WMA-Dacians

Quick up date

2007-02-20T03:58:00.000-08:00

Well although I promised a update quickly, as you can see, there wasn't one. I my defense I've had a couple of reason. Firstly I had my right hand broken playing rugby four weeks ago now, this made painting impossible for a while. Secondly once I got back into painting I wanted to do a unit of WFB spearmen for my new Wissenland army. I've half finished the spearmen now but during their painting i've managed to finish another 2 units of infantry and another command stand and the pictures of them will be up soon. Come back in a couple of days for an update with pictures.

Next on the table, well during the drying time on the spearmen, will be another unit of skirmishing cavalry. Only 9 models so shouldn't take to long.

See you soon.

Rholoxani Heavy Cavalry

2007-01-10T00:43:00.000-08:00

Finally the Rhoxolani heavy shock cavalry are done, Hurrah! Well one unit at least.

These models are Old glory I think. The Pendraken ones that came in the army deal are very small compared to the infantry from the deal. The Pendraken ones looked like, in the words of my misses, 'children on ponies' scale wise. So I got these instead. The pack contained 30 horsemen of two different models. To make things easy on the tabletop I seperated them and use only one type for each unit. I have done a small conversion to create the draco bearer, just cutting away the original kontos and replacing it with the draco from a foot command model. I think it looks alright and makes the unit look much better than with out.
The paint job was very much the same as the infantry. These models do however have a lot of armour and the boltgun metal paint over a bone undercoat then finished with a brown ink doesn't look great so I used a little black ink over the top and it looks fine. Now that they are based i'm quite happy with the way they've turned out. They add a cutting edge to the list that wasn't there before.
Next up will be 2 units of infantry, one is already under way, then some more cavalry, either some skirmishing cavalry or the other unit of heavy cavalry, oh, and another command base, propably a cavalry one.

The poor bloody infantry

2006-12-17T09:45:00.000-08:00

As promised the 2 latest units of infantry i've painted. Nothing special but i'm getting a lot quicker painting them. Have started a unit of shock cavalry which seem to be taking ages dispite being most metal. I suppose its just my dislike of painting cavalry.

Lets take this back on the road

2006-11-22T06:40:00.000-08:00

Just a quickie really. I went to the Warfare show in reading over the weekend and its started my WMA juices flowing again. After a long break from WMA because of WFB tournaments and buying and renovating a house, mostly the house really, i've decided to actually finish my Dacian army up too at least 1000 points and probably more as the Pendraken army deal has a lot of more points of troops in and I can't stand seeing things go to waste.

Another unit of infantry has been painted and based, the next is to be started tonight, and pictures will go up once the misses has returned my digital camera and removed all her dance photos off it.

Watch this space!

Falxmen

2006-05-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

Well two posts in one day, a good output helped by the discovery of using Picasa for the photos which has an auto blog function and is easy as pie.

Here are the falxmen, the elites of the army with 4 attacks per stand. Unfortuantly they have no save so they will need support against the Romans, or a flank.

Also we have another picture of the chieftain I got.
Warroirs next so hopefully you'll see them soon.

Cheiftain

2006-05-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Well here is the cheiftain, at last some command for my fledgling army. Next up will be the falxmen.

Sorry for the delay

2006-05-10T00:55:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a mighty six weeks since my last post so to bring you all up to speed.

I've done very little, for what ever reason my output of painting dropped to almost nothing over the last 6 weeks, not sure why. Well i've decided to start catching up and last night I finished painting the falxmen and the cheiftain, hurrah! They are in the middle of being based at the moment and will have a few pictures, taken with my new mini tripod for better stability, up tonight once the basing is done.

Next up will be a couple of units of warriors before I start on some of the rholoxani heavy cavalry.

Well till tonight, TTFN

The army so far

2006-03-26T05:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry it's been so long since my last post but, as i'm sure it's the same with you all, life throws up plent of other thing to do other than paint models.

I've completed another warrior unit, exactly the same as the first. So instead of showing you more pictures of the same i've taken some of all the units i've got done to date arrayed in a battle formation. I hope you like them.

Next up is a unit of Falxmen, these are the elites of the army so i'll spend a little more time on them. I'm also painting up my first leader, a cheiftain, i'm just using three command models for it as he's the lowest level leader in the army with a rubbish command value of 7. He'll be used to move the infantry warband brigades around because the +1 bonus to command rolls associated with brigaded warbands might actually give him a chance to order them around.

Forward my bold warriors

2006-03-07T10:23:00.000-08:00

Well the first of the 8 units of warriors is done, i'm getting much quicker at them now.

The warrior units have got standards, dracos, in them and I debated whether to put them in the front rank or second. I settled on the second in the end as being in the front rank would both displace a lowered spearman, which comprised most of the figures, and make it easy for the enemy to steal it. The unit also has a few ancient Spanish scrutari into break up the second rank models, which are unipose. Nothing like a bit of varitation.

