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Thursday, February 4, 2010

Recently Added







Added this fine 4Wb stand from HaT's Gallic Command set. Many happy hours spent on the plaid, which you'll have to take my word for as very little of it can be seen!





As a long-awaited addition to my old Gallic army I've just completed three Light Chariots, the General (left)

















and his lesser nobles, seen here in two views so you can see the shield art.







Of course these look so much better than the rest of my Gallics I now have a complete re-do to do.








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Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Why wargame in 1:72?

I generally have more than one reason for doing any given thing.

Reason 1: I had a lot of 1:72 armies left unpainted from when I was a kid, and decided to finish them, to use for HOTT, though I quickly converted them to DBA armies. One thing led to another and I just kept building.
Reason 2: 1:72 is a good compromise between 28-30mm, which allows fantastic detail but requires a house-sized space to game in, and smaller scales I would struggle to see.
Reason 3: 1:72 sets are pretty cheap.
Reason 4: 1:72 minis are very durable, and I am clumsy. I know that every so often I am going to drop an element from a shelf that is up to 6' off the floor and all the minis will be intact when I pick it up.

What's 1:72?

1:72 is modeller/wargamer shorthand for the scale of the individual miniatures used on the tabletop aforementioned. It also identifies me to the community as an outlier, which is a polite way of calling someone a nutball or pariah.
You see, most of the DBA wargame community plays in 15mm scale, and 1:72 figures or minis to use the American jargon are seen mainly as toys.
A 1:72 mini is typically made in softish plastic, with realistic human dimensions. It stands about 23mm tall, though variations between 20mm and 25mm are possible.

What's DBA?

DBA is De Bellis Antiquitatus, wargame rules for ancient and medieval tabletop battles.
So what's a wargame and how does it relate to a tabletop?
A wargame (setting aside the ancient history) is a game where some kind of army is set against some other kind of army. Typically each side is controlled by a single player, though there are any amount of variations: and the results are partly ruled by chance and partly by what the rules say about one type of force's capabilities against the other.
"Tabletop" means that all this happens in a physical environment with pieces you can touch, normally on a wargame table with opponents face-to-face with each other.