Two armies Revived!

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TML towers has been highly productive during lock down, one of the projects undertaken has been the rejuvenation of some sad looking old armies, I painted some 25 years ago!

My 20mm Romans and Celts were the first armies I created when I returned to wargaming after university.  They held a fond place in my memories, but to be perfectly honest, they did not look terribly great:

As was...

Based on cheap card, with rather basic flock, no undercoat, no shading, no varnish.  There were a lot of rookie errors here and the motley selection of Aifix, Revell, Italieri and Hat miniatures - gathered over about 6 or so years - had suffered further from being crammed too close together (both on their bases, and in file boxes in layers).

Fast forward one descent into chaos and isolation, and I girded my loins to the task.  I've already posted about the rebasing of the models, but beyond that there were more stages to pass through.

1. Retouch the paint work, notably the metals, woodwork and flesh
2. Spray a shaded glaze onto both the base and figures, the only reasonable way to do hundreds of multi-based miniatures.  In absolute fairness, I didn't put enough shade in the glaze, but it did work to a point.
3. Dry-brush the new bases and then add static grass.
4. Paint the base edges a nice uniform brown.
5. Spray varnish the whole lot.

And after a total of, I guess, ten or more hours of effort we get to the stage of everything being finished:

Celtic Hordes

Warbands

Cavalry and Chariotry

But of course, that's only half the output.

Roman Legions

Auxilia lead the Legion in

Auxilia Cavalry and a General's base

A total of roughly 560 models comprise the two armies.  These will work for a number of rule sets, but I have Kings of War Historical in mind for them first; within which the Romans represent about 3,000 points, to the Celts 3,500 or more.

Obviously, it will be clear they are still far from award winners, but the improved and mass-effect basing certainly makes them acceptable to return to a table in future.  The new bases are a nice sturdy 3mm MDF and the whole collection fills four file boxes fairly neatly.

Nostalgia aside, it is good to be able to go back to some of my oldest models, and put them back into service; they were far from in a sell-able condition, but it would have been a disgrace to throw them away.  Now they will hopefully serve again, for at least another quarter century.

Fingers crossed!

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