Tarantine Cavalry-Hurrah, A Finished Unit!!

Aventine Tarantine cavalry, based up for the Impetus rules, bu they can also serve purpose for Armati when I go over to game with the lads at New Buckenham.
I have another unit of these to do, the next lot will get more Italian style shields just to make them look a bit different.
Quite pleased how these turned out, as painting horses is not really my strong point.

Advancing Phalanx-Review

Along with my Thureophoroi order, I decided to pick up the advancing Phalanx unit pack (UD34) as well, after all you can never have too many pikemen!!!

This unit pack contains packs PH 21 22 23 & 24 bought as individual packs they would cost £18, the unit pack costs £16.65, so thats a good saving.
The figures, up to the usual Aventine standard, nice clean casts with a minimal clean up. A little bit more work required as the command group does contain some figures that require assembly. You get a good mix of linothorax amoured figures, along with some more heavily armoured types, in a muscle cuirass. The figures carry their pikes at a nice angle of around 45 degrees, thus avoiding the problem of impaling your hand, as I often do on the upright pike blocks!!!
Once painted, I think this unit will look rather impressive.
Check out the other unit packs on the Aventine site, as there are some good deals in there.

Thureophoroi Review

Having seen the news of the new Aventine release, on the Steve Dean Forum, I took the plunge and ordered a few packs.
So heres another short review for interested parties.
There are three packs available, two packs of thureophoroi, and a command pack. The thureophoroi packs are essentially the same, just different weapon options ( either javelin or spear).

OK, so lets take a look at the Thureophoroi pack first. Each pack contains four figures, along with sufficient shields, and weapons for each. The first thing you notice, are the separate heads, this gives you some variety when assembling the figures. I like the seperate head option, the heads themselves fit nicely into the neck recess on the figures, I would recommend filing down the neck stump, thus avoiding the dreaded "bobblehead" look that can result from seperate head models.
Detail wise, the figures are very good, folds in the clothing are well defined, and the helmets are well detailed.

The figures are cleanly cast with minimum mould lines, there is a bit of cleaning up involved around  the shield hand, where there is a small bit of flash, but its not that difficult. Both hands are cast open, thus giving the option of placing javelins behind the shield, and in the throwing hand.
The figures are a little big larger than the Crusader model, you could get away with mixing them in a unit. The big difference of course, are the cloaks, and you will need to get extra shields, so they all match!!!

The command pack contains four figures, but no seperate heads this time. You get a trumpeter, standard bearer, and attacking Thureophoroi, and a rather splendid officer ( my favourite figure in this release)

I will probably use him elsewhere, as he is far too smart for a dodgy mercenary unit!!
All in all, another useful release from Aventine. Thureophoroi units can be found in most of the Successor armies, and these models will serve purpose quite well for that.

More Phalanx-At Last A Basefull!!

Finally!!! A basefull of finished Pikemen, now just have to do the other four figures for the rear section, and we have the first Impetus/Armati unit completed. Basework not done yet, as I am still deliberating whether to put the command at the front, or more historically, at the rear of the Phalanx.
All Aventine figures, with LBMS shield transfers, I've stuck with more  simple colours, rather than going mad with purples, yellows and all sorts of bonkers shades, as I can't find any reliable historical evidence to say that the units were outfitted in anything more flash than red tunics, and bronze,linen and leather armour. Not a flash paintjob by any means, but they look OK  all bunged together, and thats good enough for me.
Back to the desk for the rear rankers, a selection of less well armoured chaps, all Linothorax this time, so we shall see how they turn out later.

Renovation!!!

A while back, I picked up an ebay bargain, 28mm Macedonian Army, mostly Foundry Figures, and all painted to a basic standard. Here's one of the unarmoured Phalanx figures.

Well, the seller must have been annoyed with the price, because the whole lot was slung nto a box, with not a lot of protection, resulting in a chipped horrendous mess of tangled pikes and figures!!

After looking at this mess, I put the box away in disgust, and there it sat until. by chance I found it again, and decided to have a go at renovating one of the figures, nothing swish, just a good basic paint job to make the figures useable again. So on the left is the result, just a nice basic paintjob, and a shiny new replacement shield to replace the bottletop he had before, nice LBMS transfer, and away we go. These guys will work perfectly well for the rear ranks of the armoured Phalanx, or for the less well equipped phalanx unit.
Oe maybe I will just stick em back on ebay, and earn some more cash to buy more Aventine stuff!!

Aventine Miniatures-New Phalanx packs

Hurrah!!! Keith from Aventine has announced the first releases of the advancing Pike packs

"We had added the first two packs of the advancing phalangites, the PH21 pack are armoured in a breastplate and have crested helmets, they are suitable as file leaders or front rankers.
PH22 are in linothorax and uncrested helmets.
The pike as you can see is angled at approx 45 degrees, this will allow the units to be pushed together in mellee(at least most of the time)."
  Also coming soon are the Thureophoroi packs, so keep an eye open for these as well.
I suspect that I shall be ordering just a few packs of these!

Surprising What you Learn

When placing an order!!
Once again I find myself clicking on the Aventine Miniatures bookmark, and ordering a few more packs. A chance ebay sale, and I had some funds to spare, so I have re-invested the funds, with some more wargames figures! I am reworking some of my figures from Foundry, Crusader and Polemarch, and wanted to replace the shields with some Aventine ones, so I can get an nice overall effect. Being a cheeky sod, I ask Aventine if they could send me a spare vexillium,I finish off the order, and send it off into the interweb. A little bit later the phone rings, its Keith from Aventine, enquiring whether I wanted a vexillium transfer, or the actual metal standard! I tell him what I want, and we get talking. I did not realise that Keith does all the mould making , and casting. So now I know who is responsible for the amazing quality of the castings themselves. Keith also told me that some new advancing Pikemen packs, and the Thureophoroi packs will be out very soon, so something else to look forwards to.

Excellent service again, what more can I say!!