MayDay and 10mm Romans

This weekend EWG held our annual MayDay gaming convention which was a smashing success. I ran a War and Conquest El Cid game pitting the Christian Spanish attempting to recover stolen booty in a counterraid (Apellido) from Almoravid Muslims. I played the Almoravids with Dennis, while Scott and Jonathan played the Spanish

Game start

Spanish Caballeros

The Almoravid booty-laager

Jonathan thinking about his first move, either that or distracting by single-handedly running an 80+ participant game day...

Dennis, eyeing up a block of Christian Knight of Santiago who have breached the Almoravid line...

Dennis, not paying enough attention to said Santiago threat...

Scott, watching Dennis threaten the flank of his knights with Berber light horse, unfortunately at this point I stopped talking pictures and those white knights got a double turn, charged the black guard, broke them and pursued into the booty laager. Spanish win. 

My main score at the auction this year was a big lot of unpainted 10mm Old Glory Roman Imperials for a song. Like 10 bags of cavalry, legion and auxilia for $11!! Well, I already have Romans in 28mm, 1/72 and 15mm...so why not? I like the mass look of 10mm for big battles.

I painted up 6 strips of legion, they went very quickly and I think paint up very nicely. I am going to do them for Impetus, Hail Caesar or perhaps DBX.FOG. Of course, it means I need to buy an opponent, would like to get something not warband with a lot of cataphracts or other elements types (Parthians, Palmyrans, or maybe Pontic?).

My first quandry now is how to base them. I am considering either 80mm (3 strips) or 60mm (2 strips).

80mm is a nice size for Impetus or DBx (played at double 15mm scale) and nicely fits 3 strips. Pleasing symmetry with the command stand in the middle. Big bases are also appealing to play with.

60mm on the other hand, is a more conventional base size, also accomodates strips without having the cut them up, and means 50% more units for the same cost and effort compared to 80mm.

I can't decide which to go with. Any opinions out there?

El Cid complete

The last unit for my October Games Day is a squad of Christian militia crossbowmen, I now have ~2500 points per side for the big game.

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I also did a few Celtic chieftains for a WAB game next week. These guys are great, real characters:

And I am very proud to present the first few models (GW LOTR we picked up at a swap meet) painted by my daughter Sasha (age 9). Her favorite is Arwen. We also played through the four intro scenarios in Mines of Moria and she successfully won them all!

El Cid- almost done....

A few remaining bits and pieces for Christian Spanish, including some jinetes, mercenary command, a few archers and a priest:

Rodrigo Diaz and more Spartans

I chiseled away at the El Cid lead pile this week, here we have Rodrigo Diaz himself, mounted and on foot, with his vassal Alvar Minaya, also mounted and on foot.

These are nice and chunky Crusader 28mm, I really like their dark age ranges. Have done a lot of their Normans and Huscarls.

I also finished another battlegroup of Spartans, this is a mixture of the two Zvezda box sets, the new Spartans and the older mixed hoplites. I think Zvezda are my favourite 1/72 manufacturer, love those Corinthian helmets.

Spanish knights and next DBA campaign map

I worked up 15 Gripping Beast Spanish knights and jinetes, I like these figs. I went with a red/ochre/blue colour theme (very Spanish-looking) to represent liveried otherwise organized groups of Hidalgos. El Cid gaming is still a few units away, but in the meantime they will serve as two additional units of Norman knights in next week's Hail Caesar game

I quite like this sculpt:

I also assembled a new map for our next DBA campaign (1/72 classical era) using Mighty Empires tiles. This is such a great product.

Next up: some ECW command stands to finish off, maybe a DBA battle report after we kick off our campaign at EDBAG tomorrow night.

2011 recap and plans for 2012

The first completed unit for 2012 is this block of 16 dark age warriors from Wargames Factory done in kite shields and with a spanish colour scheme. I plan to use these for Spanish foot for El Cid, and have LittleBigMan Studios El Cid banners on order, but they can also serve as Normal liberi in a pinch:

To recap 2011, I painted fewer models than in 2010 (~1,000 versus like ~1,800 in 2011), but there were more 28mm and generally of better quality (hence take more time). Probably the majority were ECW but there were quite a few Dark Age Spanish and Moors for El Cid, and also quite a few GW and Mantic fantasy stuff for WHFB. I played 63 games of DBA (35W-27L-1T) and learned that it is very difficult to win consistently with a light horse army. I also played 14 games of WHFB (12W-2L) using High Elves (unbeatable now I reckon) Brettonians and Vampire Counts.

I would like to play more WHFB and WAB next year if I can coax some of me mates to play more. Saga was another favourite this year, and I ran 4-5 games of Black Powder at the club too (Zulu War, ECW and Napoleonics). I am going to run Hail Caesar next week at the club using some dark age Anglo-Danes and Normans, looking forward to trying it out. I have become a big fan of Rick Priestly rules, I like the Gestalt and simplicity. I also have quite a bit more Western Desert picoarmour to paint up for BKC2, some nice new 1/72 from PSC to try out Kampfgruppe Normandy, and there is always another 15mm DBA army or two for a break.

Mercenary Turkomen

I just finished a unit of mercenary horse archers for the El Cid project. These are Turkomen from Gripping Beast that were lovely to paint.

They will likely serve in a Moorish army led by this dark chap in the foreground who is a Almoravid general or emir:




Likely will be quiet on the blog for a couple of weeks while I am off to Switzerland and Germany for some seminar and conference travel. Just when the weather here is finally nice... :(

El Cid and 1940

The last 2 weeks have been busy, work is relentless and family were here visiting for a while, so the blog has suffered some neglect.

I did manage some painting however, and managed to complete a unit of mixed spear and bow 28mm Reconquista Spanish Christian Peones (Gripping Beast) for the El Cid project:


I enjoyed painting these, I love Gripping Beast except for the gimpy spear over the shoulder pose they sculpt so often for their dark age ranges, I much prefer the at guard pose mostly seen in the second rank.




And a mixed bag unit of hard nut mercenaries for the same campaign, these are likely mostly Old Glory Crusades range, but I'm not 100% on all of them, they came in a Btown swap:


I also managed a couple of squads of 1940 French - my favourite theatre of WW2, dunno why, these are 1/72 Caesar which were pretty good, they do a great job with poses compared to other plastics:


They are not as nice as these 20mm Blitz metals, however:


Something tragic about the 1940 campaign that I like, or perhaps it is all those cool French tanks and other early war, highly riveted, tin-cannage that appeals. These guys are getting trotted out tomorrow night for a club game of Fubar 1940.

The Black Guard

I finished my first unit of 28mm El Cid Gripping Beast, these were a real treat to paint, maybe one of my favourite-ever. Yes, the paint scheme is simple, black robes, hippo-skin shields and bamboo spears, but I think they are striking:


Love the double-drummer combo:



Here they are lined up with some 28mm Hat. There is no comparison really, I am wondering whether I should order more metal or keep the Hat stuff. Hmm...



Up next: Peones and mercenary foot