Iberian Holiday

I'm still on the warpath against the many small projects that have taken up space on my painting table for far too long. This time is was just a handful of 15mm ancient Iberian cavalry. I only have a small Iberian army, which was initially made as a ally (or enemy) for my Republican Romans. I'm pretty certain I have many more of them in a box somewhere. However, because I chose to hand paint all the shields, these guys are not an easy paintjob.

They do make up a respectable force but not nearly as large as I prefer. They're certainly large enough for a ally to sit on the Roman flank. Unfortunately they have only ever been used to fight along side my friend Peter's Carthaginians against my Romans!

These are the figures that have been taking up room on my painting table for the past 2 or 3 years. A unit of light horse and a cavalry commander. That's it. They were very dusty but it didn't take much to finish them.

Looking through this blog I found that I never did a post dedicated to these troops. All I ever did were piecemeal post of units as I painted them. So I decided put the whole little army on parade and take some photos. Here they are:

Scutari - Heavy Infantry

Caetrati - Light Infantry

Balaeric Slingers

Heavy Cavalry

Light Cavalry

Commanders/ Heroes

And that's them. They definately need more heavy cavalry. However, they also need more heavy infantry and every thing else too. Maybe I'll get onto it sometime in the future, but maybe I won't. 

By the way (I should have mentioned this earlier); all the figures are Xyston Miniatures.

Cheers and thanks for reading.

I Played Some Actual Games!

Over the past couple of years I haven't actually played many games against real live opponents but over the past month or so I've been getting back into putting troops back onto the table and facing off against real live opponents.

Game 1

The First of these games was an ancient battle - Republican Rome v's Carthage, using the To The Strongest rules. My opponent for this game was Jenko. Rome had Spanish allies and Carthage had Gauls. It was a great game. We missed some of the finer details of the rules but TTS is an easy set of rules to pick up. Rome came out the victor this time around.

A big cavalry/light infantry bash on the Roman left flank saw early success for Hannibal's men with one unit of Gauls standing up to repeated attacks. But in the end they were over come and the advantage went to Rome. 

The major Roman push was in the centre where the legions advanced. Hannibal on his elephant was routed and it stampeded through the Carthaginian lines causing havoc and opening up the centre.

Game 2.

My next opponent was Lorne. We played a game of Sword and Spear - Vikings V's Anglo-Saxons. This gave me a chance to bring out my Anglo-Saxons for the first time in a long lime. It had also been a long time since I last played S&S and I think that last time was also against Lorne.

The vikings had a smaller but better trained army whereas my Anglo-Saxon army, lead by Æthelguy the Seeker was larger but less battle hardened. However, in the end my brave men defended their heath and home and repelled the viking invaders.

My plan was simple: Send out skirmishers, hold back and make the enemy come to me with the hope that a long advance would break up their battle line. Lucky for Æthelguy, that this tactic paid off.

In the pic below a unit of Viking Berserkers smashed their way through the thinly defended Anglo-Saxon right flank routing several units. They were stopped by a unit of poorly armed and untrained fyrd who hit them in the flank and stopped them for just long enough to ensure the Anglo-Saxon victory.

Æthelguy also had some wild Irish allies in the form of light javelinmen. One unit advanced, hurled their javelins and got wiped out by  group of mounted hauscarls. The second band of Irish faired batter by seeing off the horsemen. Unfortunately they got carried away and hurled themselves into the flank of some heavy infantry who routed the wild Paddies with ease.

Game 3

WWII this time, and again my opponent was Jenko. We played O Group using the introductory scenario in the rulebook - Attack at Christot. Jenko took command of the attacking British and I played the Germans. This is a good intro game will all the elements present to teach someone the rules as you go along.

This time around Colonel Jenkins lead his brave battalion to victory by driving the Bosche from Christot and securing the town. I forgot to take photo's for most of this game but the action starts with the appearance of a German PAK40 taking out a Cromwell (those who know the game and scenario will note that I subbed Sherman's for Cromwell's because I don't have any British Sherman's).

And this was Col. Jenkins's response.

A second Cromwell is hit but the British infantry keep up a steady advance.

An assault on the farmhouse sees the Germans hurled back in disarray from their strong point.

And that's all the photo's I took of that one. An artillery barrage and infantry fire took out the PAK40 and also damaged the Panther tank that came up behind it in support. A second armoured section that included a Firefly came into play and took out the Panther. 

All in all, it's good to be playing some games again.

Thanks to Jenko and Lorne.

P.S. And just in case you're wondering Athol Guy is the bass player from the 60's folk group The Seekers.

Tiny and Tinier

I've been struggling to get my wargaming mojo back recently so, on a visit to Eureka Miniatures, I invested in some Irregular Miniatures 6mm War of Spanish Succession to try and kick start me back into painting.

I did a couple of regiments of foot and one of horse. I didn't know how to base them and I had no game system in mind. I just painted and mounded them so that they looked good to me. And my plan worked because I did get my painting mojo back.

Each unit has 77 individual figures. Each block has 18 figures and each regiment has 4 blocks plus a command strip. They look pretty nice and they're easy to paint but I doubt that I'll continue with this era for the foreseeable future but I will continue with 6mm.

This unit is the 1st Battalion Nivernais.  I did this unit in 28mm some years back.

The next unit is the 1st Battalion Bourbon.  I did this unit in 28mm some years back too.

This is just a generic regiment of horse.

And just in case you've never encountered 6mm miniatures before, here they are with a 28mm wizard.

Painting these made me drag out my 6mm ancients and I forgot how much I like those figures. So I went to the Baccus website to see if anything caught my eye... And I decided on Wars of the Roses. I've always wanted to do WotR's but I've always been put off by the amount of painting requited to do all the livery and stuff. But in 6mm I don't need to worry too much about that and I think I be able to get a really good massed unit effect happening. So I ordered their two army pack (with a few added extras).

And:

You probably noticed something else in the top photo. This is my attempt at making a 2mm Roman Legion. I watched the youtube series of the new Too Fat Lardies game "Strength and Honour" and I liked what I saw. I searched on line for 2mm figures and found pretty much nothing. I did find some DIY ideas so I began to think...

Here's what I came up with:

A 20mm square of thick card.

I stuck it onto a plastic base with blu-tack.

(The plastic base is just to give me something to hold on to.)

I added a thick coat of tacky glue.

I dipped it into some hundreds and thousands (I don't know what these are called in outside of Australia but they are little balls of sugar usually sprinkled on birthday cakes or used to make fairy bread).

I stopped taking photos at this stage because after giving them a coat of pva glue the turned very tacky and I was going to chuck them out. But they dried very solid overnight. So I glued them onto a 150mm x 750 mm base and gave them a thick undercoat of Vallejo black undercoat. Then I did a bit of dry brushing and a very, very basic paint job. Some flocking and here they are.

And that's my attempt to make a 2mm legion. This method would be a really easy way to make warbands. Just cut out an irregular blob shape, glue it on a base and add the hundreds and thousands. You could easily make a vast army in an afternoon. The most time consuming thing was waiting for the pva coating to dry to a solid consistency. I left it over night but I'm sure if you placed them in a nice warm area they will cure within a couple of hours.