Italian skirmishers complete

These are the final Ps elements, looking good!

Italian javelin-armed skirmishes - the head-swap

This shows stage 1 of my 2Ps x 2 build. The HaT originals (left) are fine, save that the helmet is unsuitable. So I grabbed four Spanish slingers, whicked their heads off, and painstakingly drilled pinned and glued. The greystuff collar was rolled around each pin, because I knew I would not have a good fit.  

Finished conversion - Italian hoplites

Yay! Looking good.

4th element 4Sp

Ok, changed my mind, nothing new there! I switched from standing-at-rest hoplites, the mild conversion planned, to a more ambitious one.
The original mini, foreground, shows how converted minis have had a dynamic tweak. Heads turned quarter (just a hot water tweak) and left arm separated from body, notched, and flexed a little again using hot water. The spears are added using hot glue, to top of hand. Clumsy I know. I got most of the shields on with hot glue but one stubbornly resisted so I laboriously pinned and glued that one.

First three hoplite elements on bases

Chugged away on the Italiot Spears  (last post) and by evening I got three elements worth ready for basing. Four minis are re-based from a previous 4Ax element. So that's four of the Campanians done. Next is some light conversion work on Poly Roman minis, removing swords and altering tunics slightly. They will be the 4th hoplite element.

Campanians also need 4x3Ax, of which I have two, with a small question mark over their composition.

Italian work in progress

Before getting into these Italian hoplites-to-be I assembled three spear elements from Carthaginians. In some army matchups they can become Italians - but I didn't put any conversion work in, and they really do look like Carthaginians. I think they just end up giving me the later Carthaginians as a b option, the desperate "defend Africa" option which is not much fun.

These are all from the HaT Italian Allies box. I'll end up with three hoplite spear elements from minis like these, and a fourth hoplite spear element tbd. That will give me the 4x4Sp requirement for II/8b Campanians.

Celtiberian project complete!

Finished basing with grass, dry-brushing: now onto the gloating:

There are some problems with them: the general element isn't particularly distinctive; the caetrati Ps include a couple of sword-waving maniacs and two falcata-armed elements; and of course if you look closely some of those heavies (3Ax) look very Roman! But overall a nice, slightly more colourful Spanish ally to either Rome or Carthage.

So overall, I have a double II39 Iberian force: and an element of 4Ax Lusitanians and another of Balearic slingers.

The II39a Iberians are in foreground and Lusitanians to their flank. II39b Celtiberians are arrayed behind them. I have very few minis left from the two HaT boxes that make up the core, so a very pleasing use of available minis!

Weekend work - nearing the finish line

Saturday, worked on one LH. Done. Prepped and got the minor conversion done for two stands of Ps. Sunday, painted the Ps but did not get them varnished.

Celtiberian heavies completed

In the usual fashion, everything came together over the weekend, and I based them up over the last couple of evenings.

The four elements here included a tap-back on one element previously completed. I removed two less-dangerous looking minis and added two of the new ones. It's on the right rear of this photo:

The minis for this run are almost entirely an even balance of the Celtiberian pose from Carthaginian Command, and run-of-the-mill Roman auxilia. All these have been equipped with Itaeleri/Revell Gallic shields, and a variety of spears including homemade wire spears. The 'leader' mini also comes from Carthaginian Command, with a standard from one or other of the HaT ancient Spanish or Gauls boxes.

All told, with the previous elements, I end up with 4x3Ax and 2x4Ax, all of which can be used as Wb if need be. They'll give me more options in cases where I want to use both Carthaginians and Spanish, with or without Romans and Gauls.

Hot glue to fix spears in place

I'm back after a long-planned holiday. After nearly 2 weeks of catching up with anime and other vital things I picked up my Celtiberians project.

This next batch are mostly either from Carthaginian Command or Roman Auxiliary,  both by HaT. Both use the 'open hand' sculpt HaT often uses, and the 'fist with pin' for attaching shields.

I am using Italeri Gaul shields for this batch. They feature raised ornamentation. I use thick dark varnish (which doubles as base coat) to glue the shields onto the pins temporarily, then building-grade pva glue applied with a cocktail stick to lock them on once the base varnish is dry.

