Starting New 28mm DBA Hun Army

After I completed my 28mm DBA Armenian army I went to Cold Wars 2012 and entered into a DBA tournament ... and got smashed. Not really surprising because I had never played an Armenian army, not even a single time, so I really had no practice. (That I was not playing much DBA at all did not help either.) I came back home, put the box of troops on the shelf, and there it sat for four years until I recently took it to show it off a friend. We played a couple of DBA games using 15mm troops, but it started me to think that I need to make an opponent to this army so I can use it more.

I've looked at the enemies of the Armenians before and was thinking about the Early Imperial Roman army, but as noted when I tried making some, the helmets are quite a project. I needed something simpler. As DBA is up to 3.0 now, I looked through the new army lists and found that they could match up against the Hunnic army, which consists of one General as Cavalry or Light Horse and 11 Light Horse elements. I like Light Horse armies and this seems simple enough.

I decided to start on the first element – the General as Cavalry – and use a few new build ideas that I had been thinking about. So here is the final build of the element. It has two different style of figures.

 

The figure in brown is made with two beads, one stacked on top of the other, while the other two are a single, oval bead.

One of the inspirations for building this army was finding a novelty bead called a 'moustache bead'.

The bead in the center is the original, unaltered bead. By sanding away some of the underside of the bead (on the left) you get more of a composite bow look. By sanding on the top and bottom sides you get more of a longbow look. The figure in brown is carrying the bow, so you can get a sense of scale.

The figures in orange and blue represent a huge leap in minimalist (for me) in that the head and body are a single part, an oval bead.

At first I was skeptical about using these beads would be useful, given their simple shape. As I started adding the other bits, for example for the head covering, the arms and legs (hot glue), and the weapons, I saw that it actually worked out well. The key was giving the figure a hat, so the head did not look so pointy.

For the hat I found another novelty bead. I am not sure what it is – maybe some sort of flower – but it makes for a great padded leather cap.

I glued these to the top of the bead, sanded the top down a little so the hole was not so prominent, filled the hole with glue, and then added a short piece of yarn between the head and the hat to act as fur trim. All in all, I liked the effect. I just need to find a way to vary the look a little, other than by painting different fur colors.

The brown figure was made differently. For this I used two cylinder beads – one of which is shown below – and stacked them on top of one another. The bead for the head is shown here, with a taller cylinder for the body. I used the same novelty bead for the hat. As a way of making figures, it worked fine, but I was so struck with the look of the single oval bead that I will probably not use these for this army.

With my experiments on making horse in 12mm I started using oval beads – similar to the ones that I used for the bodies of the orange and blue figures – for horse's heads. Normally I use the split eggs, shown on the left below, for the forequarters, hindquarters, and the head. I was never really fond of using the exact same size egg for all three. I always felt like the head should have been smaller.

 

Now I use oval beads for the head, only I use ones that are more "squat" in appearance. Almost what are called barrel beads. Using these kind of beads allowed me to stop using a flathead plug as the neck, so I have essentially swapped two wooden parts for one.

Well there you have it. One stand down, 12 more to go. I just need to come up with a way to vary the head coverings a little more. I guess I will have to suffer a trip to the craft store to get some inspiration! 😉

28mm Armored Seleucid Elephant Painted

I've finished my 28mm armored Seleucid elephant for my friend's DBA army. However, in all this time of waiting for it, he went and bought a painted metal one since I started! I guess that is what I get for taking too long! I guess I will just have to build an army with an armored elephant! :^D

For the armor I decided to use a metal face mask, such as found on the cover of WRG's book Armies and Enemies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars. However, I did not like the big scale armor on that cover, so I went with discs of metal linked into chains hanging from a central chain. I may go back and add more linked discs over the top of the blue cloth so the sides are armored.

I definitely like the effect of the pikeman stabbing down. I am still considering adding light infantry to the base, both as an escort and as enemy. With DBA armies you tend not to see that, but with Impetus armies you sometimes do.

