Carpi Campaign

 I have decided on a theme and rules for my MayDay Game - it will be a Hail Caesar game set in 272AD around the time of the Roman campaigns of Aurelian against the Carpi, a Dacian tribe on the eastern edge of the Empire that was not subjugated by Trajan in the Dacian Wars. This setting allows me to use my Dacians with allied Goths and Sarmatians as foes for my late Imperial Roman army. For the past few weeks I have been working on Dacians and a few stands of Goths (to me these are generic warriors, fully clothed, with round shields, example below) to fill out the forces, and in the near future I will start working on filling out my Late Imperial Romans.

I also decided that the theme for the DBA tournament at MayDay will have an elephant theme - "Pachyderm Pandemonium" - any army with an elephant element can be entered and player score bonus points for elements destroyed by elephants. I have Sassanids and Abysinnians to choose from, but there are some very formidable elephant lists in DBA, so this should be very competitive.

Dacians

First batch of Dacians, here we have 4 bases of warband and two of skirmishers for my MayDay game - system to be determined. I am currently leaning towards Impetus.

The figs are a mix of Foundry and Warlord.

Warlord Auxilia

I finished a box of Warlord Games Roman Auxilia - these guys - in 28mm for my MayDay game.

Nice figures, really nice, but they are a bit over-animated for my taste which makes them hard to rank up. I based them on 30 x 60mm frontage so they can be used for DBA.

I am thinking of running a Dacian Wars battle for my big MayDay game. I have some Foundry and Warlord Dacians, as well as a horde of Sarmatian cavalry. My quandry is which ruleset to use - I picked up the Hail Caesar supplement over Christmas and it has some nice ideas for scenarios, and Hail Caesar is a good participation game for a Con. Although I prefer WAB ... I dunno...

Happy New Year, Comrades!

As the year wraps up I can recap what came off the bench this year, about 1500 figures (although quite a few of these are wee):

6mm: 90 foot, 67 vehicles - all WW2 and modern microarmor

10mm: 655 foot, 37 mounted - all Imperial Romans
15mm: 135 foot, 45 mounted, elephant - a couple of DBA armies
1/72: 225 foot, 47 mounted, 7 arty, 3 guns, 2 tanks - mostly Napoleonics and WW2
28mm: 193 foot, 57 mounted, 3 monsters, 2 chariots, gun - Some fantasy stuff for HOTT and ancients
Total: roughly 1500 figs - 1308 foot, 185 mounted, 86 other

I also managed to play 39 games of DBA with the following armies, and the dice were kind 31 times:

Early Achaemenid Persian: 2-0
Late Achaemenid Persian: 1-0
Abysinnians: 5-3

Early Imperial Roman: 8-1

Sassanid Persian: 2-0

Ancient Britons: 5-2
Teutonics: 5-1
Later Swiss: 1-1
Dacians: 1-0
Marian Rome: 1-0
New games I tried this year included Fireball Forward (a keeper), War and Conquest (meh - not sure if it tops WAB for me), Lasalle (good), Fistful of Tows (OK) and I played a lot of Command and Colors (Ancients and Napoleonics) and Memoir '44. 

Over the holidays I finished this batch of 1/72 Soviets for a 1941 scenario I think I will run using Fireball Forward at the next club night, the guns and infantry figs are from Plastic Soldier Company and are very good, the BT-7 and BA-6 are Pegasus, and the ruined building is a very nice Italeri kit that I picked up from chum Mark- nice!

 

Happy New Year from the boys (should have named them Jeff and Akbar...)

Augustus and the Praetorian Guard

Here we have the Emperor Augustus and his bodyguard in 28mm by Warlord Games. Super models, gotta say I love painting Romans. I now have Imperial Roman armies in 4 scales....

Napoleonic Spanish and lancers

The last few weeks have been insanely busy at work, but I still completed 3 new regiments of 1/72 Napoleonics - enough to fill out the CC:N order of battle for the Albuera scenario. Here I have two regiment of Spanish infantry from Hat and a regiment of Polish guard lancers from Zvezda. They are glossy because the temperatures have not really allowed for dullcoting.

Napoleonic Russians and Dragoons

Last week I started on Napoleonic Russians - I have quite a horde of Zvezda and Strelets picked up in a job lot earlier this year. These are very nice figures, I did some Guards infantry and Cuirassiers by Zvezda, and a unit of British Dragoons by Hat that have been patiently waiting their turn in my painting queue for about 6 months.