Finally something to show

Wow, after so many weeks of looking at half-finished figures! These are all but one spare Scythian from the Orion sets I bought. There are plenty of unpainted foot figures left... but the next objective is to get cracking on the Zvezda mounted.

Another Scythian done!

Well, 3 down and 27 to go. Plus foot.

Sunny Easter Monday

Sat in the sun for about an hour, trimmed up a few of the Zvezda Scythians. I note that the "Command" types have longswords. According to my Osprey resource this makes them later Scythians. The catch is that I only really need three later Scythians, all Knights including a KnGen.

Scythians at last

Man oh man, this has got to be one of the very slowest projects I have ever undertaken. But finally I have begun actually completing the paint jobs on my Scythians.

I started them, then got discouraged and left off to do the Gallic chariots, then the Gallic command, then the Gallic cavalry - in fact it was beginning to look as though my workbench would have piles of red-brown and whitish minis lying around permanently! But after some motivation and art help from the fanaticus community I compiled enough pictures of Scythians to make a go of them.

It was still slow going but I now have the baseline paint on 12 horse, 12 riders, and 15 foot. There's a whole other pack of 18 cavalry to work on after that!

My approach now that I am this far is to treat each as it own work of art. Scythians loved decoration and even a lowly skirmisher could have panelled edges on a jacket.

Upgrading Gallic Cv

The old HaT Gallic Cavalryare nowhere near as attractive as their Gallic Command figures, which come with heads dangling from saddles and more realistic poses all round. I've refurbished some of the old ones (shown here below)


and added Comand figures, to complete this stage of the Gallic upgrade.

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.

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.