More Archers... and some group shots

Well, I'm taking a break from working on an essay to post this little bit of an update. Last night i put finished off the basing on these guys, the second base of Black Tree Design archers. These are the last of the 'Romans' for the Patrician Roman Basic Impetus army, the rest are Barbarian foederati.

On my first archer base I had all of the tunic details as blue, that's before i decided for the army would have an eclectic non-uniform look. These guys have a mix of colours, so do look a little different to the other base. I really aim for having each base standing as an individual, so trying to make this look different from the first base with the limited poses (4) of the BTD archers was a bit of a challenge. I bent the arms of these guys a little so they look like they're firing at a longer range, while the first archer base were firing straight forward. Anyway, i'm quite happy with the result.

I've also put below some pictures of the force as it stands at the moment. So far i've got

1 x Command base (foot)
1 x CL [light cavalry] base (Hunnic mercenary archers)
1 x CP [heavy cavalry] base (Equites Catafractarii Ambienenses)
1 x FP [heavy infantry] base (Petulantes Auxilia Comitatenses)
1 x FL [light infantry] base (Defensores Seniores Pseudocomitatenses)
2 x T [archer] bases

I must say it's actually starting to look like an army, and I'm pleased with how well the villa fits in with the feel of the army. I really need to get started on a terrain mat, as the sheets of cardboard I use as a backdrop for the photos is now too small!

My orders from Aventine, LBMS and Gripping Beast/Musketeer all arrived this week, all the suppliers have been great, the Gripping Beast guys even upgraded the shipping to courier free of charge!
In my uni work down time I've been busily at work cleaning and undercoating, Laura and I have started watching Mad Men, so i've been doing lots of work in front of the telly.
I must say I'm really happy with the Aventine horses. I love the GB rider figures, but their horses have never looked 'right' to me. The Aventine horses look great with the Gripping beast riders, and they're about the right side for the small horse breeds available to the Late Romans.

Once this essay is over and done with, I'm going to get started on a CP base of Late Roman heavy cavalry. I'm still cleaning up the Musketeer Goth cavalry and the GB Franks which I'll need to complete the Patrician Romans. The Roman heavy cavalry are cleaned and primed, and they are essential if I'm to field a Late Roman Eastern or Western army in addition to the Patricians. Hopefully i'll be able to knock these over relatively quickly and get some pictures up soon.

Oh well, back to HIST1052: Australia and the World. :)

Home on the (Anatolian) range

Well, it looks like University is back into full swing. I've already completed one assessment for my Early Roman Archaeology class and have got four more due in the next fortnight. I really had expected that the student lifestyle would be a lot more laid back than this. :/

Anyhoo, I've been plodding along with the last base of Roman archers, I'm actually hoping to put the finishing touches on them once I've posted this.
I finally got my tax return, and that which didn't end up going in loan repayments was sent off to the lads at Gripping Beast, Aventine and Little Big Men in return for a plethora of Late Roman, Barbarian and Sassanid Persian goodies. Andy and Darren at GB were particularly helpful, they happily allowed me to mess around with the composition of their army deals.
My plan for the next six months or so is to paint up the following:

Late/Patrician Romans

1 x CP (Equites Scutarii) 4 GB heavy cavalry per base
1 x CL (Equites Sagitarii) 3 or 4 GB armoured horse archers per base
2 x CL (Equites Illyricani) 3 GB javelin armed cavalry per base
1 x FP (Auxilia Comitatenses) Another 10 figure BTD/GB Heavy infantry base, this time the Celtae Seniores.
1 x FL (Auxilia Pseudocomitatenses) Another 8 figure BTD Light infantry base, the Romanenses this time.
1 x Mounted Command stand - GB General, Standard bearer and musician.

Barbarian Foederati

1 x CP (Gothic Cavalry) 4 Musketeer heavy Goth cavalry per base
2 x FP (Franks) 10 figure GB Frankish heavy infantry per base

Sassanid Persians

1 x Mounted Command stand - GB General, Standard bearer and musician.
1 x CP (Pushtigbhan) 4 GB heavy armoured cavalry with kontos per base
3 x CM (Asavaran) 3 GB Parthian Horse archers per base
1 x FL (Daylaimi) 8 GB Light Infantry per base
2 x FP (Leves) 10 GB Heavy foot per base
1 x EL (Elephant) 1 Aventine Elephant and crew per base

In order to field the full Basic Impetus Sassanid army, I still need to get a base of archers, but it's a decent start. From Steve at LBMS I've ordered the fantastic Sassanid banner sheet along with a bunch of shield decals for the Franks and the Sassanids.

