After Salute 53

 

First question has to be: If it's about Salute, why a random photo of a market stall taken from where we stayed. The answer is that we stay in an apartment on Petticoat Lane and they have a market every Sunday...

Lots of expensive souvenirs in London. This one sells for £15 in the various tourist type stores in the city. Sells for £6 in the market...

There are different sets you can get. This set goes for £15 in town. Guess what the market price is?

The individual taxi is bigger than the one in the set. No idea what the town price is, here it was £3. So basically I got the lot for the shop price of the bus!

But there's more! The middle post box and telephone box were actually on key rings - hence the rings on top! These were a pound each, so my total outlay was £19! Figures for comparison a Crooked Dice Dr Who UNIT soldier, the ladies are Bad Squiddo vigilante school girls. 

The larger bus seems to fit nicely with 28-32mm figures.

Likewise the larger taxi.

Smaller taxi 25mm and smaller bus 1/87th? Haven't sized them out really.

At Salute itself I just got a few figures with a sort of Christmas horror theme - haven't unpackaged them yet. They are 3D printed figures by Modular Worlds - but can't find the figures in their shop! Pity, because they didn't have any of the Santa figure left...

And finally a visit to Warbases to rebuild my very depleted stocks of cavalry and LI/LMI bases...

Incidentally, the date for Salute 54 has already been posted - 17th April.

More of Harry's Gauls

Came across a load more Gauls from Harry I hadn't rebased yet. Just realised that the chariot is the same one I used when I did my Gallic chariots - hadn't noticed it before!

Firstly, a load of cavalry. Hadn't realized they were there - knew there was a load more infantry still to do, thought all the cavalry I got were Minifigs. This unit just about brings the historical Gauls/Galatians up to their full complement! Need a load more Ancient Brit light cavalry though.

I've also based a unit of Gallic archers. This is the second unit and completes the Gallic archery force.

I've still got enough figures around to make up  another unit or so of  regular LMI  and still have a lot more needed on top of that!

Might leave the Dacians/Sarmatians for a bit and cast up some chariots. Or a couple more units of  Dacian archers...

Dacian archers

 

20 to 60 archers are needed for the Dacian army, so naturally I looked at my universal archer and painted up a dozen that were lying around in a Dacian type paint scheme.

Figures aren't brilliant but they'll certainly do the job. To get to 60 figures means 5 more units; probably restrict it to one or two extras.

Lots of Dacians would have short cloaks. Anyway, a couple the archers lying around were ones without a quiver on their back so I gave them short cloaks to see if they were necessary. Actually, they don't seem to add much to the figure so probably won't bother. However, might give future figures a sword glued to the belt. 

Dacian falx warriors

 

So, back to 'normal' posts... Not sure what to call them; falx warriors? Dacians with falx?

My inclination would be to use these in 6 element/18 figure units, but as the army list says 20 to 30 I thought an 8 element/24 figure unit would be appropriate. May not do any more as this lot are slap bang in the middle of the 'allowable' numbers.

Salute 53

 

Tried taking photos  of the queue but they didn't come out very well...Anyway, we got in Steven spotted Pvt Harris from the Sharpe TV series being interviewed for someyhing.

This looks like an interesting kick starter.

Nice clean looking terrain

Steven seemed to like the idea of it too.

This was a nice quirky stand - people doing quirky kit-bashing!

The dinosaurs on tanks looked good, but sadly it seems that StuG can't be made as a SteG because they don't fit right together!

 good

Think my favourite was the green blobby thing.

This lot were interesting - bunch of creatures you might find on medieval manuscripts.

Finally, Steven and I did play a game - Tomb of the Cybermen by Kevin Dallimore and friends.

Sadly, we lost...

 

 

 

 

 

Oh yeah, did buy some bases and a few figures. 

Paint pens and Dacians

Started using the new paint pens. They're ones with a 'brush' tip one end, 'fine' tip the other end - much easier to use than my last lot, better range of colours and comes with a colour chart. Like them.

 

One problem is that I'm tending to go overboard  with checks and things all over the place. Plain seems to have gone out of the window as far as Dacians and Gauls are concerned!

Any way, it's another unit of Dacian warriors finished.

Numidian cavalry

 

REC5, African auxiliary cavalryman with javelin and shield, unarmoured

To make him closer to a Numidian I just sanded most of the shield detail away so I could paint the shield as hide. It would probably be more accurate if I also sanded down the javelin case, but I didn't bother. To distinguish the figure from a Moor I painted the Moor in the Roman army with chocolate skin, the Numidian with medium flesh. Purely arbitrary of course but... 

Like the Moors I also gave the 'officer' figure a cloak.

The Carthaginian army list I'm using as a 'base' lists these as 10-50 figures in the army (WRG 1981 lists) so I'll probably do another unit.