The spears are attached using hot glue. Not strictly hot glue, it's 'cool' hot glue designed for delicate craft. My glue gun is a pretty pink: I think the target market might be tweenie girls :)

These 1:72 spears are much more delicate than what the gun is usually used for and the point of the gun burns through a couple. It's still plenty hot! The main risk is that a blob of glue is left and difficult to clean up.

Here's one example:

It's a bit difficult to see but this chap has an extra vambrace of glue just below his hand grip.

Celtiberians - heavies half done

I had planned to plug on with the Italians but little by little, I had added paint to half the Celtiberians I need for that variant of Ancient Spanish. So I pushed on and finished them up.

Army choice - where to go with Italian Allies

Time for some maths!

I have a box of HaT's Italian Allies foot and another of horse.

I have a few elements already with my Later Carts.

Then, I have these:

What I can do with them is, II/8 Apulian/Campanian/Lucanian/Bruttian, or II/13 Samnite.

The Samnites are the most attractive (psychologically) but I would need:
1x3Cv, at least 10x4Ax, 1x2Ps (javelins) - and optionally 2 more 4Ax! Now if I reworked those 2x3Ax with my Later Carts, I could do that.

Apulians are next most attractive because they get 3 cavalry elements. The foot were (according to Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars) lightly armored. Some of the foot are like that, but the requirements are:
Apulian: 1xCvGen, 2x3Cv, 7x3Ax, 2x2Ps (javelin). Would I get 21 lightly armored rankers? No.

Campanians are next, with two cavalry. They were more of a Hellenistic style army, and require:
Campanian: 1xCvGen, 1x3Cv, 4x4Sp, 4x3Ax, 2x2Ps (javelin). This is quite viable, especially since I can use the round-shield foot as Hoplites and the Rhomboid and Scutum style shields as Warriors.

Finally Bruttian and Lucanian are interchangeable in fit-out. The challenge with these guys is the should have 2 Horde elements of peasants! Other than those the requirements are:
Bruttian/Lucanian: 1xCvGen, 9x3Ax or 4Ax, 2x2Ps (javelin). As I say the challenge would be the Hd. If I still had a full box of Airfix Robin Hood it would be easy - the quarterstaff-wielding mob would be a good fit.


These Italiots are the last army I know I can build out of what I have, for my 'Struggle for Italy' theme. I would like to have Syracusans but I probably don't have the material for that, aside from a bolt-thrower and some spare Greeks.

II/39 Ancient Spanish - Iberians

This weekend featured a 24-hour flu... and I revived today and polished off the Iberians!

A number of these were already built for my Later Carts, but here they all are:


Cavalry (long-shield) general, and round-shield light horse:

The standard born by the standard-bearer is a HaT standard. Though you can't see it from the front, the rider on the left has a minor conversion - he is a round-shield in the box so that gets chopped away and a long shield tacked over it.

Heavy foot (4Ax):

One element of these bad boys was already in my LtrCarts so to match it I had to find another four. Some of the HaT foot are very poorly moulded and once you carve away the mismatched sides, some stick-like legs result. I decided to leave a couple of faces mismatched, or there would be no face left!

Regular foot (3Ax):

Now in DBA there is no reason for Iberian to have 3Ax over 4Ax - but in terms of numbers of long-shield foot, I could only come up with this combination.

One interesting feature of the finish on the minis is that I have used a sharpie permanent marker to scrawl the shield motifs. The main advantage over painting is speed.

Caetrati skirmishers (2Ps):

Again, one element is part of the LtrCarts. I have a couple more, waving swords, but they are in reserve in case the Celtiberians need them. (If they ever get finished!)

The full army:

Getting my life back

Over the past 6 weeks I did this:*
http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/people_and_communities/maori/tatauranga-umanga-2016.aspx

But now with secondment over and hours of work not stretching over weekends, it's time to get my life (and painting minis) back on track.

I can hardly remember what my Iberians are up to, they are on all stages from nearly finished to base coated. And I have that side-track, Celtiberians, cluttering my table as well.

This evening I put flesh base (very dark indeed, flesh and sienna) on most of the foot.

