keskiviikko 14. lokakuuta 2009
Small is beautiful
A quick post to put up two more "GUardsmen". Old GW (Citadel) "Space Dwarves" plastic minis, extensively remodelled to get more varied poses. Oldies, but definitively goodies. I am a squat fan, by the way...
tiistai 13. lokakuuta 2009
Beauty, the Beast, and friends...
Intensive blogging days... More old school IG for the IG army. Mostly old GW imperial guard from the 1980s. Great stuff, with lots of character. The ogryn impersonnates a Heavy Weapon team of two guardsmen. I picked the idea from somewhere, just cannot remember at the moment where from... Ah, anyway. There you go. Pictures are dark and blurry, sorry. I need better light...
And the army's big boss, Colonel Nathaniael Shatz.
This is one superb miniature. I hope I did it justice. The sculpt is just perfect.
More to come.
And the army's big boss, Colonel Nathaniael Shatz.
This is one superb miniature. I hope I did it justice. The sculpt is just perfect.
More to come.
maanantai 12. lokakuuta 2009
Where the wild things are...
In between painting ancient Greeks, I have been busy gathering an old school IG army as well. The idea was to pick everything vaguely sci-fish that is lying in my flat AND is not a Space Marines, and make an army of it for Warhammer 40k. That means quite a lot of old school IG, some tanks, and ... that:
I am the proud owner of a few of these old beastmen. I think they are old Grenadier or Ral Parha, and I bought them about 15 years ago. The series is now re-issued by a British company called Em4 miniatures. I do not know how they do that, but the sure thing is that I bought a lot of those. These are superb miniatures, with good detail and no flash. They remind me of Bob Olley's sculpting style. If it is indeed his handywork, then this is the very best he has done. I have often had difficulties with Olley's style, but this is just great.
Those guys will be added to the IG army as riflemen. The idea is to get an abhuman-human army, with ratlings, beastmen, ogryns and the like. Here is one more painted example, and a few waiting for paint.
I am the proud owner of a few of these old beastmen. I think they are old Grenadier or Ral Parha, and I bought them about 15 years ago. The series is now re-issued by a British company called Em4 miniatures. I do not know how they do that, but the sure thing is that I bought a lot of those. These are superb miniatures, with good detail and no flash. They remind me of Bob Olley's sculpting style. If it is indeed his handywork, then this is the very best he has done. I have often had difficulties with Olley's style, but this is just great.
Those guys will be added to the IG army as riflemen. The idea is to get an abhuman-human army, with ratlings, beastmen, ogryns and the like. Here is one more painted example, and a few waiting for paint.
Some ancient greek cavalry...
Then the Athenians, when they had learned that by inquiry, were coming to the rescue, even themselves, to Marathon and ten generals were leading them, of whom the tenth was Miltiades, whose father Cimon, Stesagores’ son, it had befallen to go in exile out of Athens from Peisistratus, Hippocrates’ son.
Herodotus
Ok, let's move on to Greek cavalry. My intention is to make an army for 490 BC, the period of the battle of Marathon. With an emphasis on the defense of Athens by the forces of mostly Athens and Platae.
At this time, Greek cavalry was an extremely limited affair, mostly with lightly armed skirmishers on light horses. Osprey and other sources show a very light cavalry, and I was tempted to represent mine as Thessalian light cavalry, as can be found in the Wargames Foundry ancient Greek range (BRWGA9: LIGHT CAVALRY). Those would be lightly armed horsemen wearing a specific headgear resembling a cow-boy hat. Osprey's "The Greek and Persian Wars" has a good depiction of what I want, plate G2. The plate depicts a Thessalian light cavalryman coming from the plains of Thessaly, in the North of Greece. These were mercenaries, and wore the typical chiton loincloth and a cloak. Armament was light, mostly javelins or spears. Their hat is particularly striking, with its wide brim and small crown.
With this in mind, I was not really satisfied with the various sets I had: Hat Thessalian cavalry, Zvezda or Hat Greek cavalry, etc. They tend to represent the cavalry of Alexander the Great during his conquests of Persia and the Caucasus. This armored, heavily armed cavalrymen often wore shields, which Greek cavalrymen of the Marathon period never used.
So I took the wonderful Zvezda horses (from the Alexander's cavalry set) and mixed them with Hat and Zvezda light infantrymen, plus a few bits and bobs. The results below:
You get the idea. As an aside, the Hat Alexander's light infantry set contains a wealth of material: I will most probably use those as well for Persian light subject infantry or mercenaries. A guy with a loincloth and a spear can be a Persian, a Greek, an Egyptian or something else all the same.
