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Bitten off More….

There is the famous saying that someone has bitten off more than they can chew. … this evening I decided to get the metal and the resin infantry based on painting sticks and it was at this point that the enormity of the task ahead struck me…

What we have above are the miniatures for two of the four Pike blocks the guns in the foreground are for the Tercio as well as some Skirmish troops too. The pikes on the right are the front rank troops of the second pair of pike blocks.

Now technically from every stick of miniatures I will get two pair of pikes, meaning 120 miniatures or 60 pair, which will be able to go onto another base to make up the numbers. But even with this happening I am going to have to fire up the printer again and do some more pikes.

Typically I have plenty of arqubusiers spare… I think.

I did a test to see if my theory on the extra miniatures filling out the extra bases worked… it seemed to…

Here we have three quarters of an imperial eight stand Pike block, minus the skirmishers and doppelsoldners. To be fair it does look like a densely packed Pike block.

I have actually run out of lollipop sticks… I took a pile into work for the kids to make models out of… I am off to get them back tomorrow. I just have some more here, I just don’t know where they are.

I reckon with the bits and pieces I have left then I will be able to make a third Pike block, but will need more printed to make the fourth. As I am printing anyway, and have these already painted on the front rank then I might as well do the fifth unit… perhaps, or common sense will arrive and make me stop and consider things.

It is my daughter’s 13th birthday tomorrow, so I doubt I will get much done tomorrow evening. Joe is coming over on Friday for a game, so it might be a while before much progress is made.

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Parcel in the Post

Well after starting to worry that something had gone wrong with the Irregular order … (probably because Joe had given me some money to order his when I ordered mine). I got back today to find this on my kitchen table…

Funnily enough I had just said to Joe that I hoped the box would be here before we had a game on Friday… I excitedly opened it and a mountain of lead appeared before my eyes…

Actually this is only half the stuff, I added the wrong photo!

Next up was: a… trying to remember what I ordered and b… checking it was all there. Unfortunately the PayPal page for Irregular was still up and that was the one that refused to work properly, so off I went into PayPal for my actual receipt. All things were present and correct, with a slight panic that the Spanish Pike were missing, only to find them in a separate bag.

So, like you do I set them out on the table…. and voila an army appeared before my eyes…

It kind of looks quite impressive until you realise that these aren’t based yet….

More impressive… in fact it is still missing three cannons, sixteen bases of Tercio shot and nine bases of skirmish infantry… I think that is all! As you can see from the above, the Pike have only the front rank in metal. The rest of the bases will be 3D printed. The shot etc will also be 3D printed.

The above is a 500 point army, a one thousand point army, even in 6mm, would be massive and probably twice the price too.

Obviously whilst messing around with this lot all evening meant no painting… I doubt the things I wanted to paint this evening are going be any less painted tomorrow. The plan for this lot is to get them, and the resin bits and pieces onto painting sticks ASAP so that I can get them undercoated ready for a mammoth painting session. Oh yeah, along with the 6mm Samurai, 2mm Ancients, 28mm Imperials, 10mm things too. I am going to pretend the 28mm ruins don’t exist!

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Working on the Pikes

This evening I decided to do something a bit bigger than the 2mm miniatures and settled on the Pikes, that is not to say that the 2mm bases stayed unwanted and unloved in their box…certainly not… I slapped some flesh base coat on some undercoated ones…

Anyway back to the pikes…

As you can see they are a bit further forward. Most of the armour has been given the base coat. Now these still have a lot of white on them, that hopefully, sooner rather than later I will get finished.

I had better get some shot and crossbow done next, then onto some knights.

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Unclean, Unclean

Well I have decided to have a night off, as I am starting to feel a bit bleurgh. I think I have caught my daughter’s cold. I really hope not as she was floored for a week with hers. Luckily my lateral flow rest has come back negative.

I got the Aliens off the build plate and they are rather nice…

As it was very sunny here today I shoved them on the Windowsill to get some natural curing done.

I was thinking of spraying mine gun metal and then using the black Contrast Paint oder the top. Won’t that can happen is that it doesn’t work. If that is the case I will spray then black and highlight by dry brushing with blue.