*not single-handed, but yeah, mostly

Ancient Spanish not getting any younger

After much delay and occasional dabbing of paint, I finally got the Spanish horse to where I could varnish them. Then I chose the best pair (I did three) and have them fixed to a base. I'll add a few high-highlights then matt varnish.

Numidian camp followers at last

It took quite a long time! But I finally got something out of the ordinary for me, an actual stand of CF. That makes about two across all my armies.

The male CF is from HaT's Greek catapults, and the female is from RedBox's gangsters, with added greystuff headwear and lengthened coat..

Since neither look particularly Numidian I think I can use them as generic CF for all sorts of armies.

Am I kidding myself?

So, more not-assembling my not-Celtiberian BD elements has occurred.

The official DBA3.0 Celtiberian version of Ancient Spanish requires 6x3Bd, or 18 minis. My LateCarts featured a stand of 4Ax Lusitanians that could act as Blades. Then, as featured here, I assembled some conversions, achieving 6 minis. Returning to the Carthaginian Command box I found another 6. Finally, scraping through a Briton Chariot entourage I found 2 more minis that could be converted. And I had one top-half of a warrior that I think I can match with a Spanish slinger bottom.

The next stage of not-assembling will involve thinking about how a Celtiberian Cv element might look.

Celtiberians roughed out

I've got six Celtiberians roughed out now, and I'm pretty happy with the heavier types. They connect a gallo-briton top half to a greaved liby-phoenician bottom half and the joins are pretty good.

Three of the six minis need grey stuff to be worked over the join and kilt, that's the next stage.

I'll probably just want one element of 3Bd out of all this. I don't see myself finding 12 more bottoms and 12 more tops for a hypothetical Celtiberian army option.

I notice the minis are roughly OK for a Ligurian element as well, so that's handy.

Numidian CF/Celtiberians

This pic shows the idea I had for finishing the Numidian CF element. I already have an ex-member of HaT Greek Artillery (extreme left) and I thought, maybe a RedBox 1920 Gangster's Moll, with veiled-headwear added and coat suitably lengthened, would be a fair match (lower left).

The other project in hand (centre top) hints at where my next army build effort is going. The two minis (out of focus sorry) are made of top-half puny Britons or Gauls, bottom half Hannibal's Africans. Celtiberians wore Gallic top tunic, but were bare-legged or had Iberian style greaves. These are the least ambitions conversions, and are more or less just cut at belt line, drill for wire peg, then peg-and-superglue.

I'm not planning an army of these hybrids - for one thing I don't have enough discards - but I dearly wanted a couple of Celtiberian elements for my Ancient Spanish/LaterCarts options.

II_40 Numidian

We open the Numidians with two command options, 1x General as Cv with Spanish bodyguard (and looking very Punic) or as LH. As mentioned in the blog the LH general's figure was re-reworked from a Medieval Irish conversion that wasn't needed, hence the cloak, fuller beard etc.

Next up is compulsory 4 x LH and 4 x Ps:

The LH on the left is the element prepared for II/32 Later Carthaginian - you can see the slightly deeper brown used. I decided to leave the shield faces 'raw' as in  dark wash-varnish over the original. It will be easy to paint white if I want to later.

The Ps at left are from HaT's African foot, converted to hold javelins/darts. The Ps on the right are from HaT's Alexander's Lights, with Numidian-style shields added from the Carthaginian Command box.

The mighty Ellie is resplendent (and with a fruity-themed backdrop!) as technically an option, but the main point of why I chose to get this army so I'm never going to field a slinger/bow Ps, the alternate.

I already have the 2x4Ax javelinmen with my Carthaginians. This is the alternate and 'tougher' option. Under two different rulers, Numidian fielded close-formation troops that DBA 3.0 is happy to name Bd. If they enter the Carthaginian ranks, they will be Sp.

And the army assembled:

Numidian LH painted up

Two days of good motivation and as I hoped, the LH are all done! Should get the basic basing finished today, which will mean the whole army is ready for flocking.

A lesson: preserve your wisdom

Putting the Numidian LH together underlines to me the lesson I already took out of my prep. That 'how to' wisdom you built up over years of the hobby: don't let it go.

I had wanted to see how useful it would be to take minis prep much further than usual, before removing them from the sprue. All the mounts were varnished and had wire posts ready, and all the riders blocked out with base paint colours.

