Iberian Warriors, Heavily Armoured

After a break painting, I can feel I am yet as good as I once was, but nevertheless i finished a few figures here today, and thought i would show them to the readers of this blog.

They are the heavily armed swordsmen from the Orion Iberian Infanty set. There is some controversy to the existance of this type of unit, as heavily armed Iberians is something that really does not fit in their style of fighting, which is guerilla warfare, basically. There is something about being heavily armored that just does not fit in with those tactics.

I guess one could assume that they have stolen the heavy armor from fallen romans, and that would explain the chainmail. They would then be troops fighting for Hannibal in the Punic wars, in Italy. Which is probably how I will use them when fielding them anyway.

The standard of sculpting is somewhat more lumpy than i am used to, having painted alot of HaT figures. These are the first troops I have painted from Orion, so the style is foreign to me. But I must say that i think that they overall are pretty good.  There was one figure that was alittle mismolded. The shields are supposed to be the Scutum, and the figure to the left in the picture below shows a shield that is improperly molded. The one to the right is how it is supposed to look.

The unit I have presented above, 10 figures all in all, is composed of 1 officer, 1 standard bearer (from a HaT command set), and 8 swordsmen. The swordsmen look like this up close.

I chose to paint them more or less like the box backside specifies. The picture is not that clear, and the shield design was not readily visible, so i had to use my imagination. It turned out OK, but nothing more than that. I am not good with engraved shields.

The officer was simple to paint. That is apart from his breastplate which seems to be less well defined on some of the officers. I expect I will show more pictures of this pose, later on, as more units have been painted. I think that the officer might be a Carthaginian, but he might be an Iberian. It´s hard to know for sure.

The standardbearer is as mentioned from the HaT Carthaginian Command set. He probably should have had a scutum instead of a round shield, but now i am just nitpicking my own choices. As you can see i tried to use the same shield design that the other Iberian warriors had.

Stay tuned for more Iberians.

~Claus

PS: I think I might be the first to paint up this set. I have not seen the pictures of these figures painted anywhere else.

Ambushed - Goblinized and Pharao

Ok, so there I was faithfully updating my blog every day, or every other day, and suddenly nothing? What gives. Well I was ambushed. Sort of.

A friend had this project he wanted me to be a part of. I was supposed to bring out of the closet my old Orcs and Goblin Army and face a few of his adventuring friend in a battle with them. It was going to be great. I had not seen this friend for a long time... and I decided, hey why not?

Ok, so what happened: I brought out my old army, and discovered that I would need a few extra figures, and before you knew it, I had bought over 200 plastic orcs and goblins. All needing assembly. I figured that I would be done with them within a reasonable amount of time. Boy was I wrong!

I got to finishing the Night Goblins (all 100 of them) and then they overwhelmed me and goblinized me. It might have looked something like this:

The picture is from a magic card, called Goblin Piledriver. Anyway, I was completely overwhelmed, and did not find any motivation for assembling the rest. The goblins had gotten the better of me! At least that´s my story, and I am sticking to it.

As luck would have it, I recovered. And among other things I made a few figure trades (in 1/72 ancient miniatures). I traded away some atlantic Pharaos court civilians, and got a nice bag of figures in return from Tommy, also from Denmark. He was apparantly very excited about it, and also sent me this beautiful figure:

It is a Pharao, one of the rares from Caesar Miniatures, that you just do not get your hands on if you are not either a). Very Lucky or b) pay for alot of sets. The paint job is Tommy´s i believe. I think he´s done a very good job. So I plan on keeping him like this for the foreseeable future. What do you guys think?

~Claus

Carthaginian War Elephants

Watch out! Here come the Elephants.

 

Actually these elephants are quite small compared to the elephants we know from today. That is because they are of a species now thought to be extinct (or maybe near extinct). The North African Forest Elephant. We know that the Carthaginians used these Elephants in battle, the way that can be seen above. They were used to crash through the enemy infantry, and scare the enemy horses, who did not like their alien smell.

