Model Miscellany

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Time for another sweeping update, as we are still mainly indoors and painting continues.  I'll keep a couple of specifics back for their own posts, but here are some odds and ends from the last few weeks:

Lavender Hill Mob

At times it's almost felt as if I was running out of things to paint, but in truth there appear to be a good thousand or more mini's hiding about the apartment.  Still I'm getting close to the end of the Imagi-Nations project, for now, with the addition of two more infantry regiments and a pair of Artillery limbers.

Scarlet Pimpernels and Limbers

Similarly on it's last hurrah, is the Conan Board Game.  With the finishing of the bits below there are only a dozen or so mini's to go.

Bosonnian Guards

Both the Guards and the Skeletons below were essentially one session each. 

Undead

The skeletons in particular were largely drybrushed over a basecoat of brown and then extra shades of brown filled in.  Incredibly simple.

Speaking of simple:

Vroom, Vroom.

I added some more road, specifically curve sections , to my Gaslands etc. track.  just an hour or so with some craft paints, but the result is tolerable.

The biggest effort in this post, went into the 8 gentlemen below.

Splitters!

These are Jewish revolt slingers.  Auditing the stocks, I found these part built and in need of some love.  I added mantles (their traditional cloth 'scarves') and sling-stone bags with Green Stuff, and then gave the whole a decent paint job.  It is a nice change to work on small, simple units like these, and again progress was relatively quick.

Quite the Smorgasbord.  Variety is stimulating I find, as I am then never bored of just plodding out the same old uniforms or colour schemes, or using the same technique.  Always having a few options that should not take long is good to keep motivation going.

Next up, something unspeakably big, with some new effects tried on it...

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A Rebellious Faction

Well, having not painted any for the best part of four and a half years, I finally got back to the Jewish Project and thoroughly enjoyed turning out a couple more units.

Firstly a third unit of 'Heavy' infantry; veterans, well practiced at fighting in close order and with the best - often looted - equipment:

 

These models are an improved mix of poses and equipment, thanks to the introduction of some Victrix Carthaginian spearmen.  More particularly, their set is a supply for a good number of oval shields and different helmets.

 

 Realising that human and animal designs were prohibited in the Jewish faith at this time, I've limited the shields to plant life and inanimate designs, so more accurate I think than the last unit I did.  The Mantles are much better here, with a more natural flow; thanks to the use of olive oil and a plastic rolling board to allow me to get the Greenstuff extra thin.

Next I did a unit of lighter guerrilla's, made only from the Wargames Factory Numidians.  At this point I would note I'm glad I bulk bought a 150 or so of these guys five years ago, as to date their new owner, Warlord Games, has not chosen to re-release them.

 

 These chaps use mostly the javelin arms, with only a couple of large shields, and a bunch of hide covered, wicker shields, I made simply from some etched plasticard.  I tried the classic Arabic head cover, using the mantle, on several models for some variety.

 

 These chaps would not lead the fighting line, but favour skirmishing, though they can support the mainline from the rear.

Whilst into it, I decided to produce a General, based on the Carthaginian Infantry commander in the Victrix set, he looks the part.

Johnathan, and a chubby priest!

 I'm not so convinced by his portly pal.  I wanted to do a Jewish Priest, but I certainly hit my sculpting limits here trying to put robes over a Numidian torso.  The finished figure is disappointing, but he'll have to do.  The Perry's can rest easy.

At last this is something like a battle array, with three units of heavy infantry, and two light, plus a commander.  Not a full army by any means, but progress is being made.

 About the size of a Warhammer Ancients army, i.e. too small by far

And a colourful force they are too!  Something I really like.

But now I must decide what to add next, and then do some more sculpting.  I think there is enough heavy infantry for now, bowmen and slingers seem to me to be the next choice.

The Holy Land

I managed to pick up a copy of a book I'd been after for quite a long time on eBay, Peter Connolly's 'The Holy Land'

 

 This book is a real treasure trove of information, but it is an odd creature.  The history is brief and almost simplistic; somewhat at the level of a Readers Digest/Popular History feature; but it distills the key facts in an easy to read form as a result; the use of extensive photographs and illustrations on every page gives the impression of a children's textbook more than anything.

 

Historically, the book begins with Herod the Great, and carries on through to the end of the first Rebellion, so covering about a century of increasing Roman subjugation.  The real strength of this, personally, are the reconstructions in the illustrations, suitable inspiration for my long idle Jewish Rebellion project.

That said, in an effort to make my Jews look unique, I did decide to give them the Mantle, shown in some textbooks,but in few contemporary illustrations - including Connolly's - of Jewish warriors.

 

So, I guess the book worked for me, as I've been busy assembling new miniatures.  Given I've the sprues for some 150 or so infantry it was about time I got back to these guys.  Above are a nascent unit of light infantry, armed with javelins only.