Well here they are; sorry the pictures are a bit rubbish, the light was bad.

Next on with more warriors.

On my command let fly

2006-03-02T10:39:00.000-08:00

Well i've finished off the archer units now. They were done in the same way as the first unit. Now that is a big block of Archers!

I've now run out of old warmaster bases so I ordered some 1.5mm black plastikard from Slaters to cut my own. GW wanted 60p for three bases where abouts from slaters enough card to make 88 bases for £1.50. Just have to cut it up to size.

Next up are two units of warriors followed by a unit of Falxmen then back to the warriors for another two units. This is just to break up the painting of the same thing over and over.

On to the warriors; should be up over the weekend.

The merry bowmen of Dacia

2006-02-26T11:54:00.000-08:00

It's been head down painting figures and gaming over the weekend. I've got the first of the three archer units done and the other two cleaned up, primed and ready to go.

The technique is the same as the rest of the troops as is the basing. I'm getting much faster at painting this scale figure now and improving the quality, still not great, all the time. I may get the army done at this rate!

I played two games of warmaster fanstasy over the weekend, Empire against Chaos. I won the first and lost the second, damm chaos knights are hard. In the seond game the knights just destroyed three large brigades of infantry in two turns because they can fighting more than two rounds of combat, unlike ancients.

We here you go, the pictures of the archers, stand by stand...

The Rholoxani skirmishing cavalry

2006-02-22T05:01:00.000-08:00

This unit didn't take long to do as it only involved 9 minatures. These are the first horses i've painted at this scale, and I really don't like painting them at 28mm. I painted each one different colour and once agian did the shields individually.

They were based in the same style as the foot skirmishers.

Well thats all the skirmishing units done now; next the three units of archers.

The first units

2006-02-21T12:26:00.000-08:00

The first units I painted for the army were the skirmishers. The Pendraken army deal didn't include any, and I knew I wanted some, so I ordered a pack of Germanic Javalinmen from Militum Magister while the army deal made it's way to me. The Javalinmen arrived the next day no less so I got cracking on them.

The pack included 30 miniatures so with these I split them down to two units of three stands. This gave 5 men per base, the usual being 8. This had the dual effect of making the skirmishers stand out from the warrior units and being economical.

I've painted each shield individually, a thing I may regret later, but just stuck to my base pallet.

The bases are some old GW fantasy bases I had knocking around. They've been sanded, painted scorched brown, then drybrushed with bleached bone. They have patches of static grass and scatter foam.

Next the Rholoxani skirmishing cavalry.

Background to army

2006-02-20T02:03:00.000-08:00

I've played fanstasy warmaster since it came out but have recently been introduced to warmaster ancients. The same warmaster game but with historical figures and armies. And as I'd recently got into ancient history, aided by the Rome serise on TV, and had become a bit jaded with my main wargaming format of Warhammer, I decided to have ago at something alittle different. So leavingthe fantasy behind I bought the WMA rule book and got cracking.

The army that first jumped out at me was the Dacians. I'm not sure why, i'd never heard to them before, who where they? Why hadn't I heard of them? The background in the book had them as enemies of Roman from the Romanian area of Europe, north of the Danube. The were conquored by Emperor Trajan and absorbed into the Empire in around 100AD. I did a bit of reading around the subject and found that there is very little know about the Dacians. The main source is Trajans Column, carved to celebrate Trajans victory and placed in the Senate in Rome. The carved images on the column show the Dacians warriors clothing and weapons but not the colours they wore. It also had their shield designs, which are ornate, but once again no colours.

So with a lot of enthusiasm and a little money I ordered the Dacian army deal from Pendraken miniatures and set about creating a 1000 points army. Now this army deal problably has more than 1000 points of troops in it, and I also ordered a few other bit so the army had a selection of miniatures. This gave me a choice of what to put in the inital army. Here is my starting 1000 points:

General with portents

Leader

Cheiftain

8 Warrior units

3 Archer units

2 Foot Skirmishers units

1 Falxman unit

1 Rholoxani Skirmishing Cavalry unit

2 Rholoxani Heavy Cavalry units

Due to a lack of criteria for painting I settled on a simple colour scheme of Bleached bone undercoat and combinations of terracotta, regal blue, catachan green and scorched brown. This allowed me to get a unit (three stands) done in about 2 hours all in with basing and undercoat. They are nothing special painting wise but being only 10mm and with eight models on each stand I think they are servicable battlefield standard.

I'll post the first units tonight; I've started with the foot skirmishers.

Hope you enjoy my little adventure into 10mm historical figures.

test post

2006-02-13T01:37:00.000-08:00

Welcome aboard