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 Seleucid Armored Elephant (WIP)

As you might have guessed, I have not been doing a lot of woodworking of late. That's just me; I go in cycles. I decided to try and ease back into it by working on the 28mm Seleucid armored elephant that Don needs for his Seleucid DBA army, so we  can game with my Armenian army. (That might inject some interest into playing DBA again, both face-to-face and solo.)

First is the mahout. This is a simple micro peg with the bottom ground off. I will attach sticks to the side of the elephant's neck to represent the mahout's legs.

Second up is the pikeman. I think I did a pretty good job in the pose with the arms. This allows him to jab his pike downwards against any sneaky light infantry trying to hamstring the elephant.

Lastly is a javelin thrower. I will probably attach a wooden rectangle to represent a case of javelins for this crewman to throw.

I am debating whether to put a light infantryman or two on the base to represent elephant escorts. I might possibly add a shield to the sides of the howdah for a little extra shape and color. I can't wait to paint this!

Been 'Away' for Awhile

I've been away from this blog for awhile, and to be honest, those darn Romans burned me out. They needed a lot of work to shape the helmet and almost every figure needed a helmet. My hand was actually getting cramps holding all of the figures sanding them down. (One unanticipated downside to working with smaller figures when you have sausage-sized figures.)

I want to get back on them, as I really want to send them off to my miniatures painter in Canada and see what he can do with them. I really want to hear his feedback on how easy or hard it is to paint free-hand and whether this particular medium is enjoyable or not.

I am going to start posting some pictures on my Dale's DBA blog of my DBA armies, as I have collected a few but never really shown them. I've also started fleshing out my Flames of War German and American armies, so I thought I would take pictures of those and post them to the Dale's Wargames blog. I've started making some cheap terrain for 15mm, so they will also end up on the latter blog as they are not really pertinent to this blog.

One thing I was thinking about doing was trying my hand at making wooden vehicles (in 15mm) for Flames of War. If I get into that, they would definitely be posted here. Anything I make would never rival, say Battlefront Miniatures, in detail; I would simply want to get the basic shape right and of course, get the cost down.

So, that's what I have upcoming. Nothing immediate on the wooden warriors horizon, but then I have always been one to cycle through projects and go through phases, so you never know.

Commanche Indian in 28mm

I joined a new Yahoo group about wargaming the Plains Indian wars. I have generally avoided that subject mostly because I grew up with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, and in my day Scouts had almost a reverential attitude towards the American Indian ways. The wars were glossed over. But, now I live in the West (AZ) and I am surrounded by history, yet I have been refusing to game it. I figured it was time to get over my reluctance. After all, the American Indian warriors could be quite colorful.

As before I used a simple shaker peg for the figure. What needed to change, however, was the 'skirt'. I figured that for this figure I could use a combination of breechcloth and leggings, so the skirt in the front and back was still appropriate; it would represent the breechcloth. I sanded out a space on the left and right and everything looked perfect.

The feather is a simple flat toothpick very delicately sanded (along with my fingers) to get the shape. I intentionally squiggled the line in the feather so it looked more natural.

The flesh color I used was Game Workshops' Dark Flesh. As my reference picture was Chief Low Dog of the Commanches - and he was very dark - this looks better than all of the other flesh colors I have as it has that tinge of red. If I were to do more figures I would definitely mix my own pot of paint using that as the base.

Almost all of the details are done with marker pens. My experiments with the Early Armenian army, where everyone is a different color scheme and pattern, showed me that these tools need to stay a permanent part of my tool box.

The hardest part of all for this piece? The tomahawk blade. I needed it thick enough so it would take glue, but thin enough to look okay as a blade. That was very hard to cut and sand to the proper shape; many skin cells gave their lives for the creation of that piece! :^D

It is a very colorful piece, allowing me to be creative in a number of ways, so I can see getting into this period. I just have so much going on right now it will probably stay on the shelf as a one-off experiment until the mood really hits me.

