Author: Toby

An exciting and ultimately close battle using Phil Sabin’s Lost Battles rules last night against Darth Mather. We were refighting 2nd Coronea – he was Agesilaus, I was the humdrum allied hoi polloi. I felt I was doing very well initially as I pushed forward my right flank and broke right through his weak left flank and was getting the better of the melee in the centre, while his right flank commanded by Agesilaus was just sitting there like a bunny in the headlights, but two poor morale rolls saw me loosing all my remaining hoplites on my right flank and in the centre as they were already spent. I used my last command points to withdraw my hoplites on the left unengaged and end the battle. When we added up the points though, the 26 point bonus for starting the battle with only 51 points to the Spartan 64 points, and that most of my hoplites had fled because of poor morale rather than being shattered in close combat meant that Mather had actually only won by 70 points to 67, which was pretty close.

All in all a very enjoyable battle. In the last turns I felt like I was being rolled over, but since that was pretty much what happened in real life I felt that the scoring system worked wonders in showing that really I did no better or worse than could be expected with the forces at my disposal. A refreshing change from the equal points fantasy historical match-ups that I am more used to.

No pictures unfortunately, which is probably a good thing.

An interesting Thursday evening. I had planned a gentle potter in the study, possibly aiming to clear the tray of half assembled figures on the tray on top of the printer so that I can actually print stuff out again. Instead a friend of mine IMed me in the afternoon looking for some Tau fire-warriors with pulse carbines to use in a competition at the weekend. Never wishing to let a friend down, and since I did vaguely remember having some undercoated sprues of the aforementioned warriors in the garage, I leapt into action once I got home (via a brief interlude unblocking my parents-in-law’s sink).

A brief expedition into the further recesses of the garage located the sprues in question. A rapid tally of the parts revealed that I could only make 9 warriors with pulse carbines from the sprue, and even then only if 3 of them were actually lobbing grenades and just holding carbines in the other hand (which is a slightly strange posture since the pulse carbine has an underslung grenade launcher begging the question of why you would throw a grenade when you have a machine that preseumably can do it for you much better).

Anyway, I quickly assembled these and undercoated them with Shadow Grey. I painted the various bits of hardware (carbines, backpacks) with Midnight Blue and drybrushed them lightly with Shadow Grey. The bodies I then quickly painted with splinter camouflage in Space Wolves Grey, Ice Blue and Fortress Grey and then gave the whole thing a quick blue ink wash.

Here is a very poor photo of them – I would take a better one but they have already gone off to battle. I suspect a better picture will just show up the deficiencies of the paint job though. Originally I was going to do Tau in a red/brown colour scheme – these are blue/grey to fit in my David’s army better, but I actually think I prefer the blue/grey colour scheme.

I’ve just realised that there are no pictures of my Ottomans up here, only over on the Pinner Wargames website. So here they are, the result of some focused evening painting while on holiday in Wales. Apologies as usual for the quality of the photos.  I must find my tripod so I can take some photos where the depth of field is more than about 3 mil. I seem to remember seeing it somewhere in the garage about 6 months ago when I was looking for something else, although I can’t remember if I ignored it or hoiked it out on the grounds that it didn’t belong in the garage.

First up are the sipahis – the feudal landowner cavalry, normally armoured and armed with bows and a mix of lances and hand weapons. I’m experimenting with a fairly fast painting style at the moment with a base colour, some quick high-lighting and then a wash, in this case Devlan Mud from GW.

The other figures that I almost finished are the akinjis. I say almost finished because I am 4 riders short, which is irritating. I am hoping that when I split the packs with Lord Mather we just miscounted and I can scrounge the missing 4 figures off him. Akinjis are the rabble peasant light cavalry, unarmoured and bow armed and fighting for loot rather than duty.

I also managed to paint some voynuks, but there are no pictures as yet because I have run out of grass for their bases. Plus I can’t actually fit them into the army. Ho hum, I am sure they will come in handy in other eastern European mediaeval armies.

Still to come are the generals and the kapikullu – I have some figures but I need to replace the lances and I am looking for some more inspiring general figures.

The janissaries are done as well, they just need to be photographed.

Last is the azabs – I don’t even have the figures for them yet.

A reasonably nice picture of my new Marian Romans. These are the Wargames Factory figures which have received a lot of bad press and I admit that I was initially quite disappointed when they arrived. The plastic was very shiny and the detailing of the chain mail was poor. Once sprayed with black primer however the detail became much more pronounced and the chain mail dry-brushed very well. They fit together well and make for a very good figure for the mass of an army. They are not going to win awards, but look fine with a basic wargaming paint job and are very cheap into the bargain.

Sizewise they are a perfect mix with my Gripping Beast republican Romans, which are at the smaller end of the modern scale. Not so great with modern Foundry figures, but the size of them is getting stupid (as is the cost).

A couple of minor irritations. Wargames Factory haven’t yet learnt GW’s trick of including lots of extra arm and weapon options on the sprue. As a result you can’t have all of them with swords or all of them with pila; there needs to be a mixture.

Part of this is also that they have missed a trick or kit flexibility. If they had added in heads with multi-feathered crests, these would have been perfect for earlier Roman principes. Add in a few arms with spears as well and you could have made Triarii as well. Then you could have combined these head and arm sprues with a different body sprue and you have Hastati as well – voila, most of the figures for a Polybian or Camillan Roman army with only a couple of extra items on the sprue, and you have increased potential sales by another 50%.