So, while waiting for tax and now for the figure orders to arrive, I decided to have a crack at some terrain. I've wanted to build a Late Roman villa complex for a while, and had collected a fair bit of research info. I dug that out, along with some foam-core board, corrugated cardboard and blue foam and set to work.

As my armies will focus on the conflicts in the East between the Late Romans/Byzantines and Sassanid Persians, the villa i envisaged would have been able to be defended, but also home to a high status landowner. To achieve this, I made sure that besides the main gate and a small side door, there were no doors or windows which would allow an enemy to break in. I've left the roof of the long building to the right of the courtyard loose, with a view to eventually detailing the interior. The stone work under the portico is all from blue foam, using a method stolen from the terrain maestro Theomar Pius. The cobbles are a textured card i picked up from a local Spotlight sewing store in their wedding invitation section. I think they came up well, and i'm planning on building a few stretches of Roman road using them. The tiles are corrugated cardboard sheets, which i lightly scored across the 'grain' with a sharp scalpel then crushed down with a pencil along these lines. I think they look quite effective.

Oh, and i almost forgot. The pictures are taken with my new camera, a Canon IXUS 120IS. I must say I'm really impressed with the picture quality.

The base size is just within the basic impetus size limit of 20U (or 40cm square). This base is about 30cm by 35cm. I used the same basing style I've been using for my army, so hopefully they all tie in. I'm really quite happy with the result, and am now enthused to build a few roads and perhaps even a Sassanid Persian building of some description. Zoroastrian Fire Temple anyone?


I'm currently taking on commission work. All enquiries please contact me vie email, fiene.ben@gmail.com.

The Petulant Ones

Second semester of university is upon me, but before the end of my holidays i managed to complete another base for my Basic Impetus Patrician Romans. Don't look now, but it appears that I am in danger of actually finishing a project!

This base is the only Roman Heavy Infantry (FP in Impetus vernacular) base in the Patrician Roman army. According to the list these are supposed to be legionaries, but I have chosen to depict them up as Auxilia Palatina. By the 5th century the Auxilia had filled the role of the old legions, and the Palatina were the highest ranking, belonging to imperial field army. I recently finished reading Gore Vidal's superb novelisation of the emperor Julian's life. Inspired by this, I have painted these guys up as the Petulantes Seniores, the unit which proclaimed Julian Augustus and, according to Vidal at least, followed him East for his ill-fated campaigns against the Sassanid Persians. As usual the shield pattern is from the Notita Dignitatum. I tried something a little different, using some GW dark flesh to simulate dried blood. This was suggested by Count of Wymborn over on the Steve Dean forums and i think works a treat.

The figures are from Black Tree Designs, the exception being the commander who is from Gripping Beast. I wanted to give these guys a more veteran appearance than the pseudocomitatenses, and so besides choosing armoured and well equipped figures, I added a few extra and arranged them as an aggressive looking shield wall.

I'm now working on the last Roman unit of the army, a second base of lowly archers. I'm waiting on my tax return to put through an order to musketeer minis for some Gothic heavy cavalry and to Gripping Beast for some Frankish heavy infantry to finish off the army. I've also been looking through the basic impetus lists and have decided to do a couple of extra bases, one of Roman Equites heavy cavalry, a couple of Equites Illyricani light cavalry and one of Roman Equites Sagitarii horse archers. I may even end up doing another base of heavy infantry, as i'd love to paint up the Celtae Seniores, the sister regiment to the Petulantes. These additions will allow me to field not only a Patrician Roman force but also an Eastern and Western Late Roman one.

