Gothic, Rhoxolani and Fantasy Arab cavalry for mould...

 

Still  a bit of tidying up to do on these figures but this is generally the expected composition of the mould.

Rhoxolani Sarmatian cavalry - conversion of Sarmatian cataphract, simply cut down the kontos and add a Dacian officer's shield. Seriously wishing I had photographed these on a different coloured background - white is boring...

Gothic cavalry. Bowcase replaced by sword and figures given slight variations on shields. For standard bearers I'll just use the standard Sarmatian standard bearer but give it a shield... 

Lancers plus officer. The officer doesn't carry a bow... These figures will be mounted on a different horse.

Likewise generic Arab cavalry. The swordsman might be used as just another archer as he's got a quiver. The archer and swordsman figures are direct conversions of the 1972 Garrison Mameluke figure FNC1. 

Some of the later lance/bow/shield generic later Moslem cavalry - conversion simply consisted of giving the Sarmatian cataphract a shield. Flanked by figures on the horses I expect to use.

And this is the horse I expect to use for the lancers and horse archers.

These figures should be sent off in a couple of days. When I get the mould back the archer and swordsman  will form the basis of infantry archers, swordsmen and officers, not sure yet about the spearman element of the army.

Miskatonic University, Newhaven campus

With the current heatwave I have to admit I've done virtually nothing over the last couple of weeks. However, I did get round to do a set of walls for the 20mm/1/76th card model of the University I built. 

 

It also gave me a chance to see how the Oxford 1/76th vehicles manage to fit in - look OK.

One of the issues I have making these walls is how to do gates. I'd love to do loads of nice ironwork style gates but finally decided to keep it simple - just another strip of balsa. The photo also shows how crude the build quality of these walls are - very much wargames standard - but look OK on the table. Very much wargames buildings!

As it's getting cooler I have done some limited casting to get figures together for my next moulds. I have now cast enough figues to be able to convert the figures for two moulds - one with Arab infantry, one with Arab, Gothic and Rhoxolani cavalry. 

ex Old Glory 42mm Victorians

Spotted a new source of figures for my 42mm 1897 figures... and Old Glory were selling the range. So I bought it... Limited range, all Brits and no firing infantry, cavalry or guns but...

 

The range came with 6 moulds, 25 painted figures and 6 unpainted. The unpainted figures have now been undercoated.

The figures are bigger that Zinnfiguren or Irregular, but roughly the same as Shiny Toy Soldiers - which are now available again.

Meanwhile, I'm looking at my 25mm armies, especially concerning the space they are taking up. So I'm going to pare down my Minifigs figures - first up will be the Minifigs Gauls. The army totals 189 infantry, 20 cavalry and 8 chariots and I'm offering it here first for a straight £200 including UK postage. If it doesn't sell, it just goes back into the army pool... Usual thing, email me if you are interested at garrisonminiatures@gmail.com  Later I'll look at my Macedonians, Perians and reduce the Indian and Egyptian armies to more manageable sizes!

Dalek Emperor and Cyber Leader

Just for completeness - couple of figures from a company that shall not be named and a project that quietly died because said company is just so bad at communicating or sending out figures...

 

Increasing my Pulp armour

And now for something completely different... 28mm Empress Miniatures Pz1A and American T1E2. The Panzer 1 I've had a while, the T1E2 I bought this year at Partizan. 

 

Second lot are 20mm Whippets from the now defunct Frontline Miniatures... they will be missed. Wish I'd built up stocks but... same is true about Irregular... can't get everything...

Developing the Medievals

 

With only two infantry figures in the Medieval Era range I've had to look at other ranges to fill the gap. That means either the 25mm Medieval range and the Normans and Saxons ranges/

So these are my choices... archers from the Normans (the Saxon figure didn't look right), crossbows from the Medieval range. And the result... they pretty much fit though the '20mm' figures are a bit on the slim side. It just shows that, generally speaking, the Garrison 20mm range is really a 25mm range!

Meanwhile, foes... cavalry no problems. The two at the front make good general Muslims from several periods/countries. Standard Sarmatian cavalry with Khmer shields. The two behind are mostly head swap conversions. What I haven't done yet (way behind schedule) is sort out infantry conversions.

Personal conclusion? Looks promising.

Gallic Army Review 2026

Short one to show the combined forces. This is roughly the size I intend to make the Garrison Gallic army...

 

I have to admit it does look quite impressive. 491 infantry, 78 cavalry and 17 chariots.

Garrison Gallic army Review June 2026

 

Much bigger than my Minifigs host - 150 Gallic warband infantry and 80 Galatians against 135 equivalent Minifigs for a start!

