Category: Modelling and Painting

The painting bench this week

Ink some WW2 Russian Zis-3 artillery and staff for Wednesday night’s game of Flames of War against Graham.

Paint up the last of the Old Glory 15mm Gothic archers to give me all 16 Irr Bw(I) for an Ostrogothic or Later Visigothic army.

Assemble the rest of the Conquest plastic Norman 28mm knights for a Norman Saga warband.

The Ridge

As promised, a photo of the ridge for Chalons, taken on some 3′ x 2′ boards for scale. As you can see, it will stretch past the centre line of the table and dominate the northern half of the battlefield. Controlling it will, I think, be critical to the flow of the battle.

image

There will be a total of nine commanders involved in the battle, divided between the two sides.

The Romans and their allies:

  • Aetius, Last of the Romans, Magister Militum, Patricius et Dux.
  • Theodoric, King of the Visigoths.
  • Merovech, King of the Franks.
  • Gondoic, King of the Burgundians.
  • Sangiban, King of the Alans.

The Huns and their subjects:

  • Attila, Great Khan of the Huns, the scourge of God.
  • Ellac, Prince of the Huns.
  • Ardaric, King of the Gepids.
  • Valamir,  King of the Ostrogoths.

Refined battlefield for Chalons

It seems strange to refer to this as the battle of Chalons now, since we are re-fighting it on a battlefield outside Troyes, but this is the more detailed view of the battlefield that we will be fighting on, i.e. the chunk of it that fits on a 8′ x 4′ wargaming table, which (by my calculations) comes to around 4 km by 2 km.

Battle of Chalons Map (actually just outside Troyes)
Battle of Chalons Map (actually just outside Troyes)

As can be seen, the main feature is the ridge on the north side. The next post will show what this is currently looking like.

Nice roads, sir

How does PK do it. A seemingly unerring nose for the best terrain and figures. This time it is some very nice looking roads at: http://www.terrafirmastudios.co.uk/#/flexible-dirt-roads/4564861504. Must get some. Maybe I can then use them for unpaved roads and my SA Scenics roads as paved roads?

Talking of his recommendations, very impressed so far by the Old Glory 15s Gothic infantry from Timecast. They are a good match height-wise for the Buaeda barbarian infantry and Khurasan Romans and have a nice range of poses. Nothing matches the Legio Heroica figures, so the barbarian foot will be smaller than the Romans. Going to use LH Gothic cavalry for the nobles (Kn(F) in a Visigothic army or the armoured Kn(F) in an Ostrogothic army) and Khurasan and Old Glory figures for the un-armoured Kn(F) (or the Cv(O) in a Visigothic army).

Too close to finishing the lead pile

So time to start thinking about other things I could start on 🙂

Having just read the Ballista book (Warrior of Rome: Fire in the East – recommended) I am enthused about how attractive a Sassanid army could be. In DBMM its pants, but it would look amazing in 28mm and I still need a 28mm WAB army (its complex – my Nikephorians started out as a WAB army but they really don’t work in WAB – the rear rank archers just aren’t effective enough and the feel of WAB is 1:1 and the cavalry units wouldn’t look right 10 ranks deep). Sassanid would have the advantage of being very, very small, especially with elephants, and 28mm elephants are something that I feel my life lacks.

So who make 28mm Sassanids?

Gripping Beast should be very nice because I like the rest of their figures. All of the infantry have domed hats though, which is apparently totally wrong, and a lot of the mounted are on half barded horses which is actually quite rare.

Newline have some on their product list, but no pictures which is a real problem. Might try a pack from them to see what they turn out like though.

A&A Miniatures seem to have a pretty extensive range. Reasonable variety (although still all domed hats for the levy) and LBM transfers available.

Extension tubes

I spotted a set of Nikon extension tubes in Chiswick Camera Centre on Saturday for £29 so I snapped them up as they are something that I have been looking for for a while as a cheap alternative to a proper macro lens. Here’s the first photo with them, from this morning:

This is a close up of a figure that I put a photo of up in a previous post – at the time that was the best reproduction ratio I could get. This was done using my 35mm f2.0 AF-D on my D80 with the PK-12 and PK-13 tubes together. Because the D80 doesn’t have the old external coupling the camera can’t read the aperture that is set (and I have to use one of the proper non-G lens because that way I can still set the aperture manually) so I have to go fully manual, and the metering doesn’t work either because there are no electrical contacts, but its easy to just take photos in digital and look to see what the exposure is like. There is the internal coupling though so I can at least focus without the aperture stopped down.

All in all, very satisfactory – certainly that is close enough so see the paint job brush stroke by brush stroke.