David's Men of Might

A few days ago, I saw a blogging friend's display of his ancient Egyptian army which reminded me I had an Israelite army in storage in the Garage-Of-Holding. I also decided to make a display of them. I had done up a small army according to GW Historicals' Warhammer Ancient Battles, using their Chariot Wars supplement. I was quite pleased with the figures at the time and as I saw them again this morning, I'm still quite pleased. When I painted them, I was in my "black-lining" phase, and I may go back to it. That technique provides for a lot of contrast and the figures look pretty good at the usual wargames table distance.
The army itself usually provided auxiliaries for my friend Irwin's Egyptians. It might be too small to stand alone when compared to the size of most of the WAB armies I've played with and against. Still I think they're worthwhile. Chariot Wars names each type of troops in the Israelite army for the different tribes of Israel. I'm not sure how realistic it is and I've forgotten the designations anyway, so my photos are more based on the weaponry rather than tribe.

Archers... The figures are Ral Partha historicals usually moulded by Iron Wind Metals.

Archers of a different type. Again RP/Iron Wind... In their catalogue, the different figures are listed as Hittites, Amorites, Hebrews, etc., but I figured since the Israelites armed them selves in the style of whom ever they were allied to at the time, variations in dress and armament are acceptable.

Javelin armed skirmishers by RP/IW
My tyle of painting is obvious here - dark background with lighter highlighting. I might try this again.
I found it very effective with skin tones but less so with later uniform cloth.

Same crowd, different angle. I used a lighter wood tone for the javelin hafts for the most part.

Slingers who would've done David himself proud!

Spears in the light-medium infantry category. More RP/IW figures. The standard bearer has a sort of bronze disk and is accompanied by a ram's horn musician.

A different view. The RP/IW figures are more or less "true" 25mm figures so appear slight compared to 28's, but I do like how this crowd turned out. Shields are separate and you have 2 or 3 options.

More spears dressed in a more Hittite theme. The standard bearer has a sun wheel this time which is a chariot/waggon wheel mounted on a pole. The officer is some sort of ancient Middle Eastern general who looks rather lively and fits the theme well.

More of the same. Bases are 20mm plastic squares I painted them brown, dipped them in yellow flocking, then added some white play sand and green flock as detail. I often paint some light brown or yellow brown first and dip it in the sand before doing the larger area in yellow flocking. I think it looks suitably desert-y.

More light-medium infantry that could either skirmish or stand in line. The original figure had an open right hand for a spear or javelin and a knife held blade-down in the left hand. So I stuck shields on them.

Sea-people allies! Phoenicians? Sicilians? Sherden? Who knows?
They could be subjects of Zoomie, King of Mars for all I know. They're mercenaries
More RP/IW figures and I like their looks.

Lots of leather and bronze.

Heavier infantry armed with spear, shield, and bow. I used them as the Gibborim, the so-called "Men of Might" - tough heavier infantry used to stand in the line of battle. Yes, the Mogen David, the Star of David is strongly in evidence. Whether this is histoical or not, I don't know, but for my purposes, it looks good.

Here we see that the Gibborim also were armoured with bronze scale-mail.

The leader and the musician. Tome the figures are well proportioned and they paint up nicely.

The Commanding General - bronze armour, spear, bull-hide shield, and fancy helmet.

The prophet who accompanies the army. This is a Eureka Miniatures offering. That's an Australian company that makes some interesting figures. I think this is the Prophet Chuck, one of the very minor prophets.

The Army standard and another musician

The general's bodyguards. I think they're RP/IW Trojan War figures

Another look at some of the command figures.

No Israelite army could be complete without the Ark of the Covenant!
This is a beautiful Eureka Miniatures piece with four priests carrying the Ark and a fifth leading the way with the Shofar.

This is a wonderful set piece for an Israelite army. In WAB, it permits special morale additions to the army. The trouble is that when it is on the field, it attracts EVERY ARROW OR MISSILE WEAPON on the enemy's side. I has to be up front to gain the pluses but up front it gets wacked early on. 

Still I'm glad I have one. Eureka offers a second set of Ark bearers in SS uniforms for all your "Lost Ark" Pulp gaming needs. Note that some of the priests are smart enough to don helmets!

This army might never see the light of day again, but I'm glad I did it and I enjoyed telling you about it. Thanks for stopping by!

In The Bleak Midwinter

 In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, 
 earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; 
 snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, 
 in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

     I'm going to show some of my recently painted figures. These were not done since the beginning of the year or even since the Christmas holidays. Some go rather further back, but since it's bitterly cold (-9°C, feels like -17°C) and rather snow covered outside, I was in the mood to photograph a few things  I've enjoyed painting. Some are historical, some fantasy and Sci-fi, some are semi-historical.

A 75mm PaK50 anti-tank gun from an unknown maker. I decided to paint the crew as
late War SS gunners with the "pea" pattern designed to destroy my eyesight and sanity.

