I've been quietly working on this army since New Year. Except for the three Ps elements all minis are straight out of the HaT (Coates & Shine) box. I enjoyed the Cv - and as an aside there's enough in the box to provide for my Syracusan LH as well - but the foot were a chore. The poses are OK for Sp elements I guess, just uninspiring. The plastic is the softer type, so a very sharp knife was needed to trim them out.
In terms of painting I used whatever shortcut I thought I could get away with. E.g. the base varnish is also the base colour and the outliner - mix the clear varnish with burnt sienna or equivalent, then paint "black basecoat" style so the dark base is the outline. For bronze, just highlight over the base. Use flesh wash so as not to be too detailed on skin, and soft tone to pick out the skirt armour detail after clumsily using white.
It is a generous box of minis, though missing skirmishers. There's still enough "spear, standing" left to add another element, which I may do at some point. For the skirmishers I went to trusty old "Alexander's Light" and grabbed six.
