Monday 30 March 2020

And in the third week of quarantine....

I painted...

Two plastic 28mm Macedonian companions from Victrix. Should have been 3, but I was out of oval bases... resupply came today.
  Some Aventine  Sassanians for a friend... they were quite a nightmare especially because the black primer flkaed on horsemen and shields...

More Japanese 1/3000. Kaga, Hiryu, and four Shiratsuyu destroyers. All Navwar, carrier decks by flight deck decals.

 Two 15mm Crusader MK2 CS. Battlefront plastics.


Less than usual (some odds and sodds too, and the Sassanian infantry command for my levies... but because the unit will be done in a couple of days... next Quarantine post!) but the mounted were time consuming, especially the Persians.

Still alive, in what appears to be a ghost town if not for the postman and delivery services. What it is scary is the eerie silence, you rarely hear cars or van anymore, no motorbike... no even the idiot who run full speed over the railway crossing with the associated thomp-thomp... but hopefully it is working.

Thanks god mail still works so miniatures can be painted and books can be read, even if I am disappointed by the Book Depository... they claim our border are closed and cannot ship here... it is not true, even the Royal Mail simply says there will be delays due to few flights coming. But book depository simply spread fake news. They are behaving like terror groups...

Monday 23 March 2020

And in the second week of quarantine....

I painted....

 Alexander III Megas, and two of his companions, 28mm Foundry.


 Some 15mm Warring States infantry, from Museum Miniatures.
 A couple of weeks ago I had painted two bases of infantry in armor. Group picture here!

 A logistic train! Ancient style, 15mm. Mules are from Museum the New Z sculpts, people from Essex.
 The Mules had been painted before the quarantine, and three also based. But the last one needed some two legged friends.
 1/300 Russian T-80U from H&R. Repaints of old stuff.
 USS Lexington and USS Ranger, and 4 Fubuki class destroyers. All 1/3000 from Navwar. Now the US Fleet pack is done, the IJN pack almost. Carrier decks are from Flight Deck Decals, and they crossed the Atlantic through the whole quarantine. 

 And the second USMC Squad. 28mm Warlord plastic. This ends the whole box!

Another week has passed, and I am still alive and kicking.

Monday 16 March 2020

And in the first week of quarantine...

And in the first week of quarantine I painted...


A 28mm USMC squad, from Warlord Games. They are their plastic marines and they are very good, I liked building and painting them.


 Still from warlord...
 I finished their SPQR/Rome character box. Titus Pullo, Lucius Vorenus, Caesear, Gneus Pompeius Magnus, Marcus Antonius, et Lucius Licinius Crassus. Actually only Caesar and Anthony have been done in the week... but group pictures turned up nice!



 Still in Rome...
 Agema miniatures republican Romans. One sprue, thus two hastati, two principes, one Triarius. Shield transfers from Battle Flag, not as good as LBMS...


And now let's change scale...

6mm Cold War, a soviet naval infantry tank battalion for FFT/MSH with an attached rifle company.  All from Heroic and Ros. The BTR-70 are traditional sculpts, bought before the change in management, and I have to say that even older sculpts now look crisper.  They were leftover I had and received a repaint to put them in line with my current productions. The T-55AM2 are quite recent and accordingly impressive.






And then some ships... 1/3000 Navwar (except the Kaga, Skytrex). They are for a friend, but I cannot mail anything until the end of the quarantine.
I also did some other odds and sods, but for the first week of Quarantine in pictures... it is enough! (at the start of the week, before the announcement of the restrictive measures I finished that little group of Phalangites too!) 

See you again soon, and next Monday another update!

Thursday 12 March 2020

Success---ors!

Still alive,

and this time it is not an euphemism, like it or not the whole country is in quarantine and people is worried. But if you are locked at home and kicking, painting is a good way to employ your energies, especially when your lead mountain is enormous. I have launche a determined attack to my successors lead pile. Last year I basically painted all my old Navigator Miniatures (but I found some odds and ends recently...) and now I am attacking the additions to that army, mainly some Selecucid themed 1st Corps miniatures.

1st Corps successor range is both lovely and exhaustive. They are also on the smallish side of 28mm so they fit well with navigator. I had basically a 12 men group of Seleucid Pikemen and 4 Seleucid companions.  Here are the pikemen:


LBMS shield transfer from the 1st Corps range.




They are very nice figures, the casts are very crisp,  with almost no visible flash. The sculpts themselves are very nice, and in a bag of 8 line pikemen you have plenty of variation.  I have gone for a non-uniform look for them. They are not a formed permanent unit, but the standard recalled military settlers.  Probably I will add more pikemen to this group.  What I will use them for?

Obviously for a Seleucid force... as game wise, SPQR/Clash of Spear for Skirmish, and L'Art De La Guerre for bigger battles.  Now I know that some annoying people yell when you say pikemen and skirmish, but despite their inarticulate black and white vision of gaming (yes I am referring to that idiot on the Lead Adventure forum that basically spam other people threads complaining about this... and then even say he does not play ancients... so mr. Village Idiot?), no one really defined skirmish as type of engagement or size...

For me skirmish rulesets are not by default about skirmishes, but are played at a lower level that full battle games (another pet peeve... stop calling a battle game 'strategy' it is tactical... in the ancient world campaigns were strategic... but well this is a thing coming from stammering fantasy ad sci-fi game designers and players...). Being played a lower level nothing stops us to just focus on a limited area of a larger engagement. You can have part of a phalanx advancing on the table as a part of a scenario and still play with what people calls skirmish rules. It is like when you play a platoon level game set during the battle of Kursk (as in the excellent TFL pint sized campaigns for Chain of Command).  Yet, for some strange reasons some gamer seems completely unaware of telescoping approach to engagements... but let's be honest... some so called wargamers appears to have been produced without a brain... and this is not just happening in hobby wargames... professional wargaming is filled to the brim with them! (Any reference to that scam of KCL wargaming network and its crew of imposters is purely intentional...)

Anyway snarky comments aside, enjoy these pikemen!