But it didn't work.

HaT Numidian riders have a relatively tight, difficult seat on their mounts. And of course by guessing where the wire posts would sit, I made my job all the harder. Much fumbling, scraping and refitting later, I realised I had wasted my time and everything would need to be varnished again, then repainted.

All 11 riders are now mounted. (The LH general is already complete). About half the riders need a wire post, the others more-or-less sit right with the aid of PVA glue alone. All mounts are base-painted. Since I want dun-coloured mounts right across the board, I mix a medium brown sort of colour for base. Applied with a light hand over dark varnish, many of the original lines won't need lining-out again.

I must fetch my Later Carthaginian LH in for comparison before I get to the real paint stage, I want them to be compatible. I also have another element with my Impy Romans which almost certainly needs redoing.

Numidians: blades, command and look! elephant

After many days of procrastinating, where in the weekend I would say 'I can do that weekdays' and each weekday evening I would find it all too inconvenient and put it off to the weekend, I finally got back to my Numidians.

The 'on the go' minis are command, which is a Cv element of Spanish and Cartaginian horse and a LH mini that has a bit of conversion on the general; blades, which are just plain old Carthaginian foot and swappable with my LaterCarts; and the elephant in the room, which is a normal Carthaginian El with a slight tweak on the soldiers up on the castle.

Skin tone varies across the minis, but is relatively dark compared to their Carthaginian neighbours. I've also gone with black for hair, not something I do as a rule.

I had a setback on tunic colour. I really must remember that light grey dries to grey. Most are now highlighted with white.

Shield faces are white, awaiting suitable transfers. The exception is the Spanish horseman, who still has his caetrati-sized shield.

I've got the blades onto bases - part complete - and expect to finish basing this week. Then it will be LH assembly-line time.

Back up a step, add shields

With four elements of Psiloi assembled and based it is time to add shields, sourced from HaT Carthaginian Command, to the shieldless four minis from Alexander's Lights. It should really have been done way, way back at trim-out time, but I wasn't sure it was needed.

Still, the source material says foot have shields just like their big brothers on horses, and these shields are a really good match.

The shields come with a hole ready for a pin, which is no good to me, so I use the same latex grout filler I use on bases to fill those. PVA glue gives a reasonable adhesion between figure and shield, then I glue a shield strap made from dental floss over. Just one - the hand grip is too fiddly for me and pretty invisible on the other readymade minis anyway.

The picture shows work in progress - the minis are actually finished but the shields are raw - and some based, but unflocked, other Psiloi.

Oh - and, on the based Psiloi, you can see the conversion to a couple of wee javelins, from one weird spear.

Numidians still a work in progress

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks, but I have successfully pushed on with the Numidians bit by bit.

Big decisions - I decide to cancel the head-swap, as too fiddly and a bit pointless; I go fully with Carthaginian "Hellenic" style foot to stand in for the Numidian "Roman trained" Blades; I carefully cut away the oddly-positioned spears of the Numidian light foot and give them each a pair of short javelins instead.

What else? I scavenge a "retired" Numidian rider who is a failed Irish LH rider, and he becomes a General mini for the LH variant; I use a Carthaginian as one of the "Iberian guards" of the Cv Gen element and a Carthaginian horse for the General mini of that element.

The other "big thing" I'm trying is to do as much work as possible to minis still on the sprue, adding patches later when they are ready to mount. It's a  partial solution to having a lot of minis all much the same in outfit and colour.

At present I have a lot of sienna-skin, grey-clothing painted Numidians, waiting for highlights.

Trimmed out - Numidians

Whew! I kind of impressed myself. Slugging through what felt like a hundred minis, got them done.

The verdict on the Atlantic Egyptians was that they looked a little tall next to the HaT minis, so that meant more use of Alexander's Light Troops, which I will probably regret when I get round to the lighter Greek armies.

Most of the Hannibal's Africans aren't suitable as javelin skirmishers but I will get eight, or four elements, out of the box.

I'm pretty sure about the head-swap for the Blades, or at least four of them. I've found some suitable Atlantic Romans with plumes. We'll see how that goes.

