Completed Comanipulares

And so it goes. After several weeks I finally finished the Comanipulares (apart from their shields, which will come later). Here they are, based and ready to take their place in the line of battle.

I have half a dozen Lords and champions to finish off, then it'll be on to the civilians.

Still b*ggering on...

It doesn't look like our house will sell any time soon, so I'm pottering away with occasional painting sessions. The Comanipulares are about done. I used a little black ink to bring out the chain mail and then dipped the figures in clear varnish. I did this rather than use my usual ink & varnish dip, which is a bit too thick and would obscure details. One coat of matte varnish to go then I can base them up.

I'm currently reading Correlli Barnett's The First Churchill: Marlborough, Soldier and Statesman...

It's not a period I'm familiar with, and my interest was piqued when some of the members of my club in the UK played a WSS game recently. The book is a good read and shows what a remarkable man John Churchill was. As a consequence I found myself looking over Pendraken Miniatures' rather nice 10mm range. Yes, I'm suffering a bout of "Wargamer's wants..."

Lords, Comanipulares & Champions

We're still in a state of hurry-up-and-wait with the house sale. A flurry of interest in the past two weeks came to nothing, so...

In the meantime I decided to get on with painting the Comanipulares, the elite troops of the Romano-British army, along with the Lord they fight for and his champions.

It's a bit blurry, but it shows I'm making progress.

The majority of pigment is on. I just need to put a few more touches here and there. Because they're wearing chainmail I'm going to forgo using the dip on these as it'll cover too much detail. Instead I'll apply a black ink wash over the armour then clear varnish.

Because the paints I use have settled over time I'm getting a sprained wrist shaking the pots for long enough to mix the pigments. Thinking I could use a mechanical means of shaking up the paint pots I looked online and found a few useful devices -including this one!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErZqGEhpnws