Artaxerxes Triumphant, Midgard in the Ancient World

 

 

in a fabulous display of cunning cunningness Artaxerxes directs his troops to victory

         Having presented The Housemartin with his new commander we decided to put him to use directly. Basing our armies on the venerable WRG army lists we both drew up forces to reflect our understanding of the historical armies. Housemartin chose Later Imperial Persian while I went with Later Hoplite Greek. A die roll decided that the Greeks would be the aggressors so the Persians deployed first. Below you will find a photo of the armies deployment.

 

you will notice a tiny hillock under the Persian Emperor,

 this has no tactical value but is there simply to grant him the proper level of grandeur

Wargames Atlantic Medieval Shield Decals

       I just picked these up (sad to say a few weeks too late to go on MY figures) and they look great! brilliant colors, crisp lines and specifically designed to fit on the shields of Wargames Atlantic minis (they would most likely work on a lot of other companies products). If your painting skills are anything like mine you will rejoice in the idea of not having to try to paint heraldry on a shield less than a half-inch square. Another big plus is that these are water-slide decals so there won't be any fussing about with those bothersome dry-transfer decals! Just remember to paint your shields white and put a coat of gloss on the shield before you apply the decal and you will be good to go.

       My only complaint is the set of "battle-damaged" decals.  Knights would avoid being seen with such under any circumstances aside from mid-battle. Shields were inexpensive and knights kept back-ups, particularly if jousting. Additionally, if I felt the desire to have "battle-damaged" shield on my minis I could easily enough create the effect on my own with a razor-knife and a dash of paint.

UPDATED: Cool old minis Xerxesbates the distractions!

 

       I would love to blame some medical condition for my gnat-like attention span but I must admit it is the product of a near total lack of discipline. Having dug out some minis from the Mountain of Shame I foolishly decided to catalog them. Seemed like a nice, orderly sort of thing to do as long as I had them all out. What a mistake that proved to be! Half-remembered projects from years (decades!) gone by left me nostalgic for the days when Hinchliffe was the King of Minis and hordes of new releases were announced monthly in the British wargaming magazines. 

          Then I stumbled across this pack (actually there are TWO of these, The Lord alone knows why I thought I needed two, I no longer recall). All bets were off and the cataloging project fell away like leaves in the Autumn. I NEEDED to paint this set-piece for my buddy The Housemartin (he being in possession of a Persian army).

 

unlike the freak depicted in The 300, 

Xerxes was actually a pretty chill dude who liked to dress in the latest fashions

Roman around in The Vault

        Recently a friend of mine asked if I might have a few figures that would double for Roman Auxiliaries, certain that there were some stashed in the bowels of The Vault I started mining through the Mountain of Shame. After thirty dusty minutes I had found the two boxes of miniatures that were squirreled away in the back corner behind the piles of crated ammo. Along they way I finally found the box that contains my collection of (as yet) unpainted elephants and I stumbled into several trays of partially painted minis. The cobwebbed recesses of my memory could not bring to mind why I had set these aside in their unfinished state and, having nothing on my painting bench at the moment I decided to put brush to them and finish the job.

 

the Gauls will be the next group to go under the brush

Stop Russian Me! Fireforge 28mm Russian Foot Soldiers

 

 

I reviewed these guys ages ago

       In between cavalry units I knocked out these guys. It seemed like they were finished in an instant (probably because there weren't any horses to paint). The box provides 25 miniatures which translates to three Midgard bases with one spare figure to act as a commander. I assembled the figures but left the shields on the sprue to simplify painting of both the figure and the shield. The only downside is the raised pattern on the shields; while it eases painting you end up trapped two patterns provided.

 

I included a smattering of archers because the Russians used a fair number of missile troops

 

 

the remaining figure got promoted to Boss

Good Knight Sir! 28mm Conquest Medieval Knights Painted

 

I reviewed these minis on this blog quite some time back

       The unrelenting bug to get all of my Medieval minis assembled and painted caused me to plow through these in fairly short order. The assembly of these was very straightforward as the shield arm was already attached and there was very little flash to clean up. Again I posed all of the with lances held upright to ease storage and game play (despite the urge to use some of the huge selection of alternate arms). In comparison to the Wargames Atlantic knights they are a bit less detailed but there are sixteen in the box and the horses are simply beautiful.  

 

I rather wish that I had painted the whole mass of cavalry at one time,

 I could have mixed and matched the models on the bases for better variety