This is Sparta!

Well, after, getting trounced today at a tournament in Sheffield (more on it later in the week), I came home and consoled myself with the finishing touches to my first unit for a new (shamelessly cheesy) army. Spartans!

Starting my first 28mm ancients army, Having made many 20mm ones in the past. I'm aiming to produce fast work (it'd be nice to take the army to a tourney in September-ish - perhaps get some revenge!) but of a high quality. Here they are; see what you think; they took about six hours work, spread over a week all told.

The unit en-masse; twenty figures.

Up close on the commander and musician (orator) - no standard makes this a Warhammer Ancients unit.

It doesn't show so well in the photos but the flesh is of five layers; done as follows:

• Over a white undercoat base coat Vallejo Medium Flesh (70860)
• overbrush a layer of 80% Medium Flesh + 20%Basic Skintone (70815). Overbrushing is a technique akin to drybrushing, but is applied so more or less all but the nooks and crannies are covered.
• heavy drybrush of 60% MF + 40% BS
• Light drybrush of 50% MF + 50% BS
• pick out details like bridge of nose, knuckles, etc with mix of 40% MF + 60% BS

I don't like lining techniques and radical step changes in shade that look like burns victims, as you can perhaps tell. But I do think I need to darken up the base shade by about 10-15% to make the highlights pop just a little more on the flesh.

Spartan cloth was dyed a uniform red, but is generally likely to have been a less vivid colour than is associated with Rome; I went for a dullish, deep red with a simple three-part process:

• basecoat of 50% Cavalry Brown (70982) + 50% 'Rojo' Red (70926)
• Overbrush 'Rojo' Red
• Drybrush 'Bermellon' Red (70947)

Most of the rest is straight forward and along similar lines; the white is based on Ivory and white mixes, the Bronze is a brass base with gold highlights.

Lastly a word on the bases. I've moved away from using sand on these, as recent textured bases I've made for sale have really appealed to me. The brown base is an custom mixed brown emulsion, then overbrushed with a sand brown acrylic, and drybrushed with a 50/50 mix of sand and ivory. The grass is Noch summer grass, and the leaves are real miniature ivy leaves in natural brown, bought at a show; I'm afraid I can't remember from who.

Next on the bill for these chaps is either the Oracle or Cretan mercenary archers.