Iberians

This time, I've completed the Iberian army. 

Here is the result:

First the group shot;

Then the camp; Mountain folk herders. Really like how this one turned out. For the camps, there is always a "white page" syndrome at the begining, but once the Idea is there, it's nothing but creativity! fun.

General Cavalry and a light horse unit.

Three unit of Scutarii, Auxiliaries.

Three units of Caetrati, Auxiliaries.

Baelaric sligners; Psiloi.

This is one of the cheapest army I have done yet; I only bought one box of each HAT spanish infantry and cavalry. The miniatures are superb; tunic with visible (so easy to paint) border on sleeves, collar and hem. also the Scutarii and caetrati both have nicely done sinew helmets. 

The only down side for me on this finished army is how the "Spaniards in short tunics bordered with purple" turned out... RED... I even mixed the colour to have a nice reddish purple... but once complete... there is nothing there but red... ha, well... 

Cartage

hi again!
It seems that I am on fire...I spent every night painting during last week, and I still want to paint some more. So here is last week's result; Cartaginians:

The Camp; Paper tissue on styrene block for the tent. Had a bug with the soldier holding the horse: I had to bend them into shape to get this pose, and, after the paint job, the plastic bent back to it's original shape a little, thus the space between hand and bridle... next time; pose the plastic minis long before painting them...

 Cartaginian Cavalry; with the general holding a sword. By the way, I do not like the open hands... it never look like the general is actually holding the sword.

 Cartage/libyan spearmen; Hand painted shields, far from award winning, but they look good from 4 feet away!  had fun doing those. I saw the design for the shields on the net; not sure where... google image...

 Same spearmen, from the other angle.

 Same soldiers, this time, as auxiliary. Not sure about that figure choice; see comments below.

 Libyan warband. Again not sure about the figure choice. See below.

 Numidian elephants; with skirmishing escort...

 Numidian light cavalry; very nice miniatures.

 Numidian psiloi, again superb miniatures, if we exclude the single weird pose of the guy twisting his shield arm...

 Group shoot.

I am very satisfied with these. The colour choice was limited, and gives a unified look, which I like. I got this idea from this guy; who is VERY good with colours...
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=324714

There are a few difficult choices when it came down to figures; specifically the warband and the auxiliary. As I am building armies for many major players of the punic wars, to use in a campaign, I did not want to include allies into the national armies... that meant no gauls nor spanish miniatures in the Cartaginian army. I then used some figures identified as libyan spearmen with a very dynamic and agressive pose to make my warbands, and I used three guys in lose formation to represent auxiliaries...

hope you like it!

next in line:
Spanish!

Bitten by the bug... two times!

Here is my second army; Gauls.

The army is a mix of Italeri, Caesar and the venerable Airfix. I did not bother to make chariots, because I don't think that the gauls used them that much, or even at all during and after the Punic wars. I did most of the painting for this army a long time ago, and only recently based them for DBA. This army, like the romans, was also speed painted. But while the romans received an army painter DIP (which was really fast, I have to admit), the gauls received a more traditional basecoat, heavy brown wash, and then highlight... 

The camp was super-fun to do... I was inspired by the bovine merchant in the first Asterix movie:

"Je suis un marchand de boeufs, et vraiment très malheureux... "

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai67yPC-Uyk

Ok, then the Idea kind of drifted to a more serious version of a poor guy trying to convince his beast to obey... the fun thing is that particular figure began it's life as the wounded gaul from the airfix kit... poor guy has no luck...

bitten by the bug!

Hi There!

That's it. I've been bitten. I read everywhere that DBA armies were immensely fun to collect and paint, and after two complete ones, I understand why... hard to put words to it without simply repeating what have been said before; but the basic is that it is a small size project, perfectly suited to my easily turned mind.

Without any more comments, here are my republican romans (polybian romans):

Velites : Psiloi elements

Hastati : Blades

Princepes : Blades

Triarii : Spears

Equites; including the general : cavalry

the camp

The miniatures are mostly HAT 1/72, with about half the cavalry Italeri roman cavalry. I have mostly speed painted that army, simply to have quick playing pieces. When I began, my goal was to build a large army, to play "bigger" rules set than DBA. I still based my army with the DBA standards, just in case... and it turns out I was right, this is how they finally ended!

I found the "need" for a camp to be tedious at first, until I actually built one! THAT is where all the creativity goes in a DBA army. so. much. fun !!!

I also have a Gauls army paintd up, that I will present next time, and I am currently painting Cartaginians (and numidians as a byproduct), and I am also assembling Iberians... and Campanians... and Syracusans... and probably much more after that!

I am going to take the next few armies a bit more slowly, as a nice looking DBA army is easily achievable!

Teaser

A little preview of what I am going to show in the next few posts:

I am finally progressing in my "mountain of lea"... hemm... plastic...

I am going to talk about them and show better pictures next time.

Red Herring

I wanted to share a little trick I use from time to time. Have a look at those minis, painted some time ago:

Nice figs, are they? 

No, in fact, not that much: look at the poor job on the lower legs of both figs, look at the one-layer highlight on the pistol arm of the sword dude... look at the one-dimension chainsword painting... 

The trick here was to have a well done center piece for the mini. In both case, it was the face, and the chest. I spent a large proportion of the painting time only on those areas. The eye is pulled toward faces, when we look at miniatures. Try the oposite, just for fun. Do a great job on the miniature body, legs and arms, but do a quick blotch of the face. The overall "feeling" of the miniature will be poor. 

These two guys make a good first impression, but when you get to know them... 

Here is another mini, completed yesterday.

Don't ask me why it is not centered... I don't know... 

Been busy.

Well, it must be the most overused excuse for not blogging, but here it is, I have been extremely busy. To the point of not painting at all for several months. But; back to it now. Here are a few models I made in the last few weeks;

First, My Ariadna army:

I tried to keep some coherence in the whole army by using mostly the same colors, but still I've tried to keep the scotts (top picture) distinct from the french (bottom picture). I used the same color to paint the kilts and the armor peice of the french (which are blue in the studio scheme). I think that I had the most fun I ever had painting a miniature while painting the wolf. It is a really REALLY nice miniature.

On the other side; the guy with "One-handed HMG and a claymore firmly planted in the ground" is probably the stupidest pose I have ever seen on a miniature... I really wanted it for gaming, though... but bottom line is that, in my opinion (this is my blog, after all!), the Infinity range contains exquisite miniatures, but they tend to make strange poses, sometimes...

Some note; the leftmost guys in the bottom picture is not an Infinity miniature, but an EM-4 mini, which I converted to an infinity chasseur with sniper rifle. This miniature had the exact same "concept" that the other chasseur... cap, ear-set, rifle, knee pads, backpack... simply a good coincidence.

The bases are still bare... AGAIN... I'll get to that eventually...