Andy said this was extra to his needs so I received it from him. The gun model had no instructions,
so I had to intuit the entire thing. I think it worked out. The crew are all on separate bases should casualties occur.

"The Business End"

The gun kit included two identical gun commander figures. I painted the upper one in Wehrmacht cammo
and the lower one in SS cammo.

FoW King Tiger in 15mm. I like the miniatures, but I don't care for the game.

A Russian BA-6 in the service of the Spanish Republic for Spanish Civil War.
It's a Zvezda model which almost snapped together although some of the parts almost snapped in half at times.
Oh, but the price! Less than $5!

For my Shako War of 1812 project, the 17th US regular Infantry. This is the outfit I reenact in better weather.
They were on the far end of the supply chain and so got uniforms of various colours.
At Frenchtown, they were in tan or brown.

Canadian artillery for the Fenian Raid project. I wanted to find a way to include Canadian/British troops in the American Civil War games, so I decided to paint up troops for the Fenian Raids of 1866. Irish nationalist from the US attempted to invade Canada and hold it hostage until Great Britain gave Ireland its independence. It was a fiasco.

Front and back view of a Fenian standard bearer, with the banner in English and Irish Gaelic.

15mm ACW Confederate Zouaves - the Louisiana Tigers/Louisiana Special Battalion.
The Confederacy didn't go in much for Zouaves, but these fellows -recruited from among the
Irish toughs in New Orleans- were an exception. The uniforms probably didn't hold up too long. 

Gallic warrior - Wargames Factory plastic multi-pose figure

Irish pike command stand in 15mm for DBR - pikes and chieftain by Essex, bagpiper by Minfigs.
I enjoy playing the army of the Great O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, although I usually get beat up with them.

Gripping Beast 25mm Arthurians for my wife's army in our Warhammer Ancients battles.

15mm Late Roman Auxila for DBA (Freikorp 15s, I think)

15mm Late Roman Legionaries for DBA (guessing Freikorp 14s)

More Late Roman Legio - as above.

I'm going to split this blog in half at this point. More to come in the area of Fantasy, Sci-fi, and Imagi-nations.

Despite absences...

I've been slow to blog lately. This time of year does get busy for people in my line of work. Still... some worthwhile things have happened.
Two weeks ago, a group of us played a game using the Warhammer Ancient Battles rules - Early Imperial Romans vs. Gauls. There will be no report on this game since it didn't go so well for me. The reasons are immaterial, but the photos are worthwhile.



Andy's Roman legionaries advance in an appropriately bellecose manner.



An overview of the Gallic side.

The Gauls move to the advance.

Skirmishers from both sides meet in the wood.

Germans - adding to the colour... and odor of the Gallic army.



Gallic Fanatics, defended by shield, tattoo, and attitude.
They did very little during the game.




A good view of the western center of the table.






















That's quite enough about that fiasco. Last week, we did an old favourite - the Tiger Hunt. Take Iron Ivan's "Disposable Heroes/Coffin for Seven Brothers" rules, give each player a Tiger tank (Pzkwgn VI) or a Panther tank (Pzkwgn V), and it's every man for himself. When we've done a mini-con of sorts, this always goes well. It also help us to drill ourselves on the armour rules in the rule set. It's always a scream. When your tank is knocked out, you go get another from the pool. (1-3 on a d6, a Tiger, 4-6 a Panther, until those models run out, then the Koenigstiger and Jagdpanther can appear. This time we added a few "Guests" like 2 Ferdinands, a Firefly, and a Churchill with a 75mm gun so it would have a fighting chance. We actually played two games. In Game 2, all players got a Tiger and it "respawned" as a Panther, but there wasn't a third chance.



The table begins to be set up.




Der Laurentiger im Stadt (The Lurking Tiger in the town)




A Panther prepares to move. See, it IS a game!




Panthers, alive and dead, and the Koenigstiger



The Churchill - commanded by Robby - cruises into place.



The Firefly I decided to test drive. Nasty weapon, armour could be better.




Panthers close up. The blue chips represent penetrating hits.
The rules make your tank more vulnerable with each penetrating hit.




Ferdinand on parade. This frightened some folks until they realized it has
no turret to turn!




A nice photo of a Panther looking for prey.




A Forward Observer's eye-view of the table.
No extra points for shooting livestock.




















This week, the club was playing a Dreadnought-era naval game, but I could not make it due to vehicle troubles. I'll try next time. Our next scheduled game is one of the Age of Sail, an old nugget called "Don't Give Up the Ship." One of the authors was the late Gary Gygax, done prior to his D&D publication. Before Christmas, we'll do our now-traditional (as in "We've done it once") Wings of War game with Snoopy leading the Allied squadrons.

The air battle of the ages from last Christmas.

More on that later,