First I will show a two pictures of the units with the red howdah. Here they are.

These figures are pretty much like they come out of the box, from HaT. With one exception. I made a headswap for the spearman in the central elephant. He is the unit leader, or at least that is how I like to think of him. The Elephants I know are painted a little too simply, being one color, and with no hightlights, but it will do, I think.

Then there is the unit with the white howdah. 

Again these are pretty much as they come in the set, but, the central elephant has a figure from the Atlantic Gladiator set, with a headswap. I like how he fits, and I consider him the Leader of all my elephants. 

I hope you liked my elephants. Sooner or later I will assemble and paint up the Zvezda War Elephants too, and introduce those to you as well.

~Claus

Trees and Hedges

Any battlefield worth it´s salt has got to have some signs of nature. So what would be more natural than to have a few trees to put on it.

Here first is a single pine, that I have.

As can be seen it is probably meant for some bigger figures, considering how tall it is. But it looks ok with 1/72 figures I think. Next up some more generic trees.

And now some trees that look like they are more cultivated. Perhaps an orchard, or something of the kind. I have 6 of these trees.

And until recently that was all the trees I had. But then i bought a case of trees, 12 actually, that are 6 cms high. I thought that would be a good size for 1/72 figures. Here are half of these trees.

Of all the trees there are my favorites. Why? Because they actually look like they have leaves on them, instead of clumps of green.

Then there are the hedges. I have 3 of those. They are all Games Workshop products, so again, they are a bit tall for 1/72 (some call 1/72 20mm figures), and are meant for 25mm figures. Heres what they look like.

I feel I am pretty well covered on the forrest front. If I want to I can make more than 1 forest on the gaming table. Hedges I feel, as I have pointed out, are too high, but they are however still usable.

Right, now that I have shown a few terrain features, and such, I feel that the next update should be more figure related, and it will be, I promise. But that will have to wait until tomorrow.

~Claus

Ruined Towers and Walls

Continuing my efforts to show my sister what I have of terrain, so she can get an idea of what I am missing, here is a little photoshoot of my Ruined Towers, and Walls.

I have forgotten who the manufacturer of the towers is, so if anyone out there recognizes them, feel free to post an answer in the comment section.I like these towers very much. Although they are probably not exactly in time periode with the Imperial Romans, from Airfix, I have shown them here together with these figures.There are 4 ruined towers.

The walls are a Games Workshop product, and some of them are a bit too large for the figures, but you can judge for yourself, when you see the pictures.

These stone walls might be perfect for 25mm. But as can seen on the middle picture, they are definately too high for the troops on each sides of them, to engange in hand to hand combat, with ease. They are also alittle too high to scale without using ladders. I did however come up for a use for these walls when I was taking the pictures...

Look: it is a ruined fortress!

Next up trees and hedges I think.

~Claus

Games Workshop Hills

I was talking to my sister the other day, and promised her to show some pictures of the terrain that I have. My chief concern was the hills that I have. I find them very annoying to say the least. They are a Games Workshop product, and are to say the least, very unstable.

Here are the three hills you can buy in a set, along with two of my Airfix Imperial Romans.

As can probably be seen, the hills themselves are pretty nice. They are flocked with a grassy surface, which makes them look really good. Unfortunately it does not allow figures with small bases to stand on them very easily. They are easily toppled, because of the irregular surface.

It does not help that the hills are hollow. That is they consist only of a bended (bendable) surface, most likely some sort of rubberized plastic. This makes the hills prone to being a bit shakey, and when figures are put on them, they fall over easily because of this as well.

Here is a picture of the underside of one of my hills.

My problems would most likely be non-existant, if I used them for 25mm lead figures, as they are designed to. The lead would weigh them down alot, and also the figures would be harder to topple. Another annoying feature of the hills is that the hill slopes are at such a high angle that placing plastic 1/72 figures on them is quite impossible.

