Sunday Update (About Bleedin' Time)

Yes, yes, I know - it's over a week since I last posted. I've just been really tired every night this week.

So, what have I been up to over the last couple of weeks?

FoG:AM Practice Game for Usk

The themes for Usk have been announced and the FoG:AM theme is the Hellenistic Mediterranean, so we can expect lots of Successors and Republican Romans. Simon F and I have decided to go with an early Seleucid army. Richard agreed to give us a practice game on the 7th. It was a close-run thing and highlighted a few issues with our list which we have since amended. In the tournament I'll be handling the cavalry and some support troops with Simon commanding the phalanx and its supports.

I've also ordered some figures to make up a couple of units that we are missing (as well as some more Swiss halberdiers and a few C17th pikemen as standard bearers for my Buccaneers).


Feeling Ill and Drained

I woke up on the 8th with a very rough throat, headache, extreme lethargy and legs feeling like lead-filled jelly. That continued into the Wednesday, but I started to pick up in the evening and afternoon. Since then I've been feeling rather tired in the evenings, so haven't managed to do a great deal when I've got home from work.


A Game of Ludus Gladiatorius

Several months ago I won this game in a prize draw on someone's blog (sorry - I've completely forgotten whose). Simon and I didn't fancy a heavy gaming session on the 14th, so I suggested we give it a try and he insanely agreed.

We did make a couple of mistakes in the first turn but were very quickly getting it right. It's certainly a fun game to play, with plenty of tactical choices to make.

The version I won was an early one where the standard, boost and "mighty effort" dice are all white, which made it confusing at times to select the correct ones. EM4 Miniatures have since released sets where the dice are colour-coded.

I'm strongly considering doing a few things to make game-play more easy in future - getting some of the colour-coded dice, replacing the the small cardboard tokens with slightly larger plastic tiddly winks and sticking the arena map onto card.


Some Painting

I decided to start Donogh's figures from scratch again. This time I've gone with black primer. I'd managed to finish the first five by the 9th and was greatly relieved when Donogh said he liked the pics I'd sent him. I just need to give them a coat of Klear and then spray them with matt varnish. I'm going to try to crack on with the other five this week.

I've also redone the base-colour of Simon's Spetsnaz. Once Donogh's figures are all finished I'll be working on these.


A Little Bit of Figure Prep

As I haven't felt like painting this past week I decided to do some grunt work and prep a load of figures. During the week I prepped the final (yeah, right - final my a**e!) bits for my 30 YW army - casualty figures for cohesion markers, 10 battalion guns and 6 artillery limbers. I've also prepped some more Koreans - 18 crossbowmen and 80 arquebusiers.

Yesterday saw me with a lot of free time for doing some prep and thinking I didn't have anything to prep. Then I remembered my Baccus 6mm ACW armies. Fortunately these require very little prep as the castings are so clean - all I needed to do was a tiny bit of snipping and to file down the bases a bit to ensure that they were level (and not quite so thick). I managed to get all the prep for the Union forces done (20 x 6-strip infantry regiments, 30 strips of infantry skirmishers, 2 x 6-strip Zouave regiments, 4 strips of Zouave skirmishers, 7 x 3-strip mounted cavalry, 2 x 5-strip dismounted cavalry, 19 guns and crews, 6 command strips). This afternoon I've stuck the infantry regiments and skirmishers onto painting sticks.

Over the next few days I'll be doing the prep on the Rebs.

I'm going to need to think about how I will base these - 60x60 or 60x30 (30x30 for command and artillery), or do something else (20x20?) so that I can use them for other systems.


On The Workbench

Well, after that bunch of verbiage you deserve some pics!

All together

Stuff that's painted, WIP or primed. Top to Bottom: French-Indian War coureurs by AW Minautures for Bloggers for Charity; Gripping Beast's "Erik Skalagrimsson"; Conquest's Norman Dux; 2 wolves from ERM; Simon's Spetsnaz; Donogh's Hasslefree figures

Teaser pic of the first 5 of Donogh's figures - I'll be doing a separate post this week with close ups.

Baccus ACW Union infantry

Koreans

Limbers, drivers, casualties, battalion guns

Horse teams