The Legion Marches!

Though the blog has fallen silent since April I have been a busy bee behind the scenes and progress has been made on two of the four projects I set out in the last post. The first is my completed 300 point Punic Wars Roman Army for Impetus:

The Army arrayed for battle

The Roman Legion Close up

Numidian cavalry with Roman Cavalry in support on the right flank

Italian allied Infantry and Cavalry on left flank

Hastati with Gladii drawn

 

Triarii

The Generals

 

Skirmishing Velites

Roman Cavalry

 

 

Italian Allied cavalry

 

Italian allied infantry

 

 

Numidian cavalry plus unfortunate Gaul

With the Romans completed I have ordered 300 points of Carthaginians which came this week and plan to get started with the Libyan infantry which will hopefully appear on the blog shortly.  I also have a second Legion prepped and ready to paint that will bring my Roman army up to the standard 500 point Impetus army. With J painting some Carthaginians as well we will hopefully have enough for a 500 point game soonish.

All miniatures are by Baccus 6mm. Bases are 80mm x 30/40/60mm and are the premium laser cut ones from Warbases. Grass tufts from Tajima1 Miniatures.

Along with more frequent posts I am hoping to give the blog a revamp. Any suggestions on how to make the design more pleasing to the eye are most welcome.

Watch this space for my next post..............................Cultists!

T.

March of the Austrians (1)

As I mentioned at the end of my last post my next painting endeavour would be to complete 2 regiments/6 battalions/216 figures worth of Austrians to bring them up to strength with the French. Well this post will be the first of a few following my progress and also be a simple guide to how I paint Adler Napoleonics. It will hopefully encourage me to keep going as there are a lot of painting hours going into this but once complete my Napoleonic project should be well on its way to two table worthy forces.

Step 1: I clean the casts; getting rid of flash, mould lines and wash them in soapy water to get rid of casting residue. I think this step is especially important with 6mm as any faults in the casting won't be so easily hidden by a paint job at this scale. Adler figures do tend to have a lot of flash and the occasional casting flaw but do tend to clean up quickly and well.

Step 2: I use PVA glue to attach the strips of 4 or singles if command/casualty figures to lolly sticks, then undercoat them black using several thin coats making sure I get all the nooks and crannies.

Step 3: I then paint the earth round the feet as this will help with the basing later. As you can see in the picture I have cheated a bit as I had 4 fully painted Austrians left over from my other 2 Regiments so all I have to do is change the colour of their facings and their done (every little helps).

Step 4: I always like to start with the flesh no matter what scale I am painting as it helps to bring the figure alive and encourages me to finish it (can't resist their little faces staring up at me pleading .....paint me..... paint me.... ahem! anyway...). With 6mm figures (especially when you are painting lots of them) it helps to break it down into stages with as few brush strokes as possible and go along the line of figures on your strip and repeat the strokes on each. First I do one cheek with a single 'blob'.

Then the other......


I then join the two cheeks up with a single stroke across the chin

A light dot on the nose, just enough to show its there and a short line underneath for the top lip.

I then 'tighten' in the cheeks around the nose and 'dot' the hands to finish

Step 5: Next comes the white trousers. I break this down into a number of strokes that will enable me to get to all the areas that show. This is probably one of the most boring bits to do, no where near as fun as all the straps and things : (.

This is as far as I am now, I will endeavour to get as many other steps done and post an update next weekend.

The Impetuous Project

On a separate note, I have had a couple of 500 point games of Impetus now and have to say it is currently my most favourite rule set being both fun, exciting, tactical and historical. As such I am now very keen to collect some 6mm armies for the Punic Wars and have been playing around with ideas on how I want to do my armies. I've now decided to go with the 15mm scale bases giving me a 80mm by 30/40mm base size for heavy infantry. This should give me units of 60 Roman Hastatii/Principe looking a bit like this:

The rule set and base sizes seem ideal for 6mm Mass armies. After ordering some Romans from Baccus I am very pleased with the sculpts. They aren't as detailed as Adler figures but this is actually a strength when I will be having 60 of them to a base. They paint up very will, quite quickly and should look amazing on mass.

That's it for now. Hopefully more updates from Joe or me soon.

T.

Impetus battle report

Today we played the first game of Impetus using miniatures. Tom managed to make a bit of a killing on eBay and so we decided to recreate the Battle of Bosworth of 1487 - the final battle of the War of the Roses - using the 10mm miniatures he had bought. The outcome, as you will see, was slightly different though. Although we used fairly accurate armies it was by no means a serious recreation and was primarily a chance to 'test-drive' Tom's new minis.

Using the Basic Impetus rules we arranged some scenery on the table (two areas of boggy (difficult) ground, a forest and a hill). I was playing the House of Lancaster and Tom the House of York.

The green dice represented the VBU, or for those unfamiliar with the rules, essentially the remaining strength of the unit, while the red dice, irrespective of their value, represented whether a unit was 'disordered' thereby making them less effective than those that are 'fresh'.

By the time the scenery had been placed the army of the House of York was mostly arrayed on the hill with the forest on my left flank and two large areas of difficult ground separating us. This seemed to play into my hands as I had far more firepower than Tom and so decided to sit back and watch as his force slogged it across the bogs. Initially at least.

Here's how I set up...

And here's Tom's deployment. The hill was made by placing some appropriately-shaped sheets of corkboard under the mat.

Early on in the battle I decided to throw my original plan out and start marching towards Tom's army using my faster-moving ranged troops as a screen. Tom's Nobles and Light Cavalry units were making a flanking maneuver around the forest on my left and so, instead of giving them something to charge at, I decided to try something riskier and cross the bogs...

First blood to the House of Lancaster! Tom's Men-at-Arms take a hit from my Crossbowmen.

My army start the long trek across the difficult ground.

Tom's sneaky Light Cavalry unit biding it's time.

The armies meet...

An aerial view.

Charge!

My charge is repelled...

In the centre my troops are quickly warn down.

Tom's Nobles charge into mine and proceed to teach them a thing or two about hand-to-hand combat...

This picture tells pretty much the whole story. Tom's battleline has suffered no significant damage with all his units still on the board.

At the far end of the battle line my Men-at Arms await the charge of the Tom's Nobles whilst mine are looking vulnerable to a charge from Tom's Light Cavalry, the very unit and maneuver I'd been trying to avoid.

And the view from the Light Cavalry unit that, although not making it into combat, played a role in the battle and would have charged in had the game not ended.

So that was our first miniature-based game of Basic Impetus. It was certainly fun and looked fantastic and made a welcome change from just playing with pieces of card.
The game was basically decided on my choice to cross the bogs instead of waiting for Tom's army to come to me. I won't be making that mistake again! I think I should've been more preoccupied with trying to get my Men-at-Arms and Nobles into better positions. The Nobles basically botched their one charge of the game and the Men-at-Arms spent most of the game getting in the Nobles' way and ended up taking some damage when they retreated through them. My missile troops performed pretty well despite destroying none of Tom's units, they served to 'soften them up' somewhat.

J