Grant Persians 2 - Immortals and Chariots

A few pictures of Charles Grant's Immortals and Chariots..

Plus an army view.

I'll admit I'm not sure what to do with these. I've enough other figures so that I don't need to alter them for reuse (ie rebase or refurbish/restore them), on the other hand, although the paint jobs are original, they have been rebased in the past.

So, do I leave them, or do I rebase and use them?

Grant Persians 1 - Infantry and Cavalry

 Continuing the Charles Grant theme, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Infantry and cavalry, I'll try and put Immortals and chariots out tomorrow.

Grant Elephants and To Do lists

I have got a To Do list. Finish integrating armies, sort out some Philistines, cast and paint a Garrison Roman army, then...

Nemidians and Stygians? Probably. Keep thinking about starting some 7 Years War figures. Already cast  a load of 1066 Normans and Saxons, plus a load of S&S Dwarves.

So that To Do list really looks more like a 'wishful thinking' list...


Meanwhile, for eye candy, a couple of pictures of Grant elephants. They show a bit more clearly than the Miniature Wargames photo how the ears had to be changed. Time hasn't been  kind to these poor animals and they still need a bit of restoration!

Sparta!

I've started grouping all my figures into what amount to divisions that will be stored separately. Thus my Persians will have an Immortal Division, Indian Division, Lydio-Phrygian Division, etc.The Spartan Division consists of a 15 strong bodyguard/Hippeis unit, 1 x 48 'S' Range Spartans and 2 x Garrison Spartans. Not yet based are 4 12 strong light infantry units, 3 javelin, 1 sling - these are all Garrison.

 These figures are the Minifigs 'S' Range.

And these are the Garrison....

Temple curtesy of my local Tropical fish store.

Pax Romana

Although I generally concentrate on Greek/Macedonian, Persian, Assyrian and Egyptian armies there are a few others lying around, including a small Irregular Roman army. They are, of course, earlier Irregular figures, not the current ones...and very quickly painted using a lot of black undercoating and dry brushing.

I've used Irregular quite a bit in the past, including some of their 100 of a single figure for £28 deals. As I said, earlier ranges - I think the single figures were about 35p each at the time.

I might add non of the Romans were bought that way.

Miniature Wargames with Battlegames 379

Miniature Wargames 379 should be out tomorrow and will include an article called Ancient Ancients. It includes a couple of pages of photos of Minifigs 'S' Range, Garrison 20mm and some Hinchliffe figures. Hopefully I will be adding to their number on this blog in coming weeks.

Xaltotun of Python

It may be that a few people out there don't know who Xaltotun of Python was, so let me explain.

Xaltotun was a wizard of Acheron. He was resurrected and fought Conan in the novel 'The Hour of the Dragon'. In that novel, he effectively controlled Nemedia, defeated Conan and then became the power behind the puppet on the throne of Aquilonia.

To represent him  I use a Garrison White Wizard, possibly riding around in a Stygian chariot:

The Garrison Nimidians remind me  of Teutonic knights, so that gave my colour scheme for them:

Futures...

Running Garrison had one major fault. It tended to take over everything else.

There are other figures out there. One of the first metal figures I painted was a Minifigs 'S' Range Greek cavalryman. Basically, he made a good mounted hoplite and, painted in University colours, became the general of my Greek army. Recently I acquired a few more of this figure and have painted them up as a Spartan Hippeis unit as bodyguard cavalry. The original is the top row middle figure, he keeps his original shield pattern.

For basing figures I tend to use 2mm MDF. The figures are simply embedded in polyfilla that I have 'dyed' with acrylic paint - means that they can be used without further work or painted later - any chips show a reasonable base colour instead of that horrible white effect.

The next advantage is that I'm freeing up space and can (eventually) have a 6x4 table set up semi-permanently. At the moment, this is a luxury. Lighting is not really good enough for photography, but I'll sort that.

This photo shows some of my Assyrian and Egyptian forces - I recently bought a load of early figures and am in the process of integrating them into my armies. Figures here include Garrison, Minifigs and Lamming, as well as some home made chariots.

Origins

Long ago I used to buy wargame figures at The Northern Garrison.

Less long ago I seem to have acquired the old Garrison ranges...

And soon I will be retiring them.

This blog is my way of keeping things going a bit. Eastern Garrison? I'm Garrison, I live in the East of England, seems the obvious title.

However, I don't want it to be just about Garrison. I'm interested in lots of the old classic figure ranges and hope to cover quite a few. Likewise, I like Ancients, but I do like other periods as well - mostly a time thing, how many things can you collect and paint at any one time? The picture heading this blog is of a mainly Lamming army. Quite deliberate, I wanted to start out the way I mean to go on - figures from lots of different manufacturers.

Now all I have to do is work out how to get pictures into the text at the right place... and yes, drag and drop plus centre. Sorted.

The chariot below was, for a long time, the general in my Persian army. Hinchliffe chariot, Lamming crew.

Couple of days after taking this photo I dropped it...