EIRs In All Their Glory!

Good evening,

While I work the photos of today's WMA Historical/Fantasy game EIRs vs Raetian Goblins into some kind of pictorial report, I thought I'd post the completed Early Imperials in all their...numbers...

First up a shot of the lot of them. (Minus Mars - he came out to join the photo shoot a bit later).


From left to right, we have a HOTT Hero element, then Cav generals, a Knight, Light Horse and the rest of the Cav and one of the WMA command elements...


...the Legionaries and Praetorians, along with the second WMA command element...


...Auxilia and the third WMA command element...


...Carroloballistas, Psiloi and my HOTT EIR Tank, the Tortoise!


Consequently, I now have enough elements to create two DBA armies...



...two HOTT armies...



(God, Hero, Blades, Behemoth...



...and Knight, Heroes, Blades, and Artillery - opps, Art cost 3 AP - I'll replace it with a Spear/Auxilia.)

...and one Warmaster Ancients army of 1020 points.

• One Veteran Legionary unit


• Four Legionary units


• Three Auxilia units


• Two Skirmish units


• One Scorpion unit


• Two Heavy Cavalry units


• One General


• Two Sub Generals

Which leaves that third Cav General element actually superfluousness to requirements.

I initially pulled together these EIR figures as part of a planned DBM EIR army, split into three commands, hence the three Cav generals. The army was designed to be 400 AP worth, which was to include an allied command of 7 Sarmatian knights. Which in turn formed the basis of my [complete, but as yet completely unpainted] Sarmatian DBA army, which is next on my hit list.

Once they are complete, I will have the army I ideally planned to take to the 1999 NZ National DBM competition. I took lots of Revell Blades instead...and then got rid of them because they just didn't look the part!

Nick

EIR WMA Cmd

Ah, acronyms. Where would we be without them?!

Good evening,

As I am plodding away on some more Early Imperial Auxilia, I thought I might share some EIR command stands that I made up for War Master Ancients.


From left to right we have, well, the 3iC, 2iC and then the big man himself. Its his command. He's in charge, the boss, the head man, top dog, big cheese, a head honcho, number...

(100 points to the first person who can identify which movie that last sentence came from. And no cheating by copying it into Google!)


Interestingly, we have three different manufactures represented here - front to back we have Esci, Italeri and HaT.


Then we have Italeri, HaT and Newline...


...and finally Esci and Newline to finish.

I know these are ideally supposed to be on round stands so that they are distinct from the actual fighting stands, but, well, I didn't have any, and I can't cut them perfectly circular, which would bug me to no end!

In case you are wondering, the horses are actually 20mm metals from New Line (their Roman cav, if memory serves). I thought them to be too skinny to mix very successfully with 20mm plastics, but they look just the biz for these command stands.

As for the riders, well, one is a HaT Punic Roman, and the other two are a couple of my very early conversions - Esci Roman torsos atop Napoleonic cavalry legs. These were from the days before HaT (and then others) began producing any ancient cavalry in plastic (though, to be fair, Atlantic did bring some mounted Romans out ages back - never did see any over here in En Zed...).

A friend of mine told me how he made his (in fact, that mounted standard bearer is Mark's - all the way from the early 1990s!) and so that was the way mine were done until something better came along. As new ancient cav was produced, my early efforts were gradually replaced .

It's funny, my first DBA EIR army was comprised of Revel Pretorians (a bit of an odd set, but at the time it was marginally better value for money than the more accurate Esci Romans - and that was why I got into plastics in the first place - price!) with cav chopped up as above. Over the years, as I further understood what the EIR army actually looked like I gave away the legionaries (to Young Stan's son) in favour of the Esci ones, the Auxilia (again, from the same Revel set) to a chap in South Africa, pulled apart the cav in favour of the HaT EIR cav...in fact, my only converted cav figures from this first army that still remain are a couple of mounted archers that are now filling out my Sarmation army!

But I digress.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, those bases are 30mm by 30mm. They look much better than the 40 x 40 I initially used for my Raetian Goblin WMA Army.

Nick

VSF Steam Powered Zappy Gun

Good afternoon,

Well, after a couple of afternoons pottering around (yay, school holidays!), I've just dropped off my Steam Powered Zappy Gun for Andy to flock for me (kind chap that he is). So, just before I popped out...





