The US 7th cavalry have arrived - new sculpts!

A couple of days ago the advance guard of the 7th US cavalry arrived (troops A,B and C) in the form of 60 mounted figures specially commissioned by Mark from Andrew Stadden (son of Charles Stadden who requires no introduction here). The horses are by Qualiticast. I have to say that on opening the box my first impression was simply one of awe at the animation and period feel of these 20mm sculpts, but also how traditional they are with fine engraved detail and faces full of character. Mark pointed out to me that he commissioned the sculpts from Andrew as he is one of the few these days who still works in metal, no green stuff etc and this shows in the figures. I have no doubt that they will be pure joy to paint when I get to them next year - I still have around 280 mounted Indians to paint yet - and may even sneak in a couple of test paints. Troops D,E and F will follow in due course (who remembers the old US TV series 'F Troop'? 

They arrived with some basic painting instructions but basically Mark wishes me to use the old Peter Gilder 7th cavalry from his Pony Wars collection as a reference for colours etc, the link to which I posted a few posts ago here. A nice touch is that all bases are labelled using names of those who fought at Little Big Horn where possible with some fictional characters. 

Meantime I have started to enjoy my DBA in a box and had a Classical Indian v Macedonian game the other morning which resulted in a resounding Macedonian victory. Clearly the Indians are going to take some time and play to find  the best way of deploying them, my idea had been to place the light bowmen out in front with elephants at rear in order to soften up the phalanx before trampling them with the big beasts  but the phalanx simply smashed them aside! The range of bows is 200paces and the move distance of the phalanx is also 200 paces so you are only going to get off one shot before the heavy infantry are on top of you. Elephant v Phalanx is interesting, can go either way resulting in broken formations, base v base fighting, but the double ranked pikes certainly packs a punch.

One issue came up, moving the phalanx on the flocked board required careful handling to avoid bending the pikes, I have a light hand but it occurred to me that a surface where the bases could be pushed/slid forward would be better and I am wondering how/if there is a means of 'fixing' the surface without damaging it? Spray varnish possibly? Any thoughts would be most welcome, thank you. Laying thin plastic transparent sheet over has been suggested and I thought that rather clever but I really need to keep the project portable in the small box.

Back to more Indians and Wargame in a box!

I'm back painting the October batch of another 60 mounted Plains Indians for Mark and thoroughly enjoying myself. I'm tending to paint in batches of 8 keeping the horse tones similar each batch but varied overall. For this second batch I wanted to keep the ponies fairly light on the whole to begin with including several greys. I must say that when removing the first 40 yesterday from the wine caps for storage it made me think about how spectacular the 400 + mounted warriors are going to look when Mark eventually gets to deploy them on his table next year! So this will be so far 128 mounted and 100 foot, the November batch will be another 60 mounted. 

Photos look a bit overlit and please bear in mind these are 20mm Qualiticast figures. Satin varnish applied. I especially like the crashing horses. White horse eyes have been dotted out to reduce the human like appearance.

I'm now completing the last of my 3mm ancient DBA armies, the Marian Romans by painting 8 bases of heavy infantry along with a base of Auxiliaries, they will share the cavalry and skirmishers from the earlier Polybian Romans.

As you can see I now have everything stored in a lovely sparkly box thanks to my wife, I had to do the whole 'shut your eyes and hold out your hands' thing before being presented with it, never was a man so excited about a storage box! It's just about perfect and holds the 4 wooden cigar boxes containing 8 fully magnetised armies, the folding board plus terrain etc. With this about done I'm planning to make a series of 150mm x 150mm interchangeable terrain tiles marked out in 50mm square grid so I can use the armies to learn The Portable Ancient wargame alongside. I'm going to keep these one dimensional with terrain features simply painted on using textured paint only, a 9 x9 square grid to begin with. Thanks to Bob for the free PDF of the rules and I'm keen to see what I can do with project.

Marian Romans so far, the ships in the background had been gathering dust on the shelve so I think it's abut time I got them rigged.

And finally for now, I present (drum roll please), 'Ancient wargame in a box', in the words of the late Paul Daniels 'It's Magic'.

Can anyone suggest a source for 150mm x 150mm tiles please? I'm thinking 3mm MDF possibly but other ideas welcome? Cheers.

More 2mm Cigar Box armies , 15mm ECW and 3mm DBA game!

 Painted additional bases for Geoff's 2mm DBA (half scale) collection. I like the challenge!

Also another batch of 15mm Peter Pig ECW's for John R (maybe I should call him younger John?) Next are more of the same for Graham. 

Also had another game on the folding DBA board, great fun and a narrow Roman victory, once again those warbands prove their worth against solid line of blades. Struggled to get the chariots across the shallow river , I wanted to try out the rule but kept throwing ones and twos!