It might be Numidians

Having assembled a minima of Italian Allies I have the pleasant task of deciding exactly which project to turn to. So many on offer. I may take a photo of the boxes-of-minis box in my basement... let's just say it is on overflow. And that does not count the box of leftovers-but-can-use, or the box of army-assembled-plenty-to-spare. Or the 28mm projects.

OK I'm just depressing myself...

Somewhat to my surprise I find myself going back to the Numidians. The 3.0 list is harsher than the 2.2 list in the sense that what used to be Auxilia are now mostly Psiloi. Or to put it another way, are now more of a Wheelbarrow army. But you get up to 6 LH if you really want, and still has an Elephant option. And it's the latter that probably sells them to me. I only have one army with elephants, after all.

So I work patiently on trimming out.
HaT Elephant: not much to say here. This is the same pack I bought many years ago for Carthaginians and there are still four untouched models plus attendants. Hardish pastic, not a fantastic mould but gets the job done. I'm pretty sure I will keep the war-turret, and will probably use a mini out of Carth. Command box to make the crew appear different.

HaT Hannibal's Africans: for the skirmishers, possibly also the 'Roman trained' blades. Pretty good models in medium plastic, though the shields held side-on are an issue. I can already see myself bringing in a few other skirmish type minis from elsewhere. R Sabel head-swapped to get Roman trained blades and I have a number of old Atlantic Romans left that might be suitable if I want to go down that route.

HaT Numidian Cavalry: I am unlucky with this recent buy. The mould must be the same age as the original pack I bought and is poorly set, meaning a mismatch in halves among some minis. But it provides 12 horse, 12 riders, all looking right for the part.

Carthaginian Command: just a couple of minis as general and Elephant warrior

Spanish Cavalry: two riders, two mounts for the general's guards. I did think about using Italiot horse but I doubt the look.

Possible other sources: I have a couple of Atlantic Egyptian skirmishers left that I can add javelins to, and Alexander's Lights that could be suitable.

At this stage (subject to change) I'm looking at using the 'Africans' in my Later Carthaginians as a morph with this army. There are certainly plenty of minis if I want to double up.

Italian Allies ready

My final choices for the five elements completed are around tuft colour.

Carthaginians: dark winter tuft, suggesting harsh African, Iberian or southern Italian climes
Romans: warm green tuft, suggesting the opulent north, harmonising with Gallic green clump decor

So for the Italian Allies I use both, but dry-brush with yellow:

I plan to add some shield devices to the white-painted shields at some future date, but for now they are ready to join Romans and Carthaginians in the struggle for the peninsula!

Final line-up for Italian Allies

This is how the Italian Allies ended up: no swap-ins at all. My decision was mostly based on the originals being ready to base and the swap-ins from Alexander's Light Infantry not. The other part of the reason is that the latter really need belts to look like Italiots, and I didn't make any. Also, the shield straps look really ugly, I did a poor job there.

So, the 'spear at rest' figure stands with the more active poses, can't be helped. The picture below shows all five elements, ready for flocking to begin.

The final product is:
2x4Ax, looking pretty solid. One element has the oval scuta, the other has the hoplon. Heavily armoured.
2x3Ax, looking as though they all come from one nation. Lightly armoured, armed with spear and javelin.
1x3Cv, all obviously wealthy.

Italian Allies - first 4Ax ready

I've got about a dozen minis on the go, and managed to get the first four tacked onto a base. They are the closer-order 4Ax, heavily armored. The HaT minis sport a variety of body armour and shields, this four have oval scuta and bronze back-and-breast protection. Two have the 'triple disc' which my sourcebook says is typical Samnite. Which is a pity because it would have been great to have Samnite shields with Samnite armour. Not to worry, they'll stand happily alongside Roman or Carthaginian allies!

Lights heavy up a bit

I decided to push on with the Alexander's Lights conversion... I added some greystuff greaves (really just the knee, and trimming back the boot laces) and used the same as shield straps, much less hassle than trying to glue the shields on then have them split off at the decal-transfer stage!

The shields come straight from the Italian Allies Foot box, they are smaller than hoplon so probably completely wrong, but they look about right on these lighter types.

