The last round of EAW buildings

     So here is a picture of the remains of an actual building in Pompeii.

     It was probably at least three stories tall originally.  Notice the balcony built into the face of the building above the large store front doorway.  The last building I purchased from Empires At War is their Three story building with balcony. 

Continuing efforts to fill those hills.

Onwards to the first of the more flat topped buildings.  These buildings do have a slope to their roofs so I will have to puzzle over how to correct that, but herewith the Coaching Inn and Two story house with balcony.  I also tried saving these pictures as 'medium' instead of 'original' so maybe that will deal with the photo size issues. 

Here is the Coaching Inn right out of the bag.  This one has a very innovating design element, so you have something to look forward to as you read further. 

Late Roman Infantry from Gripping Beast

     Not new, I know, but new to my workbench. These have been tempting me since they first came out. I have always had a soft-spot in my heart for Late Roman/Early Byzantine troops and these hit that spot dead-on. They also stoked the smoldering coals of my interest in Post-Roman Britain, the last vestiges of Romano-Celtic culture desperately trying to stave off the dark tide of ignorant pagan Saxons (yes, I am a fan of doomed causes). So now they are on the workbench getting painted, but that is an issue for a later post, today we look at the figures themselves.

 

the box, the artwork is clear and provides painting ideas without 

getting too "artsy" like the boxes from Fireforge

It takes a lot of Buildings to fill seven hills!

     So my Roman (actually Spanish according to the manufacturer) buildings have arrived and I decided I better get a building.

 

the finished product is quite lovely

     The majority of my buildings will be from a company called Empires at War (www.empiresatwar.co.uk hence forth 'EAW').  They have a wide range of 28mm buildings.  as well as 15mm, 10mm, and even 6mm; these come from a wide range of gaming epochs, Roman to sci/fi. 

Gripping Beast Dark Ages Cavalry Kit Review

     It has been simply ages since I did a kit review, this is in part due to my life being invaded by the Castillo Project, but also in part due to my resolve not to buy more minis than I was painting (this has slowed purchases to an absolute crawl). Yet here I am with a new box of Gripping Beast Dark Age Cavalry in my hands, I suppose rules exist to guide rather than dictate.......

     

      As I indicated in earlier posts, I have long harbored a desire to build a Romano-British dark Ages Army. I resisted this for many reasons but found my resolve slipping when GB released their Late Roman Infantry a while back. Then I walked into Michigan Toy Soldier to find this beauty on the "New Items" shelf. The last shreds of my resistance fell away in an instant. I confess that I have always liked GB's plastic figures for their clean sculpting and realistic poses, the box was mine before I could think twice. Let's look inside, I am sure that you will be as pleased as I was.

Battlefields AAR

   

      I was occupied all morning in running a game but Zhodani Commando has filed an excellent report covering the convention. He also has some edifying thoughts about the hobby.

    Check out his report here

I am Arthur, King of the Britons.....

     OK, I couldn't resist the Monty Python reference. Sorry.

     Having survived the weekend from Hell (working 20 hrs of overtime, taking my wife to and from a dance convention, presenting the Castillo game at Pro or Con, and fetching my daughter from across town after a traffic accident) I decided to spend last night finishing my attempt to reproduce the Angus McBride artwork from the cover of Arthur and the Anglo-Saxon Wars from Osprey's Man At Arms series. There are things that I am still not happy with, but I believe that I have captured some of the energy of the brilliant art of McBride.

 

certainly no match for the Grand Master McBride, 

but he will do nicely as the commander of my Post-Roman British army

Drivers to your stations!

So here are the Drivers in their completed chariots.  I will take this in order of fan seating positions. 

Here we have the menacing driver in the first Blue chariot as completed by Anton. 

Housemartin's Turks

     They are ready, drop by and collect them any time.

 

One Last Shot!

     For the near future at least, I will be taking the Castillo game to Pro or Con this weekend. If you want to play get there in the morning and sign up as I will be mothballing this for a while. The logistics of moving a game with this much terrain is a little exhausting. I may (just may) take it to the con at Fort Meigs in May, but that is still up in the air.

Housemartin, Your Turkish Delight is Almost Ready

musketeers are converted by substituting a Wargames Factory 

surplus Lace wars musket for the halberd , per your request

Curse You Angus McBride!!!!!! (UPDATED)

     I know that it is poor form to speak ill of the dead, but this goes back many years. In 1984 Angus McBride's work for Osprey's Man-At-Arms series #154 Arthur and the Anglo-Saxon Wars featured a stunning picture of McBride's reconstruction of what Arthur probably looked like in reality. The combination of subject matter and McBride's brilliant artistry left me wanting to build a Post-Roman British army with a model of the cover as my command stand. Having no one in my wargaming group that wanted to undertake building a Saxon army the idea languished for decades, rekindled every time I happened to see the cover as I was in my library. Look at the picture below to see what I am going on about.

 

there is a strong likelihood that I would kill to get the original artwork

CinyCon report

     My old friend Kevin has a report on his adventures in Ohio at CinyCon posted on his blog Zhodani Commando , he has pictures of games played there. Of particular interest are his lovely Samurai figures, more of which are visible if you scroll down through his postings. Kev is quite a masterful artist.

Enjoy!

This Circus is No Laughing Matter (Updated)

     Having almost finished the racetrack I decided to get started on the spina; the "island" in the middle of the raceway that carried some odd temples and such. The real spine is much longer and narrower (as is the real raceway) but this had to fit on a 6'x4' table so concessions had to be made. The hardest part of all this is that every picture I found of the Circus Maximus showed a different arrangement of decorative structures arranged along the spina. In the end I gave up and just decided to add such representative decorations as I could manage in an evening.

 

the track with a second coat of paint, 

this was a much lighter version of my favorite color "mistint"

Off to the Circus!

   And not the Barnum & Bailey sort either! 

      Housemartin has pulled one last con on me; he needs a place for those chariots (with the "oh-so-lovely" charioteers) to run their races. He sort of left that lying there and, being the twit that I am, I said that it would be dead easy to make a spina and then paint a track based on the board that he showed me. Thus I find myself painting a terrain mat to match the track that his boardgame came with. For all my complaining it is a simple matter as you can see below.

 

a 6" by 30" space in the center for the spina and a series of 4" wide pathways around it,

the first layer is in a darker shade, a lighter shade will highlight the track