Assyrian army

Assyrian army

Sunday 22 May 2016

Partizan 2016

Didn't get to Salute this year - we usually sort it with Salute on the Saturday, watch the London Marathon on Sunday - this year they were a week apart.

So, new venue on the Newark Showground. How did that compare? Bigger, easier to find your way around, more light, bit less atmosphere. Worked well. Actually, didn't start well - the Partizan website was down yesterday which didn't help. We arrived about 25 minutes after the start expecting to get straight in - no way, only one person selling tickets so still a long queue and 15 minute wait to get in. Need more people selling tickets!

Another issue, around 2ish the fire alarms went off and most people just ignored them. OK, it was reasonably obvious that there was no real danger - after a while someone went round saying it was a false alarm and there were loud cheers when the alarms went off again a few minutes later. But really, if there had been a fire...

At the moment, I'm looking at sorting out buildings. This has had an obvious bearing on the photos I took. Mainly of terrain. Not so much of figures. Exceptions will always include elephants, so they're there (didn't chek who did any stands - elephants/Ancients Simon Miller?). Another exception was a game involving figures made from clothes pegs - seemed to impress my wife Sandra.



































Saturday 21 May 2016

Sarissa buildings

One of the background things I've been doing over the last few months is getting things together to be able do solo Lovecraftian style games. I've got the odd ship available from my Tealight Ironclads template, etc, plus a load of still unpainted RAFM figures. Also, I've been quietly picking up collections of Lledo and similar cars for use. Oh, and there's a toy train lying around I picked up from the Works.

However, that leaves all the buildings and things to sort. Well, finally settled on a main source - laser cut buildings from Sarissa Precision.

First three received, two built.

And they look just the ticket. The wood gives them a sepia look that's perfect for a Lovecraftian theme, they were very easy and quick to assemble, and all the parts fit well together.


I glued them with wood glue and used rubber bands to hold everything together while the glue dried over night.

The buildings are reasonably flexible - this is the original.

This doesn't have the upper floor fitted. You can buy extra floors if you like.

They fit easily together and stack as you want them.

This building comes with steps - the only fiddly part of the construction. I did them as slatted steps rather than solid purely because it was easier. I didn't notice until I looked at the pictures that the roof wasn't quite in place - but that's my fault, the fit is excellent.

One floor on this building comes with internal rooms. Can't see much sense in this - both floors, yes. neither floor, yes, but just one floor?

They go well with Lledo vehicles. I don't have any figures painted yet so there's a penguin refugee pretending to be... well, a penguin. Picked up a load of them in a shop, would love to find more, intend to paint them as blind albino penguins for the Antarctic adventures.

Can I think of any ways of 'improving' either the buildings or the range? Two obvious things spring to mind. The buildings have a window at the back but no door! I find this a bit strange - easy to draw a back door on of course but it does spoil it a bit. Takes it down a point. Next, the pavement. Leaves a gap if you want to space the buildings out. Best option for me would be to put out a pavements set with at least some of them matched to individual buildings. Should be an easy set to produce, should be a good addition.

Friday 20 May 2016

Grant update

OK, the original idea was to just do one unit of peltasts, then I did two, plus the cavalry and phalangites...


 I've added a general to this lot - a Garrison figure painted by Harry.
  

I will have to do some work on the  heavy cavalry spears.

Only have 11 of these light cavalry. Like the shields on these.

The phalangite figure is converted from an artilleryman figure. At the moment it's a 24 strong unit, when I find the other 20...

I like the way these figures are painted. Two 24 figure peltast units seems about right.

Other light infantry include more of the above as psiloi plus archers and slingers. Considering I hadn't originally intended to rebase many of the above I suspect most of this lot will soon be receiving my attention.

At some time I'll do more of these Dacians-painted-as-Thracians. Not sure when.