Command stands for German Cavalry

 I'm still slow, but some bits and pieces are gradually being completed:

Apart from casualty markers, which I will as usual cull from plastic figures, pretty much the entire army will be Old Glory. The only exception I can think of might be to buy a nice c-in-c from another range, but I haven't decided yet.

Shield designs by Little Big Men, as are the flags. I rescued these from an old set of Arthurian Banners (I think) that I had lying around; they are sufficiently generic to do for general pagan types.

I used the same figures for each group of three, but varied the clothing colours a little. You can tell these guys are posh, because some of them even have dyed cloaks and clothes.

Some of the horses are a bit on the big side, so I extended the usual WRG basing to a 5cm depth. Frontage is the standard 6cm.

Finally, a top-down shot to show the basing - a mixture of brown acrylic plastic wood, Faller landscape product, and flocking.

Early German skirmishers

Odds and sods left over from my Old Glory packs turned into skirmishers with javelins:

And a view from the rear:

As you can see, I've gone for muted clothing but reasonably bright shields. It remains to be seen how they fight...

Finally, a new post!

Germans, sir, fahsands of 'em!

Figs by Old Glory 25s

I am finally beginning to catch up a little bit on my ancients. Work life here has been off the scale ever since I arrived, and the virus situation has made it worse because we have all had to duplicate everything and move it online - double the amount of work for the final quarter of the academic year. However, working from home has had an extra bonus, which is the ability in between swathes of admin to do a colour here and there and even take some photos. Space is a bit tight, but anything is better than nothing...

So the photo above shows (rather badly) two newly completed warbands of 36 loose formation loonies. This completes all of the massed foot for the army:

Here they are in their nice comfy underbed storage box.

This gives me eight close formation warbands of 48 figures each plus the 72 just completed. Next up will be skirmish javelins and I already have those. Gaming with them will of course be another issue, but I have a cunning plan. When the army is finished, I am hoping to run a reasonably tight sample battle using Tactica II for the purposes not only of moving my moribund ancients campaign on a bit, but also to follow up on an in-depth review of the rules I produced for the most recent issue of Slingshot. 

In fact, I'm actually planning two battles as the Cimbri take on the might of Rome. One will be against a very late Republican army, and the other a newly raised, but rather unwieldy and poorly trained emergency force using the new so-called 'Marian' legion. Basically, it's the campaign version of Arausio, divided in two to be manageable. These will make a nice two-parter explaining how the rules can be used to construct custom armies, plus a reasonably straightforward couple of battles based mostly on infantry combat. The combination should work nicely. That's the plan anyway - it'll probably take a while to come to fruition, though, because I still need to paint the skirmishers, cavalry, command stands and (of course!) the much-needed casualty markers...

Still, I have produced this lot in around four months, so it should be do-able. This is about half of my previous level of productivity in Scotland, but it does represent my best effort since coming to Cheltenham. I seem to getting at least some of my mojo back.

Two more war bands finished

...which gives me five units of 48 figures, all Old Glory. I like the idea of an army composed of guys by the same manufacturer, it's not something I manage very often. Here's how they look in their storage box:

Not bad in work-heavy circumstances: 240 finished since May. It's a start...

Elite Scum Completed

Finished some sword-armed Early Germans:

These tend towards the wealthier end of the spectrum.

Shot from above shows the basing.

Here's how they look with some friends.

A slightly closer look at frothing loons. 28mm figures by Old Glory. So far that's 144 painted. Must do more - can't resist!

First two German Warbands

Finished two 48-figure units, the first of the ancient Germans. Figures by Old Glory. These will do for the Cimbric Migrations right through to the Marcomannic Wars, so pretty much three centuries then.

The intention was to make them look appropriately wild, helped by the variety of poses, clothing, shields and weapons.

Shields are a mixture of various types of transfers and basic hand-painted jobs.

For those with clothing (!) the colours are mostly muted, natural ones. Richer folks sometimes have posher dyes and some even have cloaks and/or swords.

This is what they should look like to their own general - moving away towards the opposition as fast as they can.

The last one is a bit blurry, but I hope it shows the basing style.

Starting a New Army: Ancient Germans

Strangely enough, I don't think I've ever painted the early Germans before. However, since they are making a suitably grand appearance in our slowly ongoing campaign, I thought it was about time:

For the infantry, I'm using Old Glory (28mm, of course). The idea is to use a limited number of colours for the clothing, mostly browns, off-whites and greens, except in the case of the wealthy ones who can afford things like cloaks and swords. Some of those even have colourful trousers.

Shield designs will be a mixture of plain, Veni Vidi Vici transfers, and Little Big Men Studios decals. LBMS does make a series of transfers to fit the Old Glory shields, but they are more Celtic than Germanic. I won't be using those because I want to keep them for the Gauls and Scordisci in the dim and distant future.

That limits my choices of LBMS somewhat, because the Germanic ones they make for other manufacturers all have a central hole for the boss, while most of the shields that come with the Old Glory figures have central spines. So I've been sourcing shields from other manufacturers that I can use with the LBMS transfers for Foundry and War-games Factory. This will give me something like four basic shapes: round (which do come with Old Glory); oval (Essex Miniatures. amongst others); large hexagonal (Irregular Miniatures); and oblong (Magister Militum).

Basing is a lot of Faller grass stuck in various places, along with flock of different kinds. I want these to have something of an overgrown look to them.

Here is how they look next to Companion Miniatures Romans. The Germans are a bit taller, although the Romans have an unsporting habit of wearing helmets to make themselves look bigger.

Another comparison shot. I like the idea of Germans charging Romans from behind...

And here's how they look in mortal combat. The Romans are definitely chunkier, but when you look at them from tabletop distance they are fine.

If I'm going to do this army properly, I'll need shedloads of them. I'd love to be able to play games with the likes of the Cimbri, Ambrones and Teutones, and of course Ariovistus and Arminius. I have to say that I am really enjoying them so far, and my limited painting time is being used to the full, especially over the spring holiday weekend. When I get to them, the cavalry will probably be by Crusader Miniatures, but I'll stick with Old Glory for the masses of infantry. There will be many of them - I feel a proper horde coming in the distance...