Silvershields

It's been a while! A combinations of things lead to having a bit of a break from both ancients and generally keeping up with things online. I was pleased to get these 48 Newline Designs 20mm Silvershields refreshed and rebased but it was quite a task. The main challenge was painting the shield designs which took a lot of focus to finish, and with giving the pikes a proper tip along with the actual rebase it was a bit of a grueller. So then when I began the Bronzeshields, which are twice the number of Silvershields, I attempted to go in with the same determination to get finished. That was June and I'm still intermittently working on them!

In an attempt to rekindle interest in the hobby I looked to other projects. This mainly took the form of building plastic sci-fi soldiers for a Warhammer 40k setting. However I'm often put off by the list building, ever changing rules updates and general complication and special rules for the sake of it. All that in itself can make that project daunting but I picked up a copy of Xenos Rampant and that has helped focus the project. The simplicity of the army building and the general philosophy of them really helped to give me a reasonable sized army list to build towards.

In general I have not been able to focus with painting as I have also been trying to make a start on Moria goblins. Bit by bit I have been working on these various projects, but none yet have reached completion since these Silvershields. Even getting to the point of writing this post has been difficult even though the pictures were uploaded back in June. Hopefully by chipping away at what I fancy when I can I will hopefully get something finished at some point soon. In the meantime I hope you enjoy the pictures of these Seleucid Silvershields:  

Hannibal's Libyan Veterans

I wasn't sure how to proceed with the rebase of these 20mm Newline Designs African veterans, they were one of the first units I did and when I started out I did 16 man units. I considered boosting each unit upto 24, then considered mixing the shield types to avoid painting extra figures. In the end I just added 2 command figures per shield design boosting each unit to 18, which worked out as I was basing these on 40mm squares on account of them being Veteran Heavy Infantry (VHI) for Lost Battles. VHI have in game terms have an attack limit of 0.5, so 2 units of veterans can attack where only 1 unit of average infantry could do so.

The figures themselves had only their spears upgraded. I added spearpoints to each spear by squishing and clipping to shape along with the repaint. I attempted to reshape one of the commanders but his sword snapped off so I replaced it with a spear.

A further rebase off the list, I have some others done and waiting to be uploaded, mainly Iberians and Eastern Archers (unless Google kills it along with Album Archive being deleted?) Currently working on updating my phalanx units which will be a big task of 3 x 48 man units! Once they are cracked I'll only have Greek archers to rebase.

Lost Battles unit cards

Lost Battles Zama Cards - see this post for more details but essentially a larger version of the counters but set up with the Zama scenario from Lost Battles. Some examples shown here,  unit art graphics from Civilization 2 modders "Fairline" and "Tanelorn" I believe, credit for the beautiful icons goes to them:

 

Lost Battles home made Zama

From a while ago, a part written post published, it was originally meant to be a battle report but I still shows the home made pieces in use. 

"After receiving my print order a while ago I got straight onto cutting out the counters I needed for the Zama scenario. The tiles are 15cm squares which I then taped together 4 across so they didn't move around so easily. The unit counters themselves were stuck to some cheap greyboard. Using PVA each side got a counter with one side having an underlined initialism to represent the unit being spent. They are very rough and ready and hastily assembled but do the trick. I missed the figures sprawled out on the table, the spectacle of the painted miniatures facing off is one of the things that makes the hobby however the counters were nice and simple to use and gave a good overview of the battlefield:"