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

Milites on the march

An outdoor event we went to yesterday afternoon ended much earlier than expected due to thunderstorms, so with a clear conscience I decided to finish off the Milites for Dux Britanniarum.

Trying for size.

The dip has turned a bit syrupy over its time in storage, but seems to have worked just fine. A coat of matte varnish over all finished the job, although I noticed the (supposedly dry) red ink used for the decorative trim on the tunics bled into the varnish a little. It's barely noticeable and I put it down to the vegetable dyes used during the period being less than colour-fast. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it...

The figures are lacking shields at the moment. I intend to get some decals when I can and will wait until then to fit the shields.

Once dry, they were ready for basing. I used discs of cardboard, with Liquid Nails sprinkled with sand for the basing material. It doesn't shrink or warp, allowing me to use the cheap/free card. I'm on a tap-water budget here.

Almost ready to go off to war against the Saxon dogs.

The spacing is perhaps a little bit too wide. I think it'll be less noticeable once the figures have their shields attached. In any case, all my figures for both Romano-British and Saxons will be based the same so there's no major gripe against it.

Next up on the painting block will be the elite warriors of the Roman-British, the Comanipulares, and the Lord and nobles to command the army.
 

Milites on the painting block

The edits on my next book are in the final stages, and another book has been accepted for publication - always a good thing for an author! More hurry-up-and-wait as far as the house sale goes, however. To get away from things for a while my wife and I attended the Marcon 52 weekend in Columbus, OH, which was... okay. Numbers seemed way down from last year, which may be due to the event falling on Mothers' Day here in the US. By contrast the gaming section had been moved to the main floor and seemed packed. Go figure.

Back home, I resumed painting the Milites, the twelve-figure mainstay of the Romano-British Dux Britanniarum forces.

These are 15mm Splintered Light Miniatures, and rather nice they are too. I haven't much left to paint now - just the hair, leggings, shoes and bases and decorative trim - before highlighting and dunking them in the varnish and ink dip. Once these are done I'll move on to the Comanipulares, the elite troops of the Romano-British army, along with the nobles and champions. After those it'll be on to the civilians, the long-suffering taxpayers all these armed and armoured fellows are paid to protect from the Saxons.

Limbo, limbo...

So, our house is back up for sale. The buyer had to back out for various reasons, leaving us in a state of limbo with much of our stuff packed in boxes.

...

Yeah, it's frustrating.

I've got book edits to do, and I might as well get something growing in the garden. Hobby wise, I'm going to get my paints and brushes out again and work on the Dux Britanniarum figures. The new resin bases are all painted and ready for them. Buggered if I know when I'll get a game in again. We'll see.

ECW casualties

I spent much of this morning getting the garden tidy so we can leave it in good condition when we move out. It's a little depressing, seeing all the plants we've established in the time we've spent here coming into full healthy leaf and knowing some will be left behind - especially when we suspect the person buying the house isn't a gardener. We will be taking a number of plants with us, and hopefully we'll have time enough this year to establish a garden in the new place. Fingers crossed...

So, enough of that. On with a bit of modelling stuff. Having some time off this afternoon I thought I would paint up the 10mm/N-scale ECW casualty figures I cast recently from resin. The pieces have been washed thoroughly and have had plenty of time for any remaining volatile vapours to disperse.

Top two rows, from left to right: Sir Alan Apsley's, Earl of Essex's Lifeguards, Bolle's, Montagu's, and a quartet of Parliament cavalry. The bottom four have yet to be assigned.

I painted up two figures for each of my current foot regiments, and enough for the (eventual) two regiments of Ironsides. Royalist cavalry casualties are to follow.

In the Victory Without Quarter rules, a casualty marker is placed if a unit suffers three hits from firing in a single turn: It represents a significant amount of metal tearing through the formation. Once the number of casualty markers equals the number of bases in the unit, that unit is destroyed. Since my foot regiments have three bases, any markers over two are redundant. In a similar vein my cavalry regiments have five three-figure bases, so any casualties over two are a major depletion in strength and the regiment is destroyed.

Dux Britanniarum bases

I'd forgotten what a pain in the posterior house-hunting can be. It's a tiresome case of hurry-up-and-wait, with some jewels among houses to look at - and some I just wanted to close the door on right away. I'm also pretty sure I'm not the only gamer in the world who eyes up rooms and basement areas as potential gaming rooms?

After a hectic round of days spent viewing and packing I found a few minutes to spare, so i dug out the paints and finished off the first batch of the Dux Britanniarum movement bases.

The first photo shows them after a light wet brushing with an eclectic mix of Miniatures Paints and ordinary craft acrylic paint. I used a bit of chocolate brown in the cups to show where men have trodden after the casualty has been removed.

Second photo, with the bases occupied by the peasant levy. Note that I've yet to fit the shields to these since I'm waiting until the house-move malarkey is done with before buying some shield transfers.

Bases and Casualties

Our house is all but sold, and we will now need to pack in earnest. At least the weather is warm enough for me to paint, so I took the Dux Britanniarum bases and ECW casualties outside and gave them an undercoat.

I used the same dark brown Rustoleum spray paint that I undercoated the livestock pen with earlier as I find it sticks better to the resin. The coverage is patchy - the nozzle decided to clog up partway through the session, but at least they're all covered. The next step, whenever that will be, is to do the grass effect and so on for the bases, and paint the uniforms for the casualties.

I'm really not sure when I'll be able to post again, so I'll sign off for now. 

Resin casting frenzy

Well, not exactly frenzied, quite leisurely in fact, but I managed to cast a lot of stuff in quite a short time.

First up, six Dux Britanniarum movement trays for my 15mm figures.

The middle one of the bases in the bottom row cracked as I got it out of the mold, but this won't pose a problem. A dab of epoxy adhesive and a base of thin card followed by a bit of flocking and it'll be good to go. I now have enough bases/trays for the main infantry component of the Romano-British army. There are four archers attached as skirmishing infantry, so what I may do is modify one of the bases so it has only four compartments. Once I get the Saxon army, I can turn out trays for that in short order whenever required. 

Next, some Zanzibari slaver casualties.

These have given me some problems, mainly due to the elderly resin I'm using. Beyond a certain age the resin turns a bit... odd (so do we all, I suppose). It has a tendency to foam up if stirred too much and this of course produces bubbles in annoying places. Another flaw is the arm on one of the figures. I didn't notice the excess silicone that needed to be cut away from that part of the mold, so the arm didn't always come out until I fixed the problem. Still, a bit of judicious patching and filling here and there followed by a forgiving layer of paint and all should be well.

Finally, the ECW casualties.

These aren't that distinctive in the photo, but they come out nice and crisp. I sculpted a trio which represents pretty much everything to be encountered on an ECW battlefield.

The weather has turned colder with a perpetual drizzle falling this afternoon. Snow is expected tomorrow - whoopee. So, I'll need to wait until things warm up again before pouring the second half of the lamppost mold. In the meantime I'll clean up all these castings, give them a soak in detergent, allow to dry then give them a dose of chocolate brown Rustoleum spray. Results to follow soon.