Ancients battle....a big one

The group played a very large Successors battle last week.  We calculated 720 pike-armed figures alone.  Lots of fun and a great spectacle.

Finally, a colonial bash with BFE: Ginnis, sort of...

I used the Skirmish Campaigns Sudan guide for this battle and expanded the scale for BFE2.  Was a great game and the action was fast. The Dervishes focused their efforts on one enemy brigade, and destroyed it, but exhausted themselves in doing so leaving the other brigade to effectively take the objectives.

Here are some pictures:

Waterloo, 2017, using Shako II

We had prepared this game for 2015 and presented it at the two local conventions, but we never actually played the full game, so it was high-time to do so.  All 28mm figures using Shako II rules.  French won....again!

ME buildings finally play-ready

It took me a long time to get these painted, but I am quite happy with the 15 buildings I produced using the wooden drawers from the dollar shop.  At the moment they are bing used for a 20mm WWII game (Safi, 1942, from the RF original rulebook).  I will be using these, however, for 28mm Sudan and NWF battles.  Indeed, I have ordered a bunch of the Perry and Tiger miniatures Afghan regulars and hope to present a game using these in 2018.

A little more done on the buildings...

I added a few more details and then textured the buildings using the old glue and sand approach.  So quick and easy.  I have since base-painted all the buildings using my usual mis-tinted latex house paint.  At about $5 per gallon in all the colours usually needed for terrain, I really don't understand why anyone would pay for custom mixed paint, or even worse, use super expensive hobby paint for terrain projects or basing.

Sudan Buildings

It has been a while since I did some work on my colonial collection.  I have prepped loads of figures for all the campaigns I play, but little else has been done.  Well I finally got going on some new Sudan/Middle-Eastern buildings using little drawer sets from the dollar store. I still have a long way to go on these, but the basic 'slugs' are taking form.  Here are a couple of shots:

The basic approach will be very Ian Weekley.  Of course, mine will be simple, durable, game friendly but I hope also evocative.

Good ol' Hinchliffe Figures

Back in the late 70s and 80s you were either a Minifigs fan or collected Hinchliffe.  Well, I was the latter and have long embraced the aesthetic principles applied to our hobby of the late Peter Gilder (designer of Hinchcliffe and Connoisseur figures).  I still use lots of the Foremost range of horses and many of the Napoleonics ranges still are worth considering.  

For a couple of my armies I decided to go with the old figures still nicely cast by Hinds Ltd..  One of these is a Byzantine army.  Recently I painted 4 units (72 figures) of heavy infantry and decided to give these simple figures a reasonably complex shield design: a simplified icon of the Virgin Mary.

Here are a couple of pictures of the painting process.  I am always horrified by close ups of my painting, but again, these are unfinished, so have mercy.  En masse they look quite effective and are not stickers!