One problem is the saddles: Thessalian light cavalry rode bareback, without stirrups, but their horses had mouthpieces and reins. I was wondering about filing off the saddleclothes of the Zvezda horses, but Mr. Osprey told me that these cavalrymen sometimes used a piece of cloth called an ephippion to ride on. This is great, because the soft plastic these 1/72 figures are made of tends to melt or shred if you file it. This is messy business, and I was happy to let them as such.
I will do two units of those, counting as light cavalry in the Warmaster list. For heavy cavalry, always following Osprey, I will basically represent them as hoplites on horseback, without the shields.
Ok, more later.
Cheers.
PS. A few links on Greek cavalry and ancient Greek warfare taken from the Interweb. Between that and the Osprey books you already get a lot of information. I am ashamed as to how little I actually know about certain aspects of this period. Or, to be precise, I know more about the organization of Ancient Greek societies than about their military life. Well, never too late to learn.
Herodotus
Ok, let's move on to Greek cavalry. My intention is to make an army for 490 BC, the period of the battle of Marathon. With an emphasis on the defense of Athens by the forces of mostly Athens and Platae.
At this time, Greek cavalry was an extremely limited affair, mostly with lightly armed skirmishers on light horses. Osprey and other sources show a very light cavalry, and I was tempted to represent mine as Thessalian light cavalry, as can be found in the Wargames Foundry ancient Greek range (BRWGA9: LIGHT CAVALRY). Those would be lightly armed horsemen wearing a specific headgear resembling a cow-boy hat. Osprey's "The Greek and Persian Wars" has a good depiction of what I want, plate G2. The plate depicts a Thessalian light cavalryman coming from the plains of Thessaly, in the North of Greece. These were mercenaries, and wore the typical chiton loincloth and a cloak. Armament was light, mostly javelins or spears. Their hat is particularly striking, with its wide brim and small crown.
With this in mind, I was not really satisfied with the various sets I had: Hat Thessalian cavalry, Zvezda or Hat Greek cavalry, etc. They tend to represent the cavalry of Alexander the Great during his conquests of Persia and the Caucasus. This armored, heavily armed cavalrymen often wore shields, which Greek cavalrymen of the Marathon period never used.
So I took the wonderful Zvezda horses (from the Alexander's cavalry set) and mixed them with Hat and Zvezda light infantrymen, plus a few bits and bobs. The results below:
You get the idea. As an aside, the Hat Alexander's light infantry set contains a wealth of material: I will most probably use those as well for Persian light subject infantry or mercenaries. A guy with a loincloth and a spear can be a Persian, a Greek, an Egyptian or something else all the same.
One problem is the saddles: Thessalian light cavalry rode bareback, without stirrups, but their horses had mouthpieces and reins. I was wondering about filing off the saddleclothes of the Zvezda horses, but Mr. Osprey told me that these cavalrymen sometimes used a piece of cloth called an ephippion to ride on. This is great, because the soft plastic these 1/72 figures are made of tends to melt or shred if you file it. This is messy business, and I was happy to let them as such.
I will do two units of those, counting as light cavalry in the Warmaster list. For heavy cavalry, always following Osprey, I will basically represent them as hoplites on horseback, without the shields.
Ok, more later.
Cheers.
PS. A few links on Greek cavalry and ancient Greek warfare taken from the Interweb. Between that and the Osprey books you already get a lot of information. I am ashamed as to how little I actually know about certain aspects of this period. Or, to be precise, I know more about the organization of Ancient Greek societies than about their military life. Well, never too late to learn.
- Some wikipedias on Ancient Greek warfare and Miltiades, the Greek commander in Marathon.
- A superb website full of black and white pictures related to Greece and especially ancient Greek sites. You will also find there the writtings of Herodotus, especially his depiction of the battle of Marathon. Very inspiring stuff...
- Robert E. Gaebel's "Cavalry Operations in the Ancient Greek World" and a book review of it giving you a good road map through the book
- A forum entry with drawings of hoplite shields' symbols (very useful for painters)
- And, because I can, the best book I have read so far on Ancient Greek civilization: L'aventure grecque, Pierre Leveque. Yes, it is in French.
sunnuntai 11. lokakuuta 2009
Something old, something new...
New projects here, after a long and pleasant summer hiatus. I even got to play my robots once, in a 750 pts tournament over a week-end. It was the first time I played since April, so needless to say I was beaten several times during the week-end. Good games, though.
However, there has been much else going on in the last weeks: Imperial Guard for Warhammer 40k, Greeks and Persians for Warmaster Ancient, a group of Mongoose Publishing ducks for Runequest (a commercial link, sorry, I didn't find them from Mongoose's website), some Gauls and Romans for playing with GW's Lord of the Rings ruleset... Finally, an army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle... a special, odd one... green, for the most part. With robots. And giant constructs... Niak niak niak...
