BTD Greek Command Stands

I made an order with Black Tree Design some time ago and after nearly 2 months of it not arriving, I decided to cancel. I also made an order for some of their Greek elders to go on my command stands on the day of asking for a refund. They made a mistake with the refund and offered me a free pack of figures for the trouble caused! So I chose one of the Athenian Command packs as they looked a lot like my other Spartans/Greeks and all credit to them, they did a very good job in sending out my second order incredibly quickly and were very apologetic over the previous delay/mess up. Below is a couple of pictures of the figures as i've arranged together with a brief description of each one.

The two figures at the back are BTD Greek elders and the figure at the front is from their Athenian Command pack. I intend to use him as a general and the two elders will act as his advisors. It should be an attractive game piece! Also, I need to cut off the shield nodule on his hand as I don't want him to have a shield as it would obscure his dramatic stance.

This will act as a more ornamental piece on the table top rather than a functional piece representing the oracle used in Warhammer Ancient Battles Alexander supplement. The two figures on the right are Wargames Foundry Spartan figures and the one of the left comes from BTD. I have a good idea for this piece, he looks a little like he's disgusted by the sacrifice of a goat and like he's wrenching! I have a great idea for his facial expression and might blood spatter the boy!

Feel free to leave a comment and i'll get back to you. All pictures are clickable.

Peltasts Update

I've just finished my first base of mercenary Peltasts and I'm quite pleased with them! They're now glued on and just need sanding, dry brushing and flocking/tufting. They've taken much longer than expected to complete. Because of their different colours, I had to keep switching between different pots of paint which was very time consuming. I'm painting four at a time at the minute to ensure each base looks as "together" as possible.

You can see my new technique with the Army Painter Quickshade where i've dipped the figure and then removed the excess with a brush (before I just dipped and left it) which stops it pooling and leaving 'dirty-looking' patches. I was influenced by Saxon Dog's blog which you can find here. He paints his on direct from the tin which is something I will do after this unit (for continuity reasons) and his methods also saves wasting any AP!

The pictures below are clickable. Feel free to leave a comment with any thoughts or suggestions and i'll get back to you.

I got the inspiration for these brightly coloured Macedonian Peltasts from the illustrations in Nick Secunda's book "The Army of Alexander the Great" which is published by Osprey (see picture below).

Peltasts!

Not quite the finished article yet but they're on their way. I spent an hour or so gluing spears and shields in place this morning and I tried to split them into those I would give coloured tunics and those I would give white (7 coloured, 9 white). I've also roughly arranged them on their bases (don't worry! I haven't glued them on) to see which figures go well together and how the spread of colours would look. I was a little worried whether it would look a bit stupid with the colours being different and standing out (I have to admit, I prefer uniformity!) but I think it'll turn out fine, and once the coloured tunics are shaded down, it will look a little more blended and together as a unit.

By this time, Peltasts tended to form up into units, acting more like infantry than skirmishers which I why i've decided to base them this way. I plan to base my Psiloi on four separate bases (each base forms a square the size of two of the smaller bases shown in the photo) to represent their loose skirmish formation.

I hope to finish this unit by Sunday evening and will post a photo or two when they are!

Spartans!

This is the first of my Spartan allies/mercenaries and to the right of him is the leader of the mercenary peltasts (he's blu tak'd to a base as I plan to base him and his unit on rectangular bases, four to a base). I painted these figures individually to get a feel for the figures before painting the rest of their units. I've used the Army Painter again and as you can see, it's given a great effect on the Spartan's cloak and tunic.

Both figures are from Wargames Foundry and the spear is Gripping Beast.

On the painting table

I've just returned to University after a weekend at home and I've brought up some more figures to paint since the unit of Romans I've been working on is virtually finished! These are Wargames Foundry figures. I took advantage of their Christmas Discount offer and bought a couple of regiment deals. I bought one of their skirmisher packs (Athenian Army Deal) and two Spartan Hoplite packs (Spartan Army Deal) for use as mercenaries or allies. I also bought a pack of Peltast characters and a Spartan Command blister. This should take me up to about 2000 points in the way of a Macedonian army for WAB.

I'm hoping to get these painting fairly quickly and to a high standard. The three characters in the bottom left of the photo (clickable) will be based on a 50mm circle base for use as a General command stand. The figure above them will be the leader of one of my units of Hoplites but I'm painting him first as an experiment for colours etc.