Gripping Beast EIR Praetorians

With Little Big Man Studios shield transfers. Hopefully I'll have a full unit shot by this weekend.

New Early Imperial Roman Auxiliary Cavalry

Here are 2 units of auxiliary cavalry, one of 8 (Gripping Beast) and one of 10 (Newline Designs). These look a lot better than the pictures would show them - albeit they are no more than a decent tabletop standard - but my photography is suddenly execrable. It's the light, I know, but time is short. I had these finished a while ago, but then decided to paint and flock up the GW modular hill and then had to fix up a variety of other terrain pieces I might use with them, and then life intervened.

First the Gripping Beast. The shields with cast javelins are from the Essex Dacian range I believe. Very nice.




These are the Newline Designs cavalry. I like these a lot, and a lot more than I thought I would. I have many Newline Designs figures in ye olde pile of lead, including a couple of armies (Ancient Indian and New Kingdom Egyptians) along with bags of the new Dark Ages ranges.

Winter and other things

This is my back yard.


I am deep into the minutiae of the EIR painting project and the details of painting 140 odd pila and an equal number of gladii are best left aside I'm sure. The basing of the Romans continues apace, but again there is potentially an aspect of tedium to this so I will not share it until as a final result.

In other news, I have sold all my WW2 coffee table books and picked up a variety of dosh, including this smashing book.


I also purchased 2 starter boxes of Hell Dorado miniatures, the Lost and the Immortals, only to discover that barring the intervention of a white knight the company is closing shop in June of 2009. The French miniature scene continues to perplex and madden in equal measure. First Ilyad breaks up in a messy divorce, then Rackham commits a disordered seppaku, and now Hell Dorado crashes and burns in mid stride. I mean, what is going on over there? And who are these ever anonymous sculptors, the true and only strength of the French wargames miniature world? Can we arrange for work visas for them? Permanent residency? And of equal importance, can someone sensible please get the moulds of these much lamented miniatures?

Workbench Update

Right, first the Roman cavalry, two units, the top eight are the Gripping Beast lads, the bottom 10 - when I purchased them from Sean - were Newline Designs EIR cavalry. Sean has since somehow transferred these, with most of the rest of his ancient ranges, to SHQ. (EDIT: I've heard since I first wrote this that it is a license agreement of some kind.) For different reasons I really like both of these references. Obviously, the painting of these miniatures is nowhere near finished.


These are the horses for the Newline Designs Roman cavalry. The harnesses with pendant straps fastened by metal discs (phalerae), and the decorative fringed chest band, or peytral, are seen on various Roman tombstones of cavalry troopers from the period. I'm no expert on saddles from the time. Peter Connolly has posited a construction of leather stretched over a wood frame in the shape of four horns, which you can see the front two of sculpted into the GB troopers above. The basing of these is coming along. The wash of dark umber has been applied. Next comes Citadel Shadow Grey on the rocks, then a dry brush of bone over the entire base, and then flocking.


The Gripping Beast horses. I like these, but I'm not sure they were meant to come with the troopers that Darren gave me at Britcon 2003 (Thanks again!). What's important for me about these are the new techniques in painting the horse hair that I'm trying for the first time.


Thank God the postman always rings twice. I am a Calpe Prussian man through and through, but I just had to get these.

The Wire - the best television I've seen in years

We can all agree on just how desperate most television is. Hell, I'm going back to radio. There are very few shows that I'll even drop the paintbrush for - the fourth quarter of the Superbowl is the only time I did so in recent history - and then there is the issue of trying to faithfully watch a television show in the hurly-burly of it all. Over the past year I read several articles on The Guardian Online about just how good HBO's "The Wire" is, so when I recently came into some pin money I picked up the complete 5 season set, that's right, sixty 60 minute epidodes of a show I'd never seen before for, shipping in, about CAN$150.00, or the price of three shitty movies at the theatre with sig other. I watched the first two episodes last night and, well, just Wow! Brilliant, gritty and delicious writing, great acting, splendid camera work, just a breathless, amazing beginning. Life is short. I have no more time to waste on crap, however well intentioned. This was not a waste of my time. Five stars.

http://www.hbo.com/thewire/

A Picture of Kovnik Markov

For some reason, this photograph has not been released by Privateer Press. I found it on an English eBay listing and I thought I'd post it so that its goodness might be appreciated by my friends. My blog has thereby acquired a limited social utility. If you see what I mean.

New Feature-Book Reviews

I've decided to start a new feature on my blog, namely, book reviews. All books that I review will be related in some manner to the hobby. I'm going to start with Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, a book my father gave me for Christmas this year. The review will be finished some time in the next week.



As far as my painting is going, I have been feverishly working on Roman cavalry and on my basing for both the cavalry and my infantry. I will post pictures of the cavalry in the next few days.

Next up, I am selling my collection of limited edition (a number of which are OOP) JJ Fedorowicz folio books respecting WW2 on eBay at the following link:

http://shop.ebay.ca/merchant/okeir

I was just gobsmacked when I saw this latest release from Helldorado. People are saying the face of the Naga is a bit featureless, but I think the art of the piece is far superior to anything I've seen in the hobby for many a blue moon.



By the way, the English rules for this game are at this link:

http://www.helldorado.fr/ressources/telechargements/telechargement_id19/fichier.pdf

Finally, I picked up the Impetus rules and the first supplement, courtesy of a fellow from Phillie who had a hankering to read up on Jochen Peiper.

That's all for a few days.