Skirmishers

Skirmishers

Loads of skirmishers including a unit (at the front) armed with bows, based for Dux Bellorum.

Saxon Shieldwall

Again, these could be used for quite a few different armies.

A Saxon Shieldwall unit

These are based for Dux Bellorum (16cm wide unit frontage). Since they are on 1p's held in place with magnets it would be easy to switch them out to a more open base style to represent other units.

Gripping Beast figures.

.

Both Shieldwall units

Dark Age Cavalry

For now this is all my early Dark Age cavalry which is painted.

Suspiciously regimented Dark Age cavalry

The bases need changing to my new style of cavalry base but are serviceable for now. The new style uses four 2p's (more to follow).
These chaps are armoured (for the most part).
I need to get the unarmoured figures I've got painted up to support them.

Religious Stuff

Dux Bellorum has an option for 'Religious Stuff', Monks!

These are work in progress of my two bases for the 'Monks' option in Dux. One is a Pagan scene, with sacrificial sheep and the other a travelling cart with priest for the more Christian themed armies. The Christian bases is the correct size for Dux but the Pagan one is, obviously, far to short and will need some sort of house rule.
The figures are all Irregular Miniatures.

Saxon Warriors

To be honest, these would probably work for any dark age warriors.

Saxon Warriors

The front unit are Noble Warriors, as indicated by the heavier armour they are wearing. The rear two units are straight forward Warriors with only helmets and Shields.

Once again these are based for Dux Bellorum but this time on Warbases irregular shaped bases to reflect the fact that in Dux these guys fight in a much looser formation. The overall frontage is around 16cm so it fits in nicely with the Shieldwall units. These are Gripping Beast figures.

Romano British Infantry

Finally got round to posting my Romano British Infantry

Romano British Infantry

They are based for Dux Bellorum. Well, my version of Dux Bellorum. I've doubled the size of the standard base (as suggested as an option in the rules) and added one so each infantry unit is 16cm wide. This gives the slightly odd number of seven figures wide but allows my cavalry to have six figures across each base.
Each figure is based on a 1p piece and fits into a WarBases base. The figures are, of course, Gripping Beast.
Here you can see two shieldwall units.

ACW game

Looking over the Union lines with the Confederates in the distance

Andy and I played a game of Regimental Fire & Fury on Saturday. The scenario was Little Round Top with the Confederates making good progress before we had to finish just as the Confederate attack on the Little Round Top was in the balance. One Union regiment held off the attack despite having taken a lot of losses and being disordered.

The brave 20ME hold off the attack

However, there were plenty more Confederates to push in while the Union had to rush reinforcements around the Top. 

Both of us agree it was a great game.

Afrika Korps

Finished my Afrika Korp Platoon. These are the  Perry Miniatures plastic box set (well two boxes actually, see later). I've organised them for Chain of Command using the latest list published here.
The list is for the Motorised Infantry supporting the 5th Leichte Division and 15th Panzer. As such each squad has two MG34's, which should make life very interesting for the 8th army platoon! The basing makes heavy use of our Kittens cat litter (thanks Puddin).

Afrika Korps Schutzen Platoon

HQ with added assets

The Platoon is composed of three squads and a Leutnant although I have added to the HQ section a 5cm Mortar, a Panzerbuchse 38/39 (Anti Tank rifle) and Forward Observers fort the 81mm mortar battery (the guy with the radio and the guy on the other side with the binoculars).

Squad

Typical Squad (ignore guy sneaking into shot on  left)

Each squad has an Obergefreiter (with SMG) and two teams each with a MG34 and riflemen (one has three the other four).

The Perry box set has the organisation for a Infantry Platoon which should be easy to create by dropping the second MG34 and adding extra riflemen.

Terrain

The terrain is a felt sheet painted with cheap acrylic paint in a sort of random pattern. The oil drum is from the old GW WH40K terrain accessory set.