If I do perk up then I am going to get some more done on my pikes…mi have got about a month before I need my army for our big Lion Rampant game.

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My Tiny Farm

Tonight I managed to get the 2mm farms just about finished.

This time the buildings are stuck down so there is no going back now. The only problem is, is that there aren’t enough buildings to make the town now…

I tried them out for size on the town base. The town base now has the church/temple on it as the rest are glued elsewhere. Luckily I have another set of thirteen printed and cured. The above still needs trees etc to make it a bit more interesting.

The other thing I managed to get done this evening was to slap some paint on some 28mm Pikemen…

Still a way to go, but they are getting there. Yo be honest a lot of each miniature still to do is armour.

I got a couple of aliens printed successfully last night. I will drop a photo of them tomorrow.

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Watching Paint Dry

I managed to get the sand covered in PVA this morning, so it was ready to paint this evening…

I got cracking with the bases painting the base green level with added brown for roads and building areas…

This photo was taken four hours ago and the paint is still wet… so I have indeed been watching paint dry this evening. I couldn’t be bothered to go and get a mixing tile so grabbed the next best thing…

Yes a good old Tesco Yeast extract lid was washed and available.

My Friend Carl pointed me in the direction of a new Kickstarter…and as I am running an Alien RPG … I just had to go and have a look…. we all know where this is going don’t we! Aliens

I am doing a freebie one this evening… five and a half hours… I am used to 50 minutes…. I am doing a couple, one for me and one for Carl. Freebie

I will find out tomorrow how well they have come out.

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Small Scale Agriculture

This evening I decided to crack on with my Roman farms and vineyards l decided to use what I had handy so they went on the 80 x 40 MDF that was in the house. My old CD’s were in the bottom shed and it was heaving it down.

So they don’t look like much now, but I am hoping with a bit of paint that they will look OK.

The vineyard in the foreground is wool wrapped around the base that is covered in Copydex… I had an assistant for the wool winding part…

Why is it when you do two or three test runs that work perfectly, when you add the glue it all goes to pot?

Tomorrow I will get these covered in watered down PVA to seal down the sand..if I am clever I will remember to do them jn the morning, ready for painting tomorrow evening.

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Small Scale Village

So tonight I eventually got my backside into gear and got some paint onto the 2mm Italian buildings. I don’t think they are going to look too bad to be honest. I was worried that they were going to look too modern, but now that I have seen them painted then I think they will be fine.

The big building will be a temple, the other two buildings will be a mancio or a government building. I have printed off a second set so that I can have lots of buildings… some will be made into a town and others into small farms with attached fields, vineyards and olive groves.

The cavalry ‘patrolling’ the streets give the idea of the size of them. These will need the doors painting, but otherwise they are done and ready to go on bases. I would have got some more done on things but my friend and I were trying to send each other the most annoying songs… I think I beat her.

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Triarii Make an Appearance

Yes the veterans have made a fashionably late appearance… probably due to trying to travel whilst kneeling

So after painting them and cutting them off their bases I tried them on the two base ideas from yesterday…

I am really finding that the velites are tricky to get off their supports. I have had to glue some of the above back together and to be honest some ended up lost on the floor.

Tomorrow I will do another six units red, then start on different scutum colours for different legions.

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2mm Consideration’s

Tonight I really got down to considering what the bases for the 2mm forces would look like. Now the ‘Age of Hannibal’ has various troop types so it would make sense to base them something like this…

Velites in the front, legionaries next and the soon to be painted Triarii at the back… the problem this makes is how many of these make a legion… to me this would be a cohort, so ten of these, which is quite a few… or I go three of these to make a legion.

It is easier with barbarians as they don’t have set formations or definitive unit sizes… so the Numidian light cavalry above is sitting at 500 men.

I also tried the Romans on the 80×40 base …

Some more Velites in the foreground and the line of Triarii at the back and Voila…a legion. Talking of a legion…

The rest of the evening revolved around getting the extra supports off this lot so that I can start painting them.

I am having a bit of trouble with the Velites falling apart when I take of the supports…this is something I will have to sort out.