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?

Late Romans

First project of 2013 is a Late Roman army in 28mm starting with heavy infantray. These are Foundry, very nice sculpt by the Perrys, who are my favourite. Beautiful figs, just a joy to paint. I have another 2 units of unarmoured foot, and will likely order some archers and cavalry for my birthday later this month to round them out.

 I also experimented with some different basing materials, I used Woodland scenics ballast for the ground, cork for the rocks, and GW tufts for the grass bunches. I also based everything on 60mm frontages since they will be used for either WAC/WAB using casualty markers or element based games such as Dux Bellorum or DBA.

What did Santa bring?

My haul this year included a new camera- a Samsung compact smart camera that is probably too smart for me, and cost well above what I spend. But it's lovely, thank you to the missus, and I hope it will improve the quality of the photos on my blog- and in doing so cast a better light on the shortcomings of my painting ability! Also received was a copy of War and Conquest

3 boxes of Sarmatian cataphracts

CC:N Spanish Expansion (great game!)

Here are the first photos from the new camera. The models are WF cavalry cobbled together from bits of Germans, Saxons, Persian and Celtic sprues and meant to be Gothic for my late Roman project (starting in 2013). I also experimented with some new basing materials including leftover grout for the base (too coarse, I think DAB or polyfilla is better), new Javis flock (too green methinks- will have to work on the blend) and GW tufts under the horses. The tufts are potentially useful but you really have to apply them to flat surfaces, so I used them right underneath the horse.

Year in review coming up on New Year's Day. Happy Holidays everyone!