The extra box

Why did I get an extra box? Well, as well as giving me more options to field for the AK platoon, I think that the figures wearing the early tropical uniforms (with the baggy trousers) will do for AVBCW BUF! I'm not going to use the back packs, obviously.

English Civil War Game
Over the xmas holidays Andy Bailey and I played an ECW game using Pike and Shotte from Warlord Games.

Andy's wargame's room is in the top floor of a barn and features realistic water effects, ie the roof leaks! On a huge table (12' by 6' (est)) we each had four regiments of pike and shotte, two cavalry regiments and two artillery pieces.
The game started well for the Royalist cause (me) with my large blue coat regiment advancing rapidly in the center, supported by the green reg while my left flank cavalry charged round Parliaments right flank and hit his regiments before they could deploy.
Unfortunately, the Parliament left cavalry did the same to the Royalist right and the game settled down to a huge firefight in the center. Eventually, Parliament started to get the better of the fight and the Royalist army withdrew in good order.
We agreed on a Tactical victory to Pariament! Booo Hiss (as far as I can remember that is).

Click here for more photos and a roughly chronological order.

Finished 8th Army

8th Army Platoon

Well, it took slightly longer to paint these then anticipated but they were still quite easy to do.
They still need a spray coat of dull Varnish to take of the sightly shiny look.
The 'ground' is a blanket I found on ebay. It needs lightning to look more 'deserty' so I'm going to try bleach.

8th Army painting

Base undercoat with dip

The first stage in painting these figures was to undercoat. Stage two is a quick coat of Vallejo Iraqui Sand (70.818). After that dried another basic coat but this time with Coat d'arms Dark Brown Super Shader. I prefer this to other 'dip' types because it's water based and is easier on my brushes.

UK Game Expo Winner!

About a month ago I attended the UK Game Expo in Birmingham and had a really great time (I know this blog post is a bit late - bad blogger).
Well, while there I took part in the Sails of Glory demo being put on by Wotan Games and won games on both days (Saturday and Sunday). My prize for each game was a Wings of Glory WW1 plane. But I was also entered into a prize draw for a Starter set and won that as well (on the Sunday)! Unfortunately, I had to go before the presentation so Wotan Games very kindly offered to post the game out to me and yesterday it finally arrived.

My prize

Carol playing her move

Carol and I played a quick game (she managed to get behind me!) and this is her winning finish.

My response

Obviously, beginners luck (although she has played before!).

Ah well, thanks for a great prize Wotan.

Plastic Norman Infantry

Unit of Norman Infantry

Plastic Norman Infantry

These are some of the plastic Conquest miniatures. I picked 16 unarmoured figures to represent a lightly armoured unit. Not sure but I’ll probably ungrade the leader figure to an armoured Knight later on as I think that would fit my theme of a retinue raised by a poor Knight better.
Once again they are mounted on pennies and a Warbases base (with rare earth magnets holding them in place.

Republican Roman Velites

Velites

I've always wanted to collect a Punic Wars army but never had the courage to start one because of the cost (and the large number of figures involved). I love the idea of a Carthaginian horde with their mixed forces (including elephants!) facing up to the ranks of Romans.
Now along comes Agema miniatures with their plastic Velites (released at Salute 2013, although I missed them!). Sixteen plastic figures for around 9 pounds (I paid eight at Phalanx). I quickly assembled and painted them in a similar style to the box art but with them all in the same coloured tunic. Not sure about the shields yet, I might up grade them to Little big man ones later.

Sprues (8 per box)

Slingers

Dark Age Slingers

These are made from the Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors boxed set. You can make about half the figures with slings but I've just assembled six to see how they look.

Dark Age Warriors

Dark Age Warriors

Some of the Gripping Beasts Dark Age Warriors. These are ment to represent any poorly armed, quickly raised group of warriors in the Dark Ages and do a great job (IMHO). I bought a box of these at Salute 2013 and quickly painted some of them up. This is a unit of 20 spearmen with a a few extras for the next unit!
Fabulous figures, very easy to make up and paint. As always (well from now on) these are bases on UK 1p's then placed in a Warbases base. I added some 3mm Rare Earth magnets to the base to keep the figures in place.
I liked these so much I picked up two extra boxes at Phalanx so I can add more of these generic infantry to my Dark Age armies.

