My Blog
"Britannia"
Over the weekend, I wasn't really feeling like painting anything much, so I fished out various boxes of figures to take photos of whole 'collections' as they stand at the moment. I'd never before photographed all of my Warlord Games Romans and Britons - in fact, I'd never had them all on the same table at the same time - there are too many to play a game on my usual wargames table. …
Sassanids - work in progress
I still have five units (if I can count a pair of jumbos as a unit - they'll get painted together anyway) of Sassanids to do: jumbos; super-heavy cavalry; Iranian light cavalry; Sassanid foot archers; Sassanid foot spearmen. And, of course, the infantry will all be getting my new shields - Hicksy says he hopes he'll finish the sculpting on Tuesday, so then they need to go off to the caster.
A third unit of super-heavy cavalry for the Sassanids is on the cards - I seem (quite by accident) to have ended up with almost enough spare horses, I just need a couple more gee-gees and a load of riders. And I think more foot spearmen too - I've got about 20 more than I need for the current units, so buying another 16 to make another unit of 36 isn't going to break the bank... At this rate, I'll probably end up with two armies each of around 3,000 WAB points.
Romans - work in progress
My late Principate Roman 'army' as it stands this morning. I was trying to decide what to paint next, so I had the boxes of figures out, and thought I'd take a quick snapshot of them and the Sassanids - see the next page for them!
Still to do for the Romans: a cohort of legionaries; a (milliary) cohort of auxilia; an ala of cavalry. I may also do some dromedarii and turn one of the auxiliary cohorts into a cohors equitata (mixed cohort) by adding a few cavalry (more for the look of the thing than for any real wargaming reason). A few Palmyrene archers wouldn't go amiss either - there seems to have been a numerus of them involved in the defence of Dura Europos circa AD260.
Another Cohort of Roman Auxilia
Hello all! I managed to get my grubby paws on a Foundry Roman 'Engineer', mopping his brow, for the Onager crew. I thought about removing his dolabra (pick) and replacing it with something, but in the end decided not to - a pick might well be of use to an onager crewman, and that way I can still use him as an engineer if I want to. …
Onager
Here is Warlord Games' latest Early Imperial Roman model, the Onager - so called because it had a kick like a mule. It's a nice little model, which is easy to assemble and paint, and looks very effective. I think my only criticism is that it only comes with three crew - I added the optio, and could really do with a fifth, casually-posed, figure (for which I have left a space on the base). A figure like the cloaked legionary in Wargames Foundry's 'Emperor Trajan' set, or the guy mopping his brow in the 'Centurion and Legionaries Fortifying Camp' set (link here) would work nicely - but I'm not prepared to pay £18.75 (including postage) just to get my paws on one figure!
The Dreaded Lurgy
(with apologies to the late Messrs Bentine, Milligan, Secombe and Sellers)
I seem to have contracted the dreaded lurgy. I'm not feeling bad enough to just lie there and groan (so it's definitely not man-flu), but not well enough to really feel like getting on with anything much. Add to that the mucky weather, the dark, and this 13th November being the 16th anniversary of the still-birth of our first child, and you'll understand that I really don't feel all that great today.
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Kurdish Javelinmen
The Sassanid Persian Empire was a real empire - Persians (obviously) ruling over the peoples of modern-day Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Dagestan), southwestern Central Asia, most of Turkey, certain coastal parts of the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf area, and areas of southwestern Pakistan. …
Hush, hush!
I've been painting again. But alas, at the moment what I have painted is still top secret: if I told you what it was, I'd have to kill you. I can't afford the bus fare to the next town, so there's no way I can trot around the globe murdering you all, so I just won't show it to you until next week when Warlord Games (hopefully) release it. …
Stumped!
It's not a good day. The weather is really horrid - wind, rain, hailstones, cold and half-dark. I don't feel very well - I have had belly-ache since last evening, so I didn't sleep well and going for my usual swim this morning was probably unwise.
And my modelling mojo has upped and left. Here's why (sorry, it's not a short story).
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Scorpione
I have four of these beasts, one for each of my planned legionary cohorts. All are pretty similar, so I just photographed one. The officer is from one of the A&A infantry command packs. There is another photo in the Third Century Roman Photo Album.
More Random ramblings
I'm very tired today. We had a day out at the Royal Armouries in Leeds yesterday, partly to look around the museum and partly for my lad and I to go to the 'Fiasco' wargames show. The museum was, as ever, 'a grand day out'. The show wasn't half bad either. I bumped into a couple of people I know and had nice chats. …
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