But let's start with Greeks and Persians for Warmaster Ancient Battles, the "operational" system of Warhammer Historical for 6-15 mm. I used to play Warmaster Fantasy version with Dwarves, and appreciated it a lot. The rules' most important notion is command: each leader has a command value, and you test for the capacity of these leaders to have their orders followed by their troops. Without orders the troops can act instinctively, fleeing, assaulting, etc. The game system is one of the best Games Workshop produced, and certainly one of the most elegant. It has problems, for example with recoils (troops under fire do not die easily, but they tend to get distressed and recoil. This is often very messy when you have lots of units together in a tight spot) and like Warhammer it tends to end up with a big bash in the middle of the field. It is a good game though, very well presented and easy to grasp. It is also a one-book game system: no need to buy codices or army books: lists, rules, everything fits in one book.
The Ancient and Fantasy versions share lots in common, but have a few differences. Especially, the historical version limits the number of orders you can give to the same unit or groups of units, hence limiting the number of time this unit will be able to move in the same turn. The historical version also gives a bigger role to skirmishers. Of course it still is a GW-product, so the "historicity" of the lists for example is more often than not debatable. But in the same way as in Warhammer Ancient Battles, the designers are very clear on that: the point is to play Warmaster with an historical feel, not to "re-enact" historical battles or aim at more than general accuracy. If you are ready to keep the little historian in you repressed for a few games, this is a very rewarding way to play with historical toy soldiers. It pays its respect to historical accuracy without letting it get in the way of a good game.
For me, it was mostly an excuse for taking a few plastic toy soldiers out of the cupboards. I have a long history with plastic 1/72 soldiers. These are the first "miniatures" i owned, and I still have extremely fond memories of a set of Vietnam era US Marines I bought back as a teen. Excellent stuff. Since then two companies especially have been putting out superb sets: Zvezda from Russia and Hat, an English company. I had Greek hoplites from both, so of we went for the Greek-persian wars.
Painting is very straightforward (references Vallego or Citadel). Black undercoat, then main colors Dark Fleshtone, Brazen Brass, Bleached Bone, Dark Green, etc. Dark basic colors. Then on that a first highlight color, then a second on the edges and tops. For white for example: Bleached bone, then pure white. For fleshtones: dark fleshtone, then dark fleshtone + bronzed flesh, then bronzed flesh.
I am preparing two 1000 points armies for the battle of Marathon period, one Persian and the other Greek. The models take the paint very well. Zvezda's miniatures have no flash to be mentioned, Hat a bit more. Zvezdas are a bit more ... chunky, big than the Hats, which are thinner. But they mix very well. The Hats do not have the spears included, but I did some with bristles from an old sweeper: works very well. The Hat figures have their shields in odd positions, but this is minor. For about 7 euros I get a box with, either 36 Zvezda hoplites, or 48 Hat mercenary hoplites. These are superb miniatures, with no flash, well sculpted, and easy to assemble. Enough said.
They are based on 60 mm * 20 mm strips of plasticard. Basing is also very simple: some joint filler paste, glue then sand in patches. Then the paint: basecoat GW Snakebite leather, then heavy drybrush with bleached bone and drybrush with pure white. Finally some static grass in patches. This makes a suitable dry looking landscape. Remember if possibe to paint light-colored bases, it makes the miniatures themselves appear bigger. A dark base will "suck" the color of the mini.
Following the instructions of the Warmaster Ancient rulebook, I enlarged the bases a bit to accomodate these bigger 20 mm. This means I will have difficulties to play these armies against other Warmaster-based armies on 40 mm * 20 mm bases. But this is not a problem as I don't intend to play these armies much outside friendly Persian-Greek fights.
Enough for today. Lots more where they come from, though... The only problem I met with Zvezda and Hat is with Greek Cavalry. I heavily modified the Zvezda Alexandrian cavalry set using Hat and Zvezda greek light infantry in order to reproduce the very light cavalry that was used by the Greeks in front of the Persian army. I will show those later.
For the information, I used three Osprey books (Ancient Greeks, Persian Army, and the Greek-Persian wars). The Ancient Greeks book is particularly useful, and beautiful too. Angus Mac Bride was definitely the best military illustrator of his generation. There is a vibrance in his drawings, real life, something lacking from the more academic illustrations of the two other books.
In the list of links, you will find the Plastic Soldier Review website and both Zvezda and Hat sites. PSR is an excellent website, full of information and updated at a staggering pace.
Yep, more on that and other projects later. Just a little hint as to the green mystery army...
LEFT! NO! RIGHT! YOU STOOPID!
Cheers.
However, there has been much else going on in the last weeks: Imperial Guard for Warhammer 40k, Greeks and Persians for Warmaster Ancient, a group of Mongoose Publishing ducks for Runequest (a commercial link, sorry, I didn't find them from Mongoose's website), some Gauls and Romans for playing with GW's Lord of the Rings ruleset... Finally, an army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle... a special, odd one... green, for the most part. With robots. And giant constructs... Niak niak niak...