I've also added bands of armor around the legs and the end of the trunk, to give it a little more protection and make it a little more armored looking. In the picture below you can see the engraved expression I made for the elephant's mask, to make him look a little more fierce. The mottled look of the metal was actually a mistake – I aim for a clean, crisp look for my Wooden Warriors® – but I wanted the metal glossy so I applied some Future floor polish to it and it started to dissolve the ink (my new pen is clearly not waterproof or permanent). I actually like the look.

I am already thinking of a few improvements – case of javelins, shields on the howdah, silver tips on the tusks – but I will probably leave it like this for awhile. Time to finish more projects started.

28mm DBA Early Armenian Army Completed

My goal was to scratch-build and paint a 28mm DBA Early Armenian (II/28(b)) army in twelve days, but I did not make it. More like 24 days, especially considering that the bases arrived yesterday. But, it was not about the amount of time it took, but more to compare a hand-made wooden army to the commercial metal figures and show the proportions of the figures. Ultimately the question to answer is: can you game with both figures on the table? Or must the hand-made armies always be pitted against other hand-made armies?

For me, it is a question of style, more than of just proportion. I remember growing up playing Napoleonics and our club used 1/72 Airfix, Scruby 25mm, Hinchliffe 25mm, and Minifigs 25mm, together all on the same table. As we were playing Column, Line, and Square, which uses bounce sticks for artillery fire, the proportions of the figures actually came into play. "Triple-ration" Minifigs Austrians always took more casualties from artillery than the Airfix or Scruby French units. If you based your Scruby Mamelukes just right, the enemy could fire a horse artillery shot straight down the center of the unit and not hit a figure! (At least that is how I remember it from my childhood.) So, let's just say that I was used to gaming with figures that were not perfectly matched within a command (although no one ever mixed figures within a unit).

I don't have any pictures of the Great Comparison, but here is the Early Armenian army. You start with these:

Micro Shaker Peg

Wooden Spool

Split Egg

And you end up with these:

If you would like to read the process of building and painting these figures, see my previous blog entries:  Using the Micro Shaker Peg, Making a Basic Horse and Rider, Making the Cataphract, Making the Horse Archers, Making the Warriors Part 1 and Part 2, and Making the Foot Archers.

I look forward to taking these guys into battle. If the amount of effort you put into painting (and making) troops would manifest in success on the table, these guys would rock! Unfortunately, that is rarely so...

Armenian Army - Almost There

Well, I am almost done with my 28mm Early Armenian DBA army. It is only "almost" because I still have not gotten my bases from Litko. [grrrr] They are running a little late...

I finished the remaining three elements of Armenian Warriors (Auxilia in DBA).

I threw in a couple of different poses and shield shapes, but for the most part they are small round shields and armed with a short spear held overarm.

If the swordsman's head looks strange that is because I painted him with male pattern baldness. Not something you usually see in a commercial figure, but all of my wooden warrior units have at least one.

Finally, a shot of the whole army, save for the two new optional elements that will be in the DBA 3.0 list (two Bow elements).

It has been great fun building this army from scratch. Once I get it properly based, I will post the results to Fanaticus, Lead Adventures, and TMP and see how the "proper" world responds.

New DBA 3.0 (Draft) Army List for Armenia

Well I was just looking at the WRG website and reading the draft army lists for Section II of the upcoming DBA 3.0 rules and noticed that the Armenian list I am building has had a change! Instead of 2x2Ps it is now 2x(Ps or Bw), so that means I can build two more elements (six more foot archers) in order to have some options!

I am not sure under what circumstances I might use the Bow elements over the Psiloi, but options are options.

Armenian Archers and More Armenian Horse Archers

I still have 2 1/3 elements of Armenian Warriors in the last stages of gluing, but in the interim I have finished the two elements of Armenian Archers (i.e. psiloi in DBA) and finally gotten around to photographing the last two elements of the Armenian Horse Archers.