Seleucid Elephant WIP

As stated previously, in order to play my Early Armenian DBA army I need to make a Seleucid elephant for my opponent (as the army he purchased wasn't a legal list). I thought it would be fun, and a nice break from sanding all of those darn Roman helmets.

The basic model is three split eggs - the size I use for my 40mm cavalry - and a spool for the body. As I did with my cavalry, I decided to add a flat plug for the neck, with some added wood filler to fill the gaps. The ears are teardrop shapes from the Woodsie round shapes pack. I used these for shields in the Armenian army. Grinding off the bottom, removing the point, made it look about right. Clearly this elephant is not yet excited as the ears are not flared out, as they usually are with most commercial models.

The mahout is the standard micro shaker peg (a.k.a. heart peg) with the bottom cut off and the head sanded down. Nothing really to discuss here, but I will add tile spacer legs to it rather than painting them on.

The howdah is simply a craft stick cut into square pieces. In hindsight I should have used the square Woodsie shapes; it would have been so much easier. As it stands, now I will have to fill the gaps with wood filler.

Inside the howdah I glued in a square platform for the crewman to stand on.

On the sides of the elephant I glued craft stick cut into rectangles to act as aprons or armor (depending on how you paint it).

The howdah crewmen will be standard heart pegs. The pikeman will have both arms up, holding the pike pointing downward, while the javelin man will be throwing a javelin and the left arm down.

I'd like to paint this beast, but I am giving Don the first right of refusal with them. If I want to paint one, I guess I will have to make one - with a corresponding army - for myself. :^)

Starting an Early Imperial Roman Army - the Helmet

After posting pictures of the Early Armenian army I built and painted I received quite a few comments, one of which was from my painter in Canada, Bob in Edmonton, who does all of my 15mm troops of late. When I posed to him the idea of painting a scratch-built army, he said he was game. So, now I am building an army, which for the first time will be painted by a painting service. I am excited.

Looking about in the DBA army lists - those that are an enemy to the Early Armenian army I just built - I see that the Early Imperial Roman army is listed. To be honest, I have never really fancied a Roman army after the Punic Wars, but given the iconic image of this army, I felt it was almost a must to use them.

So, what are some of the problems with making Romans? By and large it is the helmet. It is close fitting, can have a peak at the front, and has a neck guard at the back. One thing I have noticed is that there are several styles of helmet; it is not all uniform across history. The second problem is the curved shield, which almost curls protectingly around the soldier's left side. There are numerous shapes to use - rectangular, oval, oblong hexagonal, etc. - but for the legionnaires the shield is curved in this period. (For the auxilia the shield can be straight, which also helps distinguish between the two.)

Other iconic details include the segmented armor, which is detail simply painted on, and a mixture of pilum and gladius. This should be fun.

But first, I have to solve the problem of the helmet. I start with the standard micro shaker peg (a.k.a. the heart peg) and sand off the excess to make a simple rounded head. I then draw out the portions where the face and ears are exposed.

Using small bits I sand out a dent where the ear will be. Normally, I am against creating 'lines' which force where the painter must paint. The indentation where the ear is serves to mark the line where the neck guard ends. To create the neck guard I cut just above the line defining the bottom of the helmet. I then sanded a hollow out, creating a flare, then reshaped the head of the helmet. Although it does not show in the photographs below, I sanded below the flare, thinning the neck, giving further definition to the neck guard.

In the figure below you can see that I also sanded out the area for the face. Subsequently I stopped doing that, preferring to let the paint define those lines. Nonetheless, you can see the sort of effect it has if you want to expend the effort, say as with a single figure or a few for a skirmish game. In those cases I would also sand below the cheek guards to further thin the neck, giving the helmet greater definition.

I'll show more pictures later, of more variations, but suffice it to say that this design allows me to cover all of the legionnaires, auxiliaries, artillery, and cavalry. The only thing that looks different is the single element of LH, which represent Numidian cavalry, which will have a head shape similar to my LH Armenian horse archers (i.e. long hair).

The more I look at this, the more I realize that with a peak on the front, I have a pretty good pickelhaube for the 1860+ Prussians and Germans...

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...