But let's start with Greeks and Persians for Warmaster Ancient Battles, the "operational" system of Warhammer Historical for 6-15 mm. I used to play Warmaster Fantasy version with Dwarves, and appreciated it a lot. The rules' most important notion is command: each leader has a command value, and you test for the capacity of these leaders to have their orders followed by their troops. Without orders the troops can act instinctively, fleeing, assaulting, etc. The game system is one of the best Games Workshop produced, and certainly one of the most elegant. It has problems, for example with recoils (troops under fire do not die easily, but they tend to get distressed and recoil. This is often very messy when you have lots of units together in a tight spot) and like Warhammer it tends to end up with a big bash in the middle of the field. It is a good game though, very well presented and easy to grasp. It is also a one-book game system: no need to buy codices or army books: lists, rules, everything fits in one book.
The Ancient and Fantasy versions share lots in common, but have a few differences. Especially, the historical version limits the number of orders you can give to the same unit or groups of units, hence limiting the number of time this unit will be able to move in the same turn. The historical version also gives a bigger role to skirmishers. Of course it still is a GW-product, so the "historicity" of the lists for example is more often than not debatable. But in the same way as in Warhammer Ancient Battles, the designers are very clear on that: the point is to play Warmaster with an historical feel, not to "re-enact" historical battles or aim at more than general accuracy. If you are ready to keep the little historian in you repressed for a few games, this is a very rewarding way to play with historical toy soldiers. It pays its respect to historical accuracy without letting it get in the way of a good game.
For me, it was mostly an excuse for taking a few plastic toy soldiers out of the cupboards. I have a long history with plastic 1/72 soldiers. These are the first "miniatures" i owned, and I still have extremely fond memories of a set of Vietnam era US Marines I bought back as a teen. Excellent stuff. Since then two companies especially have been putting out superb sets: Zvezda from Russia and Hat, an English company. I had Greek hoplites from both, so of we went for the Greek-persian wars.
Painting is very straightforward (references Vallego or Citadel). Black undercoat, then main colors Dark Fleshtone, Brazen Brass, Bleached Bone, Dark Green, etc. Dark basic colors. Then on that a first highlight color, then a second on the edges and tops. For white for example: Bleached bone, then pure white. For fleshtones: dark fleshtone, then dark fleshtone + bronzed flesh, then bronzed flesh.
I am preparing two 1000 points armies for the battle of Marathon period, one Persian and the other Greek. The models take the paint very well. Zvezda's miniatures have no flash to be mentioned, Hat a bit more. Zvezdas are a bit more ... chunky, big than the Hats, which are thinner. But they mix very well. The Hats do not have the spears included, but I did some with bristles from an old sweeper: works very well. The Hat figures have their shields in odd positions, but this is minor. For about 7 euros I get a box with, either 36 Zvezda hoplites, or 48 Hat mercenary hoplites. These are superb miniatures, with no flash, well sculpted, and easy to assemble. Enough said.
They are based on 60 mm * 20 mm strips of plasticard. Basing is also very simple: some joint filler paste, glue then sand in patches. Then the paint: basecoat GW Snakebite leather, then heavy drybrush with bleached bone and drybrush with pure white. Finally some static grass in patches. This makes a suitable dry looking landscape. Remember if possibe to paint light-colored bases, it makes the miniatures themselves appear bigger. A dark base will "suck" the color of the mini.
Following the instructions of the Warmaster Ancient rulebook, I enlarged the bases a bit to accomodate these bigger 20 mm. This means I will have difficulties to play these armies against other Warmaster-based armies on 40 mm * 20 mm bases. But this is not a problem as I don't intend to play these armies much outside friendly Persian-Greek fights.
Enough for today. Lots more where they come from, though... The only problem I met with Zvezda and Hat is with Greek Cavalry. I heavily modified the Zvezda Alexandrian cavalry set using Hat and Zvezda greek light infantry in order to reproduce the very light cavalry that was used by the Greeks in front of the Persian army. I will show those later.
For the information, I used three Osprey books (Ancient Greeks, Persian Army, and the Greek-Persian wars). The Ancient Greeks book is particularly useful, and beautiful too. Angus Mac Bride was definitely the best military illustrator of his generation. There is a vibrance in his drawings, real life, something lacking from the more academic illustrations of the two other books.
In the list of links, you will find the Plastic Soldier Review website and both Zvezda and Hat sites. PSR is an excellent website, full of information and updated at a staggering pace.
Yep, more on that and other projects later. Just a little hint as to the green mystery army...
LEFT! NO! RIGHT! YOU STOOPID!
Cheers.
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