4 Dux Bellorum units worth of Warriors

And here are those warriors painted up and ready to go.

WWII

British
28mm British figures mounted for Rules of Engagement www.greatescapegames.co.uk
All figures from Great Escape Games.

I started collecting these figures when the game authors ran a demo game at UK games Expo 08. I had a bast and even won (good sales tactics?)! I bought a British Infantry pack and a German Pack and started painting straight away.

Basing
You might notice some none standard bases. Well I thought I'd help new players to identify different weapons so my SMG's are on hexagon bases. My sniper and medic on oval, large rectangle for my LMG teams and large round for my heavy weapons.
I then base them (usually on 2p's), cover up to the base with Basetex from Standard Paints and paint them green. I then cover random areas with white glue and dip them in a mixure of builders sand and gravel. Finally, I cover the rest with static grass.

Painting
All these figures were painted with flat colours. The flesh areas then had GW flesh wash (no longer available) washed on. A final dry brush of GW elf flesh finish them.
After that I use Warlord Games, Army Dip (strong) but paint it on. I can't bring myself to dip em and it also saves a lot of the expensive stuff.
After basing I spray them with Army Painter Anti Shine (also from Warlords Games).

British HQ section

First Section, note Bren team in background

Second Section

HMG team

Mortar team

Sniper team

Under strength Section

Germans
To follow.....

Doctor Who

These are all Harlequin figures.


















The Two Doctors (3rd and 4th) arrive on Earth while three of their companions (Sarah-Jane, Harry and K9) wait to help out.

















And there is the problem, The Master has tricked the Cybermen into doing his dirty work again!

















At the same time Davros arrives with his Daleks (including an Engineer Dalek).
















Luckily, the Brigadier, Captain Yates, Corporal Benton and Unit are there to help out.
















These two on lookers are pre-painted by E4M.

Fantasy

Games Workshop figures for Warhammer.

All these figures are mounted on Games Workshop 20mm (unless otherwize noted) bases with magnetic strips on the bottom. The movement trays have green steel pager on them to hold the figures in place.

Dwarves

12 Dwarf Warriors

These are straight from the Skull Pass boxed set.

Dogs of War

20 Cursed Company

These are the Cursed Company bulked out with a few 'normal' skeletons. I left the bannor blank as it looked suitably undead (its also easier to paint!). All the weapons and armour are dry brushed with 'rust' to make the unit look as if its dropping to bits. The shields are old smooth plastic ones with transfers added and 'hacked up' with the clippers.

Goblin

20 Goblin Bow

These are actually not the latest version Night Goblins but the first boxed set that came out. The leader, musician and standard bearer are all from the Skull Pass box.

Chaos

15 Gors

16 Ungors

I had intended converting a Standard Bearer and Musician for this unit but have not got round to it yet. If you look carefully you can see a few Ungors armed with hand weapons and shields. I prefer the to make the unit look like its not uniformly armed although treat it as spear.

Savage Orcs

20 Savage Orcs

These old style Savage Orcs are some of my earliest GW models. I prefer this style to the newer ones GW have released. The warpaint is based on pictures in an early White Dwarf (sorry can't remember which one). They are armed with a mixture of weapons (including bows) and mounted on 25mm bases with magnets on the bottom.

The Boss at the right is also an early model but with a new style shield. He's obviously not a Savage Orc!

American Civil War

All these figures are 15mm, based for Fire and Fury.

Union

Union general leads his troops into battle with artillery support on the hill. Infantry figures are by Museum Miniatures while the general and artillery are Peter Pig.

The Union battle line. Figures as above.

Confederate

A Cavarly column passes two Confederate Brigades. All Museum Miniatures.

Zouaves!