It's worked out really well. One thing I would like to change is the way I've connected the cables to the generator. Basically, I chopped them too short. Works well as is, but upon further reflection it would have looked even better had I left the wires long and had glued them coiled on the base. Ah well.

Oh, and I deliberately left the braiding on the officer black (undercoat as it happens), as per this...


...and this very helpful page here.

And so, I can class it as a General's element - either Magician or Artillery for HOTT - or just plain a Contraption in G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. If I ever get round to actually playing a game now I have the rules.



Nick

Some Carts

Good morning,

While I've been working on the EIR Ax, I've also been pottering away with a few other bits and pieces, more catch ups than anything systematic. So, while I was applying flock to that Gallic element (and my Early German ghosts!), I thought I'd finally flock these guys who have been waiting ever so patiently for me to do so, years after having been completed!


They were painted for me by Mark Ottley (the Cart General's element), Dave Wallace (the Spear element) and Andy Gorman (the Spanish Auxilia element).




Indeed, the more observant of you may recognize the command figures from the banner atop the page, 'cept I replaced the horn (I thought it was an ancient mace at the time!) with a sword.

Ah, the wonders of flock. They certainly complete the elements.

Thanks guys!

Nick

Speaking of Romans...

Good morning,

Here, all covered in sequins, is my Hordes of the Things Early Imperial Roman Behemoth - a Testudo!



I started this in 2002...in fact, rather than me spouting on about it here, you can read all about it here.

Again, these paper shield covers have been invaluable in completing the over all effect.

Nick

Speaking of Elephants...

Good evening,

Again,

Again,

Just to prove I can actually paint an elephant (I wasn't sure there for a while), here is my Elephant/Behemoth element for my Numidian DBA/HOTT army.


I simply took a HaT 8023 Carthaginian Elephant and re-crewed it with a Carthaginian Punic militiaman and an Esci Muslim warrior.

The element beside it is a Cav/Hero General for, funnily enough, the same army.


It's s'posed to represent Juba I, he of "Let's beat those Romans" fame, flanked by Gallic and Spanish body guards.

Juba himself is actually a HaT Celtic cavalryman with a head swap from the Hanibal's Carthaginian Infantry, specifically one of the spearmen.

The 'Spaniard' is actually a HaT Punic Roman Cav figure. Although HaT have actually brought out Punic Wars Spanish Cav, I don't have any!

Nick

DBA Numidians

Good evening,

Thought I might post some old pictures of a early iteration of my DBA Numidians (Book II List 40 - II/40). These are all HaT 8024 Numidians Cav (with one HaT Celtic Cav rider with a Carthaginian head swap) with some HaT 8020 Carthaginian Infantry (specifically, the Numidians)...




Initially I designed the army composition...

• 1 x LH General


• 5 x LH


• 6 x Ps

...around the fact that DBA LH can make as many moves as PIPs you want to spend moving them.

So, I thought, lets have a Light Horse General, so, so long as the General goes along with the multiple moving LH, that group of multiple moving LH will not have to suffer the -1 "General out of contact" penalty.

And given that heavy foot can't kill Psiloi, just force them to flee to come back sometime later, I figured I'd also take the all Ps option and park them somewhere relatively safe while the LH did all the work - specifically by finding exposed flanks and exploiting them. So far, it hasn't worked out too bad.

Subsequent to these shots I have also added a Cav General, a Blade element and an Elephant to represent Juba's army. I've also added a wall of sand as a God, added another Bd, and classified Juba as a Hero to morph the army for HOTT!

Funnily enough, this is one of the my few armies that actually has an appropriate camp element!


This was created, painted and based for my by Mike Hansen in Auckland. Very clever fellow is Mike.

Nick

Mars, a Roman HOTT God

Good evening,

To further Robin's annoyance at incomplete elements (see his comment on the Early German post), here are a couple of shots of my 54mm Plastic [Toy] Roman who I'm using as my 20mm Marian and EIR (and Polybian and Camillan, and hey, any Classical/Helenistic Greek) HOTT God element before I actually managed to finish his base...




He's getting cozy with my Late Republican/Marian Roman General element for my, well Late Rebublican/Marian Roman DBA army.

I just painted his flesh shades of red. That's a pile of spare shields, spears and swords at his feet.

Here is a shot of one of the [so far few] battles he's been in. Going against a Lost World Magician General who was up hill. Suffice to say Mars was done like a dinner!


Nick