My green stuff skills have taken a step forward here with the use of a plastic palette rubbed down with olive oil to flatten out sheets of it on.  This gave me thin enough strips to get nice folds in, and to allow a more Arabic headdress use of the mantle, as shown in some illustrations to be experimented with.  These warriors, not being part of the well equipped fighting line, have mainly no shields or simple wicker and hide affairs, and only a few helmets; no Roman equipment.  Hopefully I'll get a couple of units created before I get sidetracked or bored!

As to the Connolly book, it is hard to find, I paid about £15 second hand for my copy, but it is worth it if this is a period of history you are interested in, and if you would like quality reconstructions of the buildings costumes and artifacts of the period.

Suitable inspiration for this wargamer at least.

A Return to Judea

So I've finally sat down and fabricated up another batch of Jewish rebels.  The building and painting for these takes probably as long as a unit of Napoleonic British.  Now I realise why I haven't got the armys' worth of figures off their sprues yet (some 18 months after buying them).

Still they look a fine bunch finished:

For this selection, I expanded the variety of shield designs to include some with a degree of Greek influence, but otherwise they were done in the same manner as the first batch.

I now have eight bases of close fighting troops and four of massed bowmen, a long way from an army perhaps, but closer to my goal.  I've decided that the heavy troops will be in units of three or four bases normally - three giving a 180mm frontage which is about right for Hail Caesar.  This also means that if I get one more batch of this size done I can assemble four reasonable units.

However, as my Spartans might say; 'if'.

Drawing the Rebellion

Long before I devoted needlessly large portions of my time to painting tiny models made by other people, I used to spend a lot of time drawing.  In the last year or two I've started to get back to the habit, and have gradually re-learnt a lot of forgotten technique.

Stylistically, I'm more of an illustrator than an artist, and my influences are European comics (particularly Herge), Japanese manga and classic black and white illustration work.  Colour is something I've only dabbled with...

Anyway, this is a wargaming blog so ordinarily my other hobbies have no place here; but during the research for my developing Jewish Rebellion army I found that illustrations of the warriors of the period were pretty thin on the ground.  So in part as inspiration for my army, and to offer other potential gamers some inspiration too I began making illustrations based on my research of the period:

Above a Zealot wearing a Kippah, which may be apocryphal.  His equipment is spear and shield from the Herodian stores, and a long knife which is probably personal.

A village rebel, emaciated and relatively old for fighting.  He is nevertheless capable due to years of otherwise backbreaking labour of drawing a captured horse archers compound bow.  His cloak and tunic are cheap and unadorned.

Bandits were the Freedom Fighters of their age; with similarly conflicted motives.  This Parean bandit fought at Beth Horon and as a result is well equipped with Scutum, Gladius, an Auxilia mail shirt and rebel-made short javelins - most likely with bronze heads.  His cloak is unkempt but finely adorned, and so probably belonged to a member of the Jewish middle classes before being 'liberated'.

I hope you find these of interest, maybe I'll do more in future...

A Pledgers Progress: April-June

Three months have passed one again and it's time to tot up the numbers.  The figures are just above average in fact and run out as follows:

• 24 Zulu Wars British Infantry
• 20 Judean Fighters
• 8 Carolingian/Norman Spearmen
• 3 German Tanks
• 20 Zulu warriors
• 12 Judean Bowmen
• 10 Dogs of War Barbarian Javelinmen (Duellists) 

That brings me to a total of 109 points against a target of 90 for the quarter.  It's not particularly impressive, but I've had a busy social calendar of late; and added to the 169 points from the first three months of the year it begins to look better

Now the last two are the main additions for the month of June, and the Dogs have yet to be photographed, but I can show a picture of the completed Jewish troops:

These are light infantry, but with enough numbers to hold some sort of fighting formation if needed.  Most of the models are Wargames Factory Numidians with added cloaks, but three of them are their Celts.  These were an experiment to see if I could make them work.  Layers of clothing needed adding to some models and removing from others, all a bit fiddly, but there is nothing straight forward about this lot!  

The cloaks certainly look better on these chaps, with practice I'm sure they'll get better still.  I've also added some 'Autumn Tufts'  From the MiniNatur range; I think these best evoke some sparse desert foliage.

That makes the Jews up to a very modest 32 figures.  A long way to go yet!

Apocalypse - The Great Jewish War

Many years ago I had a stab at reading Josephus; concious that given his status as a traitor to Judea it was likely to be a biased account of the Jewish Rebellion.  That it certainly was, but recently getting back in to the period and looking for other books on the subject I came across and excellent tome, that discussed in detail why he would be so disposed to treachery, amongst many other points.  Not least an excellent account of the war.

Neil Faulkner's 'Apocalypse, is a book of two halves really, the first part details the background and context of the war, including great detail on the prior history of the region and extensive discussion of the Jewish society and religious movements that more often than not worked against one another during the rebellion.  The readar is introduced to Essenes, Sicarii, Zealots and more, as well as the Romanophile property owning elites of which Josephus himself was a part.

