definite conclusion. Both of our right wings had made breakthroughs and the battle line was likely to turn had we had the time to fight on. We settled for an honourable (or horrible) draw. Overall a great day out. Great game visually with tons of figures, in good company. Steve took pots of pictures and I suspect his will be much better than I've managed, so hopefully they'll be up on his blog soon.
As for our elephants.. As ever, they looked great but ultimately proved to be a liability and more of a problem for us than them!
