Sand Dunes, Grey riders, Keeper and Getting Geared up for Command and Colors Ancients

After some fun days in France as reported last time (see here) and visiting a number of places in Bordeaux, I think the most fascinating thing was neither a Chateau nor an old Fortification. Instead I think the Dune of Pilat was one of the highlights of the Trip. It is the tallest sand dune in Europe and I have not seen as much sand since I visited Sahara a few years back. After the time there I think I had enough sand in my shoes to cover a 6 by 4 feet table (more about the dune here). It gave me a strong kick to get on with the Rommel project and the desert bases (But not too strong it seems as I did s**t all on that project this week).

Rising from the Ashes

I realised that I need to do another 46 bases of cavalry for the next Great Northern war project so I prepared them and gave them a coat of grey over the weekend – I will send away most of these to Marching in Colour (link to this excellent painting service here) – as my little Autumn treat (see more here).

greyguys2

Command and Colors

Since I went to Joy of Six earlier this year I have been thinking about the Ancient Command and Colors game staged by the Wyre Foresters (see more here, the game is shown at the end of the post). Having recently got the Tricorne version of the game my Command and Colors itch has become more difficult to resist.

Great Game and you can read more about it on Boardgame Geek – here.

I have a fair few unpainted Republican Romans from Baccus (link to their Republicans here), and some Rapier ones too (link to their ancient range here), that I have had in one of the boxes in a dark corner (I recently discuss these boxes of shame here).

The game uses a hexagon board with terrain tiles and wooden blocks. The approach is to replace the hexagon board with sanded and static grasses tiles and the blocks with miniature bases.

I decided to got with 70mm hexagon bases (side to side, being 80mmish at its widest point) and using 2 No. 50mm by 20mm bases for each unit. I will use the following basing convention for the number of miniatures:

Infantry basing convention – Auxillia (two rows of 8 miniatures – 16 in total per base, 32 per unit), Heavy Infantry (two rows of 10 miniature – 20 in total per base, 40 per unit), Medium Infantry (two rows of 11 miniatures – 22 in total, 44 per unit), Light infantry (6 per base in random order, perhaps more!, 12 per unit)

Cavalry (and war machines and warriors) Basing Convention Heavy Cavalry (one row of 8 horses, 16 per unit), Medium Cavalry (one row of 6 horses, 12 per unit), Elephants/War machines (one row of two miniatures, 4 per unit), Light Cavalry (one row of 4 horses, 8 per unit), Warriors (12 models spread over a base, 24 per unit).

I intend to send a few bases worth of these to Marching in Colours to get this project progressed a little bit more. I did throw some quick paint on a few to have a look how they would turn out and to give to Chris as a reference for his work.

Romans2 — Some Heavy Triarii Infantry – Rapier on the left and Baccus on the right – Note that the Rapier base is slightly bulkier and the figure look taller than they are compared to the Baccus ones. The Miniatures work very well together.

Romans4

In addition I need to get some Hexagon bases for the terrain and after surfing around I found that Supreme Littleness Designs (link to them here) sells 6 No. 70mm bases for £1. I will need to figure out how many I would need, there are 113 hexagons on the board, but I want to have a few more for special terrain, like rivers, forts, hills, shoreline, etc. For forest I intend to create small canopies that can be placed on top of the units, etc. I think that there are about 20 scenarios for the Punic wars so I think I will count the units of each type and any terrain features to give me what I need. I will get back to this in due course.

I could have gone with bigger bases for the units as well as the size of the hexagons but I think it will be big enough side project as it is.

He is a Keeper

I also pimped up one of the Dreadball Guards (Orcs) to a Keeper with a “ball glove” , using an old credit card and some spaghetti. It ended up looking brutal enough – he is a keeper!