28mm - Greek Light Cavalry - Victrix

 

A change from Napoleonics for sure!   Yesterday I completed a unit of Greek Light Cavalry made by Victrix.   These were certainly a lot easier to paint than the Napoleonics I have been mostly painting this year. 

There are 12 plastic cavalry in the Victrix set and with enough spare heads wearing later style helmets to cover Alexander's Macedonia.

There are also plenty of arms, so there are sword options as well as shields.  I opted for the classical Greek Light Cavalry of the Peloponnesian War era.  I rather liked the additional left hands clutching extra javelins. This meant a sleek Stanley knife amputation here and there but it means this unit looks like it wants to shower it's foe in javelins!

The figures and horses went together really well. The horses needed a little filling on the rump but this was straight forward. Other horses only had one hoof in contact with the stand. This made them a little wobbly. I used the basing material to try to grasp another hoof to add a little more strength.

The fit of all other parts was generally very good.

It was fun to paint these. Although the clothing is simple, I was still able to add a variety of colours and the addition of bronze always adds interest to a figure.

Some of the horses have a furry creature's pelt upon the back of it instead of saddlecloth. I wasn't too sure what the animal skin was initially.  As I was applying wolf colours I thought I could make out a lions tail.  A little further research and I discovered that Lions were around in Greece until around 400 AD.  This changed everything for me!  Lions aplenty for another 800 years...so lion pelts they became.

I was most interested to read Wargames Illustrated and be inspired by the article about Simon MacDowall's new rules for the period called 'Alala!' published by the Society of Ancients.  There is a lot to be said for period specific rules.  I have spent a lot of time making generic period rules be more time-frame specific.  Rules that cover the nuances of a particular period are becoming more interesting to me.  I was very keen to try them so made the purchase!

The rules have a lot of elements that really appealed to me and having read the rules several times now, I am really looking forward to trying them out.  This gave me encouragement to finish the painting on these Light Cavalry.

I have several things on the painting desk at the minute. I have spent the last month or so rebasing and re-organising and even painted four 'Bloodbowl' fantasy figures (Fantasy...whatever next!). It was actually a really nice change to do something totally different, though at times I felt very much out of my comfort zone!   I'm not sure what to paint next...but it will be fun for sure!

Peloponnesian War - Spartan Command - 28mm Wargames Foundry

This was a delight to paint up. This vignette is from the Wargames Foundry Spartan Officers set, with one figure from one of their command sets.  

I have never painted up an animal sacrifice scene before so this was something new for me!   According to the Osprey books that I used as reference material, the Spartans placed great importance on the pre-battle sacrifice.  One of the Osprey books has a wonderful illustration of such a scene going on  with a  storm of arrows landing around them!  

Given the importance of the scene, I decided that this had to be Senior Command stand and they had to be fully engaged in watching the outcome - no matter what else is happening on the battlefield!

The drably dressed Helot slave boy provided a nice contrast to the powerful figures in the scene.

The  relative simplicity of the Spartan clothing and equipment meant that I could invest a little extra time in texture, highlighting and lowlighting.

The officer above is clearly a little more concerned about something and with sword drawn and shield ready, he is prepared to defend the ceremony attendees - perhaps he has seen the Athenian light troops drawing nearer and preparing their bows and slings.

I used the Victrix dory/dorata instead of the Foundry supplied wire spears.  The two were a world apart in detail and for a vignette like this I really wanted the best for the figures.

A few more photos of the whole composition are below.  I often see command stands as a necessary evil.  I always like to use commanders in games with command and communication taking central importance.  However, I'm always short of troops and I normally find that I would rather be painting lots of troops instead of a few commanders (who need extra time investment in details).  

These Spartan's were a lot of fun to paint and to experiment with the composition and I didn't regret the time spent on these one bit.

Stay tuned for the next instalment!  I'm working on several things at once and I've no idea which to post up next!

 

Peloponnesian War - Athenian Hoplites - 28mm Victrix

 

I have been busy painting Ancients since my last post. This time it is the turn of Phalanx's and Hoplites!  As usual I jump around with different time periods like a time traveller, paint brush in hand.

I have had small collection of Thebans, Spartans and Athenians in various states of incompleteness for several years.  I thought it was about time I emptied those boxes with figures still on sprues.  

The Athenians are especially colourful, the men being responsible for equipping themselves and bearing the cost.  With this freedom, the wealthier citizens no doubt took the opportunity to make themselves stand out from their fellows.

Just recently I became aware of how much unpainted lead and plastic I had stored away awaiting their time for painting.  I realised that I spend too much time painting and not enough time completing units.  I decided to try to speed things up with the Army Painter washes and just experiment..  I have used the 3 shade 'triad' method for a number of years over a black undercoat.  This time I opted instead to go for a white undercoat and do things differently.

I painted a fairly light shade of all of the basic colours and then applied the Army Painter washes over the top, taking care not to overpower colours that really needed lighter washes, or even dark washes of their own colour (such as the blues).  This proved very successful, and helped things to speed along.  What I found happened was that this method gave me a little more time to focus on colour choices and patterns on the linen armour and take some care with details.

I was unsure about the Foundry bronze colours that I used as they look quite light, and I wondered if the bronze should be of a deeper reddish hue.   It is possible that it was, but I read that great care and pride was taken in polishing armour to get it to shine.  With slaves on hand to clean and polish and short campaigns, I would have thought that a clean bright finish would be quite realistic.

 A wash with Army Painter 'Flesh Wash' over skin and bronze armour at the same time provided a nice reddish brown lowlight prior to highlighting.

Shield designs (thank goodness for decals!) are by Little Big Man Studios.  Mine were the best part of 10 years old and appeared to have adhered to the plastic sheet.  I found I had to pull the entire sheet off and then cut around the sticky transparent design.  Trying to peel off the cut out design simply was not going to happen.  I suffered sevearal losses with the decals.  I shall know now to try to use decals soon after purchase (ie. not leave it a decade!).

The troops have lots of character about them and a certain presence.  I really enjoyed painting them, though was glad to finish the box!  I split them into 3 groups to paint completely or it would have seemed hard work to do them all in one go.

The only criticism that I do have is the number of bareheaded figures.  They look nice for sure, but when some of the men are in full fighting order, it can look a little odd for other men to be taking their ease with their helmets off.  There is sadly no choice to use armoured heads instead.  You get what is in the box and the choice isn't there.  A bit of a contrast to the multitude of options usually found in a box of Perry Miniature figures.

The troops do have a look of momentum about them.

A few more photos to finish off.  I took quite a number of photos as I'm also doing a short photography course and wanted to try some settings on these figures and use these as examples of work on the course (combining my hobby with coursework!). 

The first photo on the blog of the Hoplite with Medusa shield and the photo below have both had some processing work to get rid of static grass left inadvertently on figures and also improving light and contrast of the image.

More Ancients to follow!