First the Armenian Archers:

Nothing new here, in terms of construction. The bows are tile spacers, about the only thing I will use them for anymore. The arms are pieces of wooden coffee stirrers sanded down with a Dremel. The figure on the far left, in the above picture, uses a Faber-Castell artist pen. The tip almost looks like a paint brush, so the lines are excellent compared to those where you use a nylon nib. In this case I have painted on little "X" on the white trim. The ink is waterproof, but not permanent, so you need to varnish it pretty quickly.

I have been using thinned-down Elmer's Clear School Glue as a varnish. Although it is shiny, it is not more so than Future Acrylic Floor Wax. It might actually make sense to use both - the Future to penetrate the wood and the glue to coat it - in order to maximize protection. At this point I have not tried both. These figures only have generous dollops of the clear glue.

The archers, being the poorest class of troops of them all, are less richly dressed than the other figures, but I still put some trim on in places.

The new horse archers are not different from the previous ones in any way except the paint schemes.

I decided to try a few skull caps for head coverings on this batch.

All in all I really like the color schemes. I am still debating about adding one or more quivers per figure. Although it would certainly be appropriate, it would also clutter the figure more than it already is.

Let me know if you have an opinion on this.

Armenian Warriors

The Armenian army list in DBA consists of four Auxilia elements. Looking at Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome I found that these are unarmored warriors with spear, sword, and shield. Very little information is provided about them, although they do mention a unique headdress they wear, but don't really show it. I decided to forego that and make most bareheaded (but with long hair), with a few caps and maybe a helmet or two.

Here is the first element. The central figure is the leader of the bunch, with a sword (top of flat toothpick) and almond-shaped shield (from a pack of various wooden shapes). He wears a sheepskin cap on his head (a flat-headed plug) which I painted gray and used a pen to make the 'texture'.

The second figure has an oval shield (also from the pack of wooden shapes) and spear (dowel with a sanded point).

The final figure has a crescent shield (half of an oval shield from the pack of wooden shapes, sanded to get the inner curve) and a spear.

My these boys look angry!

As you can see from the side pictures, I added some trim to the basic colors by drawing a white line with the Elmer's acrylic white paint marker, then adding dots of color using the Sharpie marker pens. Simple, but effective.

The rear picture shows some more detail of the markers to add trim. I went to town on some figures (not shown).

What differs from these figures and previous ones in the Armenian army is that I gave up on the tile spacers for arms. They make great bows, but for arms they are (currently) too much trouble. I instead used wooden craft sticks the size of coffee stirrers and shaped them with a sander. I drilled a hole through the arms and clear through the heart peg body, then stuck a dowel through to secure the arms.

The army is coming along nicely. Next should be the archers (Psiloi), then hopefully the last post will be the entire army painted and mounted on proper sized Litko bases.

Armenian Horse Archers

The Armenian army list has four Light Horse elements in it, which is one of the reasons I chose this list to oppose the Seleucids, and I have photos of the first two elements. Again, they are not based yet as I still have not received my order from Litko Aero for the 60mm x 40mm bases necessary for DBA.

As with the cataphracts yesterday, the core parts for the riders are a micro shaker plug/heart plug, with the tenon cut off so the figure is not so tall, and plastic tile spacers for the arms, legs, and on these figures, the bows. The horses are the new design of split wren's eggs-and-wooden spool, but with a flat head plug for the neck. I used wood filler to fill out the gaps in the neck.

These figures have a lot of metallic ink pen, permanent marker pen, and paint marker work. I painted the figures Cocoa for the flesh, then added the black hair. As you can see, I sanded and shaped the head of the heart plug so the size was not so exaggerated, making it look like they have long flowing hair. Then I painted a solid, bright color with paint.

With the paint dried, I went back with an Elmer's acrylic white paint marker and drew lines of white in various places, to act as edging and trim. Finally, I added slashes, lines, dots, and squares using various color permanent markers. I tried both the Sharpie and Bic brands and did not really notice any difference between the two other than then Sharpie black is much glossier than all of the other colors.

The bridles on the horses were mostly the Office @ Work metallic ink pens, with dots of gold, brass, and silver for the metal work. All of that was with the Office @ Work and Sharpie metallic ink markers. As with the metallic armor on the cataphracts, using these pens really made short work of this task.