The second part of course attends to the war itself, which can loosely be divided into four parts - the initial rebellion in which the Romans are defeated at Beth Horon; the War in the north where despite some willingness to take on the Romans in battle the Galilean's led by Josephus are defeated in detail; The siege of Jerusalem (preceded by the small matter of the year of four emperors); and the the mopping up campaign concluding with the tragedy at Masada.

One particularly commendable point to Faulkner's account, from a wargamers point of view especially, is the detailed discussion of ancient warfare and siege combat.  If nothing else, pages 338 to 344 (of this edition) should be required reading for any wargamer, detailing as they do the reality and psychology of pitched battle.  The author also details at great length the siege tactics, campaign doctrines and army compositions of both sides.

All in all, it is an excellent and very readable account of the war, which offers more balance and insight than a  reading of Josephus alone would permit.  I'm glad I picked this up, and for anyone with an interest in the middle east or Rome at war this should be a must.

The First Rebels Arise

So the first of my Judeans are completed:

Everything is painted to at least three layers, i.e. base, main and highlight, though some items have a fourth layer to get the right effect.

As to the shields, I entered in to a little debate on TMP about these, but it boils down to a case of you pays your money, and you takes your choice.  Personally I considered the fact that the rebels minted their own coins, with a range of standard decoration on them interesting.  If nothing else these suggested the images that the Jews saw as identifying them selves as opposed to the Romans.  To that end these seemed like good ideas for shield designs:

And so here we have the chaps in close up:

Again the Jewish shields are a three layer colour scheme.  The letters are in the Archaic script, which according to Wikipedia was out of fashion by this date, but is in fact the only script used on the coins, and the script of the Dead Sea Scrolls, so for my money clearly the right one to use.  However I should add in this first group of models, they say only gibberish!

The Roman shields are simply the transfers provided with the Warlord games miniatures, over a green base.  One of the warriors carries his shield upside down; this is intentional, why would a Jewish warrior respect the orientation of his enemies iconography!

Lastly I would add that my attempts to randomise the bases, with one model of every pose on each, and a mix of costume colours, has somehow resulted in the shield designs becoming thematically linked on each base.  Dammit!

At this stage I've not added texture to the bases, just a four layer highlight!  This looks fine for Masada and many other parts of Israel, but I'm considering adding scorched grass and shrubs for a more mountainous look.

Overall, these didn't take too long to complete, and I think the results look pretty good.  Now I need to work on some storage options for them!

Rebellion Begins

I've finally begun a completely new project, the first truly new one since I began the Napoleonics three or so years ago.  It is in fact a reboot, for the observant may recognise it as an army I've previously done in a different scale.  But to cut to the chase, I'm starting on a Judaean army for the Jewish Revolt of 66-70ad.

The inspiration behind this is twofold.  Firstly the mini-series (remember when these were all the rage?)  Masada; which I probably saw when I was about fourteen.



For some reason I sided with the Jews, I can well imagine, not having seen the series in over twenty years, that it was written so I'd have too.  As I recall the acting and setting was top notch, and clearly it stuck with me.

Secondly, as part of my reading of the classics, I plodded through Josephus a few years back:



One of the telling aspects of the book is just how quarrelsome the various Jewish sects were, it's a wonder they ever organised a rebellion as they seemed to be as ready to fight one another over whose version of the Torah, or command style, or hat was best.  Nevertheless Josephus (who was a one time commander for the Jews, who switched sides and then wrote a history of the war) highlights a number of Jewish victories and aside from the extensive politicking, does go in to considerable detail on the Jewish battle tactics, and campaigning.

So, the background is set, but I needed to get hold of models for the force.  Not wanting to spend an arm and a leg on models that anyway don't appear to exist in metal, I decided on converting the huge variety of 28mm plastics out there.  My previous army was a mix of mainly Hat, Italieri and Zvezda plastics in 20mm:

Now subsequently sold to a chap in New Zealand.

Knowing the variety of models available, I knew nothing was a perfect match, but decided that the ever useful Wargames Factory Numidians would be the base for most of the models.  I decided to blend these with an initial batch of Warlord Games Roman Auxilaries, as it appears from the account that captured equipment was a major part of the inventory of the Jews.  However the signatory feature of the Jewish troops appears to be the Mantle - cloak-like covering common to all levels of society.  Whether it was practical to wear in battle is an issue I've discarded (I suspect it may not be) in favour of modelling it, so as to make the rebels look suitable Jewish.

As is self evident, these were made from Greenstuff, procured at £6.50 a metre from eBay.  Actually my first time using the material, and much easier to work than Milliput it is too, though not as strong.  For this unit I tried out a variety of ways of doing the cloak before settling on a style I liked.  The last handful had clasps added too.

Satisfied with that I test fit the unit to it's bases:

Initially I'll be doing units of four stands with a 120mm effective frontage.  20 figures to a unit.  Dropping one figure per base from what would be typical allows me to both economise on numbers a little without losing too much impact, and to make the bases look more disordered; as the Jews should be something of a rabble.  Overall they take up all the space anyway, not being in particularly unified poses.  I think the net effect should be pretty good.

So now it's on to the painting...