Numidian Cavalry Rebased

These Newline Designs 20mm Numidians have just had a straight rebase without any adjustments to the paint work. However the Numidian command figures which were once based together as noble cavalry have been distributed among the other bases as unit leaders to mix in a bit of variety.

Work slowly rumbles on on the Heroquest mission eventually I will do a post on the various miniatures painted. Also in the background my Punic wars era Romans are starting to get rebased. Still there are a few more posts to write up for stuff rebased ages ago.

 

New Skythians

A quick look at the new 20mm Skythian's from Newline Designs at the time of writing there are currently 3 codes foot archers, foot javelinmen and the horse archers on the top row of the picture below. However there are a few more codes coming out shortly and I got a few hasty snaps of the raw metal figures to give people an idea of what they are like.

First is the light cavalry Javelinmen, they use the same horse poses as the Archers. There are 3 varieties of riders and they came with wickershields and bowcase as well as javelins (however I use bristles). 

Secondly there are also some medium/heavy Skythian cavalry with an armoured horse and 3 better armoured rider poses. Again shields, weapons and bowcase come with this code. Further variety can be achieved by swapping the horse poses between the heavy and light codes. 

Overall a very welcome addition to the 20mm ancient world, especially since Skythians feature in many army lists as mercenaries.

 

Death of Ptolemy VI

The unit of Hellenistic Mercenaries from the previous post was inspired by a illustration by Seán Ó’ Brógáin featured in Ancient Warfare Magazine X. 2. Since I was snapping the mercenaries I thought I would grab some elephants and cavalry to emulate the illustration further. I was quite pleased with the Geek Villian rocky grass fleece cloth and it worked well with the sky sections. 

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Hellenistic Mercenaries

I'm very pleased to get a unit done for my main project, it's not a rebase either all freshly done! Also they are the 20mm Hellenistic infantry I kept pestering Sean at Newline Designs about so its good to get some done again. I stocked up on quite a lot being both very useful and from my favorite armies of the era. As usual I used my stock of plastic bristles for spears and swapped their shields for the shields from the Ancient Jewish range.

I also took the fresh miniatures to attempt a new approach to basing the heavy infantry as its difficult to apply filler in between the ranks. I initially tried using hot glue to fix the figures down but I was having problems doing that, I think mainly due to the Work's brand hot glue gun not being hot enough it cools too fast. After a bit of trial and error I realised I could make individual stands for the figures meaning I could easily adjust the particular angle the figure stands and still make him free standing quickly, the low temperature and quick cooling turned to my advantage!

Now with that sorted I decided to attempt a tactic reminiscent of my old style of basing, namely lots of PVA,   figures placed basing material poured on! I mixed some PVA with some of my basing paint emulsion in the hope it would start to dye the fine modelling sand at least which was poured on to level the basing between the figures eliminating the need to apply filler in between. Once dried I just painted with the sandy earth emulsion and let that dry which it did and cracked a bit but it was quite a cool effect and once the static grass was applied looked fine. I may do a step by step post on it down the line.

Work also slowly rumbles on on the Heroquest mission eventually I will do a post on the various miniatures painted. Still there are a few more posts to write up for stuff rebased ages ago and I have a  post to sort showing new Newline stuff which has just arrived in the form of additional Skythian sculpts! Now I just need a chance to get caught up blogging! 

Late Roman Cataphracts and Guard

A few might recollect a post on the newest codes from Newline Designs 1:72 / 20mm Late Roman range, well they are finally painted up below. I'll go through each one briefly below. I notice that now the pictures on the computer screen are very bright in comparison to my phone screen, something to bear in mind next time, however they are clear and show the detail of these lovely figures. 

I post also on PARADE GROUND 20mm Facebook page , then share among relevant groups, someone offered a great tip on spear tips! I wasn't able to track the comment down again but I followed the advice, squish the end and snip into a spear head. Very simple and effective! So the spears below are the usual bristles just with a bit more attention. 

Command

The command set is not new per se but newly painted and it turns out the brand new officer figure is joining the original command figures:

Guard Infatry

I wasn't sure what was on the way with this Guard Infantry Set but I was eager to see them! Going off their initial appearance they looked like the drawings of the Late Roman legionary in Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome. I posed the question on whether to paint their armour as a metallic or organic material, Peter popped out of his cave to answer the question. As you can see Peter said go for Leather, I had a good time experimenting with them, Thanks Peter!

Cataphracts

Finally the Cataphracts couple of horse poses and rider poses which can be tweaked to give a bit more variety. 

With these last Late Romans done I am moving onto both my main Macedonian and Punic war project and the Heroquest mission!