My sister, who is studying landscape architecture, has kindly offered to make some hills for me! How can i pass that up? The only thing I had to do was show her these pictures, so she had an idea about the problems that I faced.

~Claus

Imagi-nation Greeks

Some years ago I painted up some Greeks. I decided that I would make four main Greek armies. Those would be the Thebans, Athenians, Spartans and Macedonians. Of course I also wanted there to be minor greek ally contingents, that each of these mighty armies could call apon, and thus I invented some Imagi-Nation city states, that had uniforms i just picked out for fun.

Here is a light equiped hoplite unit, that I imagine comes from the Greek settlements in Egypt..

That they are from Egypt is not very visible on the above photo, but it is quite a bit more visible in the shield designs that the figures from HaT have. These are visible in the photos below where I have taken a picture of each pose.

Of course lighter troops were also available to the Greeks, and I made a shieldless light psiloi unit. Also an imagination unit.

Here are the poses from the unit, in profile. I have omitted the central figure, more on that later. (I think I might have omitted a figure from the rank and file too, but no worries. If you can pick out which one, you get a brownie point).

Also I made a 2nd unit of light psiloi. These are equiped with a shield. The thracian shield I made a very primitive design on. Just a triangle and two straight lines dividing up the shield into three areas.

The figures making up the unit, are basically the same as the other light unit of psiloi, but here they are any way in close-up.

Now to the more special figures of these light units. It is a conversion in each case. The basic figure is one of the atlantic civilian greeks, with a short walking staff. Since I in general do not like civilian figures, I decided to convert them, with a simple headswap. Here are the results.

And from the back:

The heads from the civilians I put in my spares box, and later reused on other hoplites. It is easy to explain a helmetless man. The left figure shows some wear and tear, and i might repaint him before using him in battle. I like how these conversions turned out.

~Claus

An old battle

I have been asked if I use my figures for wargames, or they are just for display. While I am flattered that some people think they are good enough to be used for display, my main reason for painting them is to use them in wargames.

I do not get to wargame as often as I would like to, mainly because it requires me to clear my painting space, and convert it to my gaming place. But once in a while I actually do it. This battle that I am about to show you was played out some 6 years ago I believe. I took pictures, not knowing if I was ever going to use them, and I played out the game without remembering to take pictures of the end...

But here are some of the pictures of my Ancient Egyptian Army, as it looked back then, with Punic Libyan and Nubian allies.

As can be seen, if you click on the picture, they are fighting Republican Romans. I remember that the Egyptians won the initiative and thus got to set-up first, and had advanced parties on the board. The Romans had to enter from the edge of the table.

Here they are, with most of the Republican Roman Army deployed.

And here is a closer look at the Egyptian deployment.

Back then I did not know how different the Punic war Libyans looked from the tribal libyans at the time of the Egyptians. So today, this battleline would have looked different. The Republican Romans are finally deployed...

And battle begins as the skirmishers from each side start to meet up...

And here we have a view of some of the Romans. Notice the skirmishers with black skins, and ahistorical geometrically designed shields... they are fleeing from the missile fire that the Egyptian bowmen has been hailing down on them.

Roman skirmishers engage Libyans in this picture. Some Atlantic Egyptians painted up as Nubians, watch, as they themselves have made a unit of Republican Roman skirmishers (velites) retreat.

The Libyans turn out to be no match for the Velites, as can be seen in this picture. The Romans seem to be winning the early battles in hand to hand combat.

On the right flank (as seen from the Egyptians) the Republican Roman Cavalry is almost ready to charge the Nubian bowmen.

And the last picture I will leave you with is a shot of what happens in the center, seen from the Republican Roman vantage point of view...

As I said in the beginning of this post: I don´t recall who won. But my thought would be the Republican Romans... But you will have to imagine the ending yourself, as I did not take any more pictures..

~Claus