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.
Well there is no painting or anything tonight, i had a nice hike looking for Neolithic Archaeology today… you can read about it here…Neolithic Landscape
Gaming tomorrow night, but I may have time to get some more bits and bobs done.
I have got some ideas for making 2mm grape vines to go along with my Romanesque buildings. I might have a play in a minute and see how the idea works. They will not, however, look like this….
Today I managed go get some more slicing and printing done. More Gauls have been added to the box. I also managed to shrink my 6mm Italian buildings down to fit the 2mm troops…
Here they are next to their larger cousins. I put a 2mm elephant in the foreground.
I am also printing more 2mm troops. This time with an oval shield.
I had a bit of a problem with a couple of the last 10mm buildings. The two on the left warped… probably a support failure.
Today I had to sort out the header tank for the septic tank. Luckily it wasn’t as bad as last time.
Tomorrow we are going up Ronas Hill… Shetland’s largest. We are off to look at a stone axe ‘factory’
Mind blowing fact… well it us to me… Iceland (the country, not the shop) is closer to Shetland than Yorkshire and Faroe is closer than Aberdeen…
Tonight I thoughti would crack on with the elephants. I managed to get them finished and I think they are rather cute…
This is them on an 80×40 base…here’s a different view of them…
If I base them on this size thenI am going to have light infantry in amongst them too. This wil stop the pesky Velites from scaring my pachyderms. These aren’t glued down yet, they are merely placed for effect. I have another eight without the howdah that aren’t in the photo.
Well… it is sort of a night off… I haven’t painted anything, but I did get some more slicing done on Carl’s 10mm buildings…
Because of their height there is a 6 hour print time.
I have also started looking for hex maps of the Punic Wars… there is a Strategy and Tactics version thT may be of use… I will have to have a look and see what else I can find.
So I am going forcan early night tonight and will take a book to bed with me….
Today my new painting light came, my new old one was always a bit too far away frommthe desk top so after watching Luke over at Geek Gaming talking about a one he got then I thought I would give it a punt.
As you can tell by this awesome photo a black,light against a dark background wasn’t exactly a great idea. You can however see the effect of the lighton the work surface. The light comes with three light settings that are dimmable. These are warm, daylight and white. As it is an LED light it runs from a USB plug. This is the one I went for…New light . Interestingly enough it has gone up by £6 since I bought mine less than a week ago.
I used it this evening to get various bits and pieces of 2mm painted up…
Bottom left are the elephants, with chariots to the right. In the back are a mix of Roman infantry and various types of cavalry.
I also got a pile more celts and Romans printed and cured. I also sprayed yesterday’s Romans white ready for painting. The 10mm houses are drying off, but they did come out really well…
To save on resin, I printed these hollow and remembered to put a big drain hole in the bottom. I have another few to do. Thee are 130% larger than the original stl.
I eventually got my Irregular Miniatures order in… it was a right sod as the PayPal bit kept falling over. So hopefully very soon there will be a heavy thud on the doormat.
Today has been ‘one of those days’ work wise so I wasn’t really jn the mood to do much, but I did print and cure some more 2mm miniatures. I then got the Roman infantry put onto a painting support…I say Roman, but they will, do for other troops too.
I also did some slicing of some 10mm buildings for my mate Carl and then I set about compiling our Irregular miniatures order. This took ages as the PayPal app part of it kept spitting the dummy and not letting me add anything more. I got to the end only to find that PayPal wanted a code and it went to my wife’s phone and … you guessed it…she was asleep. I will have to press confirm tomorrow.
I am actually having an earlyish night… till’ tomorrow peeps…
Today I got some more paint on my larger 2mm Hill Fort. I also got some paint on the legion sized base as a test run for Strength and Honour when it comes out…
Now I did purchase some new rules to try out. These are by Mini Wars TV and are called Age of Hannibal…
Joe and I had a look at them yesterday and we think they will work for our 2mm forces. We are going to base the miniatures on 30×40 mdf bases.
We are almost ready to make a start on the 6mm Italian Wars forces. We are just finalising our lists then an order will go into Irregular.
I was having a mooch in a box under the bed and I came across this lot…
It’s a pile of 6mm Irregular stuff in the background and some H&R WW2 stuff in the foreground.
Tonight we returned to the Sudan for another battle between the Ansar and Anglo Egyptian forces. It did turnout to be a bit of a one sided affair.
We organised our forces, I took some naval ratings, Egyptians and Sudanese, with a Gatling. Joe went for the the Ansar. I was lucky with my command values, but not so with tne officer attributes, having one drunk, one cad, one short sighted chap, a brave one and the general’s favourite nephew . The naval ratings were led by the cad, and the Sudanese by the nephew…
So from left to right some really useless Egyptians who were both poor shots and unenthusiastic. Next are some okay ones, but their officer was short sightedness couldn’t shoot beyond close range, we then have the Gatling gun led by a brave chap and finally the naval ratings and the Sudanese.
In the scenario Joe was expected to defend the town, and therefore had to drop his points to 18.
My subterfuge was to put the useless troops as far away from the fighting as possible…it worked as their dice rolls were impeccable and as I was rolling 8 plus on all of my dice the fact they were useless wasn’t obvious. The force steam rollered forwards and engaged the cavalry in the trees. They took a couple of casualties, and then got annoyed by the firing and charged… sadly they fell short and were caught in the open. All of my units managed to fire and made short work of them and the unit of fanatics coming up behind.
The Ansar in the open moved to threaten my left flank…if they had pressed home they would have rolled up the line.
To be honest with two units out if five down, it was pretty obvious that my forces only had to stay put down fire at long range…
My dice rolls were pretty jammy tonight and the Gatling failed to fire or move only once… I have a confession to make. I was hitting on fours, it was only when I went to tidy up that I realised that I was reading the Gatling stats from the last game. So a big apology to Joe for being a cheating B*stard. I should have been hitting on a five.
We have decided that the Ansar are going to have hidden set up, as was the case in reality, they would often appear in their hundreds outof defile etc. This will make jt a bit harder for the British, but jt should stop the stand and just shoot approach.
Today was another midge day, we were putting up and electric fence and it was a nightmare until a breeze got up. On the upside I still have my fetching veil