Although it may sound funny, using a black pen to define the 'butt cheeks' of the horses really adds dimensionality to the figure. Simple to do, but strong effect. I went back and did it with my cataphracts.

As with the cataphracts, I really like these figures. Also I am still struggling with the plastic tile spacers (I have since determined that they probably have a mold release agent on them that makes gluing and painting problematic), the last versions of these used wooden dowels to pin the arms and legs in place. This is much more secure and stable than the dressing pins I used on the cataphracts.

I am putting the finishing touches on the other four horse archers, and starting to get into the core work of the infantry (four Auxilia elements and two Psiloi elements).

Armenian Cataphracts

Well, my "12 elements in 12 days" experiment did not work out. Although I will probably end up finishing them in (about) 12 days, they won't be consecutive days. Gaming got in the way too many times. Considering that is what I am doing this for, maybe that is not so bad, but I did want to finish these quickly in order to show it could be done. Oh well.

The first two elements in the army are the cataphracts, one being the General. There was no way to fit four of these fat figures onto a 60mm frontage, so I had to settle for 1x3Kn(Gen) and 1x3Kn. (By the way these bases are temporary; my Litko Aero order has not arrived yet. These bases are 3" x 1 1/2", not the 60mm x 40mm required.) The base on the right - with the gold armor - is the General's base.

All of the rider's use the micro shaker peg, or heart peg, that I discussed in the last blog entry. By sanding down the head appropriately, I got a reasonable body size and head-to-body ratio. :^D The horses are standard (wren) split egg-and-spool design, but with the improvements of a flat head plug added for the neck and wood filler to fill in the gaps. I like it better than the previous design.

As you can see, I did not use anything for the tails other than paint. I started with some yarn, but it was not working out, so I need to experiment first. I can always come back to these later and add tails if I want. All of the tails are bobbed and the bits of color represent the ribbons used to tie them so that annoying infantry does not try to grab then when attempting to hamstring the horse.

Not only was this an experiment in making 28mm figures, in using this peg as the core, in changing the horse design, and to me using tile spacers for arms and legs, but this was a huge experiment in using paint markers and metallic ink pens. I painted the armor a base color in paint (either mustard yellow or light or dark gray) and then used metallic inks to paint on the dots, scales, plates, and bands. It made for a quick and easy method to represent the various sorts of armor. I rather like the effect, but I now know that some of the shine and color can rub off with handling, so you have to varnish these figures.

The horse archers are up next. Fun with tile spacers...

What's Next

Of late I have not been blogging much on any of the three blogs I run, as I am working feverishly on what I am calling "Scratch Build and Paint 12 DBA Elements in 12 Nights". Yes, that is right, I am building a 28mm ancients army to face off against a buddy's 28mm metal Seleucid army. I will have a fight between commercial metal figures and my homemade wooden warriors so I can post the pictures of what a "normal" army looks like in battle with our little beauties. It should be fun.

To try an swing things in my favor, I have selected an Armenian army, which contain 1xKn(Gen), 1xKn, 4xLH, 4xAx, and 2xPs. These are some of my favorite troops types (LH and Ax/Ps), and I tend to do well with them in my other games, so we will see how it all turns out.

No pictures yet (well, actually I do, but I am not releasing them in order to build anticipation - LOL), but the cavalry are basic spool-and-split egg construction with micro pegs for both the light horse archers and the cataphracts. The infantry will all be micro pegs, so the army will have a fair amount of consistency in look.

Also, I am making a lot of use of permanent metallic (ink) markers (not the paint markers). I have been very impressed with the Sharpie Silver Metallic marker and the @ the Office metallic markers from Wal-Mart. I really cannot recommend the two enough. Once you see the results, maybe that will be all the convincing you need.

So, that's the teaser. I am hoping to have the figures done this weekend - assuming not too many things get in the way (like gaming) - but if I finish early next week I will still be ahead of schedule.