I've also finally settled on which army to field as opponents. I was tossing up between the various western barbarian lists, but I found the monotony of painting up loads of similar bases a rather daunting prospect. I ended up going for something completely different and quite interesting, the Sassanid Persians. These seem like an interesting army to paint up, with the cataphracts on brightly coloured barded horses, the Parthian and Iranian light horsemen, the hopelessly outclassed levy infantry and the elephants! A chunk of my tax refund will be going on these guys, mostly from Gripping Beast but with the elephant coming from Aventine miniatures.

Anyway, as usual please leave a comment or ask a question. Hopefully the Archers will be painted up in the next week and I'll be able to get some pictures posted.

I'm also still taking on commission work at the moment, for enquiries please email fiene.ben@gmail.com

The Big Guns

Here we are at the third post in as many days and still no sign of the project loosing steam. Its a pretty good achievement for me, especially as this base marks the half-way to completion point for my Basic Impetus Patrician Roman army.

The latest addition to my force is a base of elite Roman heavy cavalry, the Equites Catafractarii, argueably the forerunners of armoured knights. The Cataphracts were heavy armoured cavalrymen riding barded horses and armed with the huge 12 foot lance called the contos, and according to some sources also armed with a composite bow. The Romans adopted this style of armoured cavalry from the Sarmatians. During the reign of Constantius II, the Romans introduced another virtually identical type of heavy cavalry called Clibanarii. The main difference between the two being that while the catafractarii mostly drew recruits from Sarmatians and other Germanic horsemen, the clibanarii drew its recruits from the Armenians and Persians.

These figures are from Gripping Beast, and they paint up a treat. Wanting to give the unit a Germanic feel, I chose figures with the Germanic spangenhelm style of helmet rather than those with a more Eastern style of equipment.

The unit I chose to represent is the Equites catafractarii Ambianenses, basically because I love the city of Amiens. As the Notita Dignitatum has no shield patterns for any of the catafractarii units, I took a pattern of one of the Sarmatian named units and changed the colours around. The red-white-yellow theme was chosen by my girlfriend Laura, who has among her many talents a great eye for colour combinations :)

As these guys are the elite cavalry, I decided to keep the damage on the shields to a minimum, assuming that they folks in their prestigious position would have had the money and incentive to avoid scrappy looking kit.

Next up on the painting schedule are a unit of heavy armoured Roman infantry. I've only just undercoated them so hopefully I'll have them completed and get some pics up next week.

For now, enjoy and please feel free to leave comments or ask questions.

Poor Bloody Infantry and Horrible Huns

As promised, here is the remainder of my Late Roman army completed up to now. The Basic Impetus Patrician Roman list calls for one stand of Hunnic Mercenary horse archers and a base of Roman Light Infantry, so that's what I've done :)

For the Huns i used Gripping Beast figures. I love the figures but really am not too keen on the horse sculpts. Nonetheless, I'm pretty happy with how they came out, though i'm actually trying to find some decent replacement horses before i paint up any of the other Gripping Beast cavalry. I tried to go for some bright-yet-muted colour schemes on these guys, with the rationale that as they're in the pay of the Romans, they would most probably be pretty well cashed up and so would be wearing their Sunday best to show off their status. I strung the bows using some very fine gauge wire picked up from a sewing store.

The light infantry base is the first of two Roman infantry units in the army, the remainder being made up of Frankish allies. I've chosen to represent a poorly equipped, ragtag pseudocomitatenses unit. The Pseudocomitatenses were the static border units (Limitanei) which had been pressed into service with the mobile field army. The Black Tree Design figures gave me the right mix match of figures, and i swapped a couple of the oval late roman shields for round barbarian ones just to add to the lack of uniformity. This particular unit is the Defensores Seniores. The shield pattern is hand painted, the Defensores design copied from the Notita Dignitatum.

The wonderful mini-diorama style basing work of David Imrie really inspired me in this base. I really wanted to represent the image of a ragged shield wall barely holding against the enemy onslaught. The arrows in the shields are an idea taken from Mr. Imrie yet again. Perhaps you see a pattern developing here :)

Anyway, just put the last bit of paint on my next unit, some elite Equites cataphractarii, so a unit from the other end of the army's social ladder.

Enjoy the pics and please feel free to leave a comment.

Also, just a reminder that i am looking to take on some commission work. Any enquiries please email me at fiene.ben@gmail.com