15mm DBA Lysimachid Army

The club is seeing a bit of renewed interest in DBA and opted for a c. 300BCE period for armies to take part in a mini tournament.  I bought a couple of armies from Museum Miniatures, this one, a Lysimachid army and another Scythian army which is in the pipeline.   

The Lysimachids came with 4 bases of Phalangites (pike), 3 bases of Hoplites (Spear), a general's base of knights, a light horse base and three bases of psiloi.  I added some extras, 2 bases of auxilia (Bulgarian) spearmen (Ax4) and two of Thracians (Ax3) plus another Psiloi of Thracians, an elephant with tower and a pack of mules for a baggage base.  Gives me enough bases for the early and late Lysimachid periods with several options within each period.

The whole army.

War elephant, hoplites and Bulgarian auxilia.

Phalangite pike blocks, hoplites, General/Knights and Psiloi.

Baggage train, Thracian light auxilia, light horse and Psiloi.

A quick paint to get them in action as soon as possible, ready for the tourney in November.

Thanks for looking.

6mm Roman villa

Steve Oates of the Baggage Train passed me these at the club just after Christmas.  He is building up a nice set of 6mm terrain items, suitable for ancients wargaming, especially Roman and Dark Age periods.  These are his Roman villa and Roman workshop pieces.  I thought the workshop looked  lot like an early Romano-British villa (1st-2nd Century), while the villa looks good for 3rd-4th Century courtyard villa.  I've read that as the Romano-British nouveau-riche landowners rapidly adopted Roman style and culture  after the invasion, abandoning Iron Age roundhouses and moving into rectangular villa buildings, before moving on to more luxurious courtyard premises as styles and tastes changed - so much like the property ladder today.

I've modelled this piece to show the derelict roundhouse as an irregular circle of boulders (hut circle), to the left of the villa in the image below.  The early 1st/2nd Century villa building is now used to house slaves and as a workshop, while the landowners family live in the courtyard villa with its hypocaust flooring, garden and pond.

The front entrance of the villa.  The roof of the villa is a separate casting, so the inner courtyard can be detailed, but I need to glue it down as I see it's gone a bit wonky as I was photographing it.

Another view from the less salubrious side of the complex.

Nice crisp castings, very little clean up required.  I did wash them in detergent in case there was any release agent on the surfaces.  I'm not sure how much these are selling for, but Steve's prices for his other items are more than reasonable, well worth a look if you see him at a show.

Thanks for looking.

10mm Early/Mid-Imperial Romans

I recently dug out a Warmaster Imperial Roman army that I bought from Pendraken at a show, along with an Ancient British army, about 10 years ago.  In a rush of enthusiasm, I painted up the entire army, but ran out of steam when it came to the Ancient British, so never got a game in.  At Deeside Defenders, Black Powder  and the various related rules Pike and Shotte and Hail Ceasar are all enthusiastically played.  So, after discussing with Ian whether he had a suitable opposing army (which he did having Sassanids in 10mm), we scheduled a game for this coming Thursday using Hail Ceasar.

The entire force, at the back two stands of Scorpion bolt throwers, five legionnary cohorts (a veteran legion in the centre representing the Praetorian Guard), three cohorts of auxilia, one ala of cavalry, one unit of archers and three German javelin-armed skirmisher units, plus a tribune and a legate.

 The Germanic tribes skirmisher units

 The unit of Archers

 The three cohorts of auxilia.

 Two cohorts of legionaries

 One veteran legionary cohort - the Praetorian Guard

 Two more legionary cohorts

 The small unit of Scorpion bolt throwers

 The whole army on parade.

 
The shields could do with some detail either painted on or as decals - not sure which way I'll go yet.  In any case, they should be able to put up a decent show on Thursday night.  All depends how quickly I can pick up the rules as I've not played HC before and my rules haven't yet turned up from Amazon.

Thanks for looking