Italian Allies trimmed out

The elements that I'll be adding to Polybian Romans and Later Carthaginians are firming up, at least in my mind; and after a couple of evenings' dogged knifework, I have 20+ minis.

HaT's Italian Allies some in two boxes, one for foot one for horse. Both are in a really nice hardness of plastic, not too soft not too hard. I didn't have to swap in a new knife blade. Moulding is average: there are quite a number of minis where there is a distinct space and mould mark. The exception seems to be the horses, which were really easy and clean. I may have been lucky on that one, the riders were average.

The foot box supplies you with a variety of potential armies, all viewable in WRG's Armies of Macedonian and Punic Wars. If I go down the road of building full Italiot armies, I'll need more boxes. Samnites in particular would need two boxes, minimum, based on the DBA3.0 lists.

Some foot poses are quite placid looking. Their role with the Romans requires them to be Auxilia, so standing with spear at rest is not a great look. I trimmed out four of 'Alexander's Light Infantry' at the same time, in case I decide to swap for more active-looking Auxilia!

HaT offer spare sword and spears and a few spare shields, and of course other HaT boxes have the same, so there are options especially for Hoplon-toting types.

Italian Allies

I'm beginning work on HaT's Italian Allies, for both Hannibal's Carthaginian's (horse) and Polybian Roman (foot).

The Italian Allies Cavalry is a dream to prep for the horse but awkward for the foot. The horse are really well moulded.

Prepping the foot I can see I'll need another pack if I want to end up with a Samnite army, but the single pack will do for Apulian, Campanian, etc. They aren't great but not horrible either.and the plastic is perfect - not soft, but not too hard.

I get through all three horse minis plus a couple foot, then superbowl 50 calls. Hope to finish the remaining foot soon!

II/33 Polybian Romans, awaiting Allies

So with the choice made, I place Gamer's Grass of 'strong green' shade. Polybian Romans II/33 on the 3.0 edition have:
1 x General (Cv)
1 x equite (Cv)
4 x hastati/principes (Bd)
2 x triarii (Sp)
2 x velites (Ps), and
a choice of  2 x either hastati/principes (Bd) or allies (3/4Ax)

By adding the command/colour party minis I've ended up with a full-roman option. I will still be creating some allies for them!

 In this option one command/colour party element stands at rear with triarii, the other stands with the principes in the second line.

Last legionarii based!

Woohoo! I guess all the bits of painting reached that critical point, like a landslide or avalanche, it all rolls down to completion today! The heat helps me as the caulk dries swiftly, and I get the flock on last thing.

Now I have all Roman elements. The final basing item is the stands of grass - and I have yet to decide what colour I'm going with.

Days of summer

The return of hot weather has the painting on hold. There are eight drab-looking basecoated legionaries looking sad, and four pretty near complete.

I got four 'standing at attention' triarii and four hastati on bases, waiting for more base covering. The triarii are 'spares' that can swap out with one of my command elements.

prepwork

A fine Saturday but not too hot: I sat in the shade and finished trimming out the remaining 20 Poly Romans. Then I basecoated them.
I feel like I've got a handle on how much paint will do, and what colours, and I bought a couple more shades in mightyape's recent paint sale.

Polybian command elements

It has been a long time between beginning the command minis and finishing the 'regulars' to take their places on the bases beside them. But the temperature dropped below 20 degrees (Celsius!) and suddenly I felt I could sit down and paint. So a day later they're finished.

In order above I have the pair of elements to show how I've split the 'colour party' between them;
then the general's element (distinguished by standard and bare-headed officer) with kneeling triarii;
then the view from the rear to show how the choices I made work in practice.

The 'resting' shields all use the caulking to lock into place. As plastic soldier review notes, the kneeling minis have a strange placement of shield location. As designed, it seems that the kneeling soldier has to carry the full weight of his scutum from some odd lower-strap arrangement. It makes no sense. But the shield doesn't really work the other way. So I angled each back, and used the locator pin and hole that way, with plenty of PVA glue and bedded into the caulk.

The colour party is a lot more carefully painted than the accompanying triarii, but taken all together they look pretty good. Once finished I remembered I was going to use a variety of shades on the tunics, because veterans wouldn't all be uniform, but too late.