9 chariots rather than 8. The centre is quite impressive. I plan on roughly doubling the numbers eventually...

48 Garrison cavalry compared to 20 Minifigs - and no Garrison Ancient Brit light cavalry added yet though there is a command element to let me use the Dacians!

Second of the two cavalry blocks.

Side view of army. Again, light infantry I have far more Garrison - 72 compared to 54.

So where does this leave me regarding Gauls? Probably on pause for a while - looking at those Garrison Medieval Era figures at the moment, plus want to look at generic Medieval Muslims, Goths, Elamites, Kushites and of course the Spanish infantry to go with the Carthaginians... bearing in mind that this Gallic army was originally looked on as just a bunch of Carthaginian mercenaries

Minifigs Gallic army Review June 2026

 

With both my Garrison and Minifigs armies being sorted, I thought I'd do a Review for each then another one for the combined armies. I'll spread them out over a few days though...

Still got 8 chariots but now 3 45 strong warbands...

Close up of one of the warbands.

Side view of the army. The army has 20 cavalry and 54 light infantry. This army is pretty much surplus to requirements these days so is on my 'downscaling' list - the Garrison army is bigger and growing, this army was always an afterthought and won't be enlarged by me.

Minifigs Indian Army Review June 2026

 

Having added those extra elephants recently - plus a small number of cavalry - it seemed like a good idea to do another Review - the last Indian Army Review was in 2019.

Back then I had 9 painted elephants, today it's 16.

4 horse chariots still the same.

Likewise 2 horse chariots.

The current right flank, cavalry and javelins. The cavalry force is a bit bigger than last time, but not by much.

And left flank cavalry and light archer unit.

Sizewise, the army includes 126 Bw, 80 Sp, 24 Ps,  81 cavalry, 16 elephants and 11 chariots. Barring a sudden urge to paint a load of chariots I don't see this army getting any bigger.

The elephant I mentioned earlier...

 

Crew as they came, elephant basic paint job. Colour out a bit on this - background should be white!

Sorting and tidying

As time goes on my wargames table gradually gets filled up with things that prevent me from doing battles or anything. So time for a bit of a sort...

Adding to that, I'm filling a lot of boxes with figures at the moment and needed to sort some space to act as shelf space.

And somewhere amongst that lot I found another elephant and a few more Indian elephant riders... 

Mould 159 Medieval Era

 

Latest mould back from Pete includes the entire Medieval Era classical range. I'll have to see how well they fit alongside the 25mm Medieval archers and xbows.

Basically means I've now got a production mould for the entire Medieval Era Range.

Games night

 

One thing when Steven visits is that we tend to spend the odd evening doing games. This gave us the chance to play Sandra's latest purchase from Partizan - Forbidden Island. Turned out to be a good game, running around the island and trying to gather up all the 'treasures' before the island sank below the waves. Sadly, though, we lost...

Next one was strange. A game we've had for years and has proven to be a favourite. Strange? Don't know how many times we've played the game, but this is the first time we've managed a three way draw! 

Another thing we do when Steven's home is some kind of wargame or project... Anyway, a while back I got Steven a 15mm Irregular Sassanid army. Of course, Ian then announced his retirement so Steven put in an order tofill out the army. his left him with the thought of doing a 40x40mm camp. Seemed like a get idea to give him a chance to play with balsa and assorted power tools... result, a couple of camps which he'll paint when he gets home (should add he did the design and modelling, I just provided materials and help in the techniques to use.) Should get some pictures oif the finished camps when he paints them.

More elephants

Definitely in a bits and pieces period... couple more of the elephants lying around. Should have made them Seleucid but already had eight Seleucid armoured elephants, don't need any more. So I stuck some Indian archers in to add to the Indian herd. Figures were just as they were - painted the mahout and stuck it on a base, that's it.

 Not sure what to do with all the extra elephants really - got more than I need. They're not brilliant, but I keep thinking of just selling off the surplus. Minifigs currently charge £8 for just the elephant, no crew etc. Crew cost £4.55. Total for an elephant £12.55... so if I charged £50 for the 6 inclusive of UK postage it would be worth it... 

Indian elephants

 

Adding to the list of odd units that have been lying around for ages are these four elephants

I got them from different long-forgotten sources and they were in pretty poor condition -had to give one a new trunk because the olds one was missing. Used a Garrison Seleucid elephant trunk - badly fitting and I haven't even filled in the join!  Crew are from my stock of spares. Still a low grade unit but it brings my Indian elephant corps up to 13 animals including the general so worth doing!

I also had a couple of elements of cavalry lying around so finished them off as well...