Plastic........................Fantastic?

A while back, Doug Powell gave me a sprue from his box of Victrix Miniatures Later Greek Hoplites. I have finally got around to sticking one of them together, just to see how they would compare with my Aventine stuff.
To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised with how they turned out!!
Right. here's a quick review, and we start the ball rolling, with a few sprue pics! Now I have no idea how many different sprues there are in the box, nor how the figures go together, so this could be interesting!

You appear to get eight bodies on each sprue, a selection of different arms, eight heads and some seperate helmet crests, the spears and shields, a couple of shield aprons, plus some scabbarded swords. I think that certain arms will go with certain bodies, but without any instructions, I can't be certain.

They are nice clean looking models, and have some lovely detail. Some reviews are saying that the models are inaccurate, well they look like Hoplites to me, and to be frank, thats good enough.

I cut off a selection of bits, and made up a figure. There was a certain amount of clean up required, as always with plastics, you will get mould lines, and where the bits are cut from the sprue trees. A bit of work with a sharp knife, and some files, and we were ready for some glue action.
I used my good old Humbrol Liquid Poly, and the plastic responded well, with all the parts welding nicely together.

Here he is, the finished product, with an Aventine Italiote Hoplite, and to my amazement, they actually look just fine together!!
Would I use them in the same unit? Probably not, but I would certainly recommend the Victrix models.

So, the pros and cons of using the plastics: Well, they are relatively cheap, you get 48 figures in a box, and if you shop around, you can pick up a box for £20. The models are very well detailed, and they go together nicely too. They fit in Ok with the more popular metal ranges, but I would not use them together.
One box will get you 4 bases for Impetus, with 12 figures on each base.



Being plastic, there is more work involved, you have to have a level of modelling skill to put them together. Plastic, by its very nature, is fragile, and breakages will happen.
All in all though, I can't really find fault with the figures, and will invest in a box or two, when I get around to building my Syracusan army.

Back Again - With Some Italian allies

Yes I know, I was going to just have the one blog!!
Somehow, I managed to get a small amount of enthsiasm together, and finished off one of the unit bases for my Impetus Pyrrhic army!!

An Italian allies base, they could be Samnites, or Bruttians, or any of the various tribes that went over to the side of Pyrrhus.

Bit of a labour of love, as the figures used were not great. They are mostly Crusader Miniatures, and they were a pain to paint. I had to replace all the shields, with A&A Miniatures ones, as the Crusader shields have no suitable transfer sheets from LBMS, and I did not fancy attempting freehand designs. The figures came with seperate heads, a novel idea, but more farting about to get them right. General detail is a bit sof tand very plain,  none of them have a side arm of any description too.

The command figure is from Aventine, he's really a Roman officer, but I quite like the figure, and he could have pinched the kit off a dead Roman.

I await the arrival of the new Aventine models for the Samnites, as they will hopefully be, bloody excellent, then i may feel a bit more inspired to add another couple of unit bases.

Next, I hope to finish off the elephants, and Greek Cavalry

Back Again

Ok
Radical rethink time!!  I have decided to keep two blogs going for a while. I now have a different approach I'm messing about with, more later.

BLOG MERGER

I have decided to merge my two blogging efforts into one mighty blog!!

if you want to continue following the feeble efforts involved, in getting this project finished, slip on over to

http://nigelh-viewfromtheduckpond.blogspot.co.uk/


and join the party over there

cheers faithful followers :-]]]

A Fresh Start!!

I've rebooted this project, as I badly need to get something finished this year, and this army is just about my only hope of doing that.

So, on the desk we have, from left to right

Thureophoroi, and one of the elephants, with its crew

Thesssalian Greek Medium Cavalry, and in the centre, the leader of the Oscan unit.

Cretan Archers

Oscan Infantry unit, some of these are already done.















and completed so far, I have

Again, going from left to right

Macedonian Phalanx















Epirote Phalanx   

Tarantine Phalanx

Tarantine Light Cavalry

Slingers, with a couple of the Oscan Infantry in front of them.

My mate Doug has the other Elephant, and the Agema Cavalry to paint, so hopefully between the pair of us, we can crack out this army, and I get a game of Basic Impetus with it.

Oscans on the way

Got the first two finished, only another, ohhh ten or so, for the first Impetus base.
Tried out the new Doug bronze on these two, and its worked out quite nicely. Figures are from Crusader, with Gripping Beast shields ( LBMS don't have any transfers for the Crusader ones).

Also got some A & A Samnites in the post today, decided on a couple of packs, just to see how they fit with the Crusader figures

They need a bit of cleaning up, but nothing I've not seen before. I think they fit in perfectly well, and are actually nicer figures then the Crusader ones!!! I shall be investing in a few more of these I think.

Finally, I was pointed in the direction of a decent matt varnish, by my mate Paul Cotton

It goes on really easily, brushes can be cleaned with water, and it dries to a pretty good matt finish too. Well worth a look I would say

More Italians!!!

Started work on the next unit, this time its more Italian allies. Using figures from Crusader, A&A, and SHQ, as Aventine have not released any suitable figures yet :-[

These figures are hard work, need a bit of cleaning up, and the detail is nowhere near as good as the Aventine models. Crusader have different shields to all the other models, and no LBMS transfers available, so I have ditched them for replacements from Gripping Beast, and A&A. I think they will all look OK once I've done them.

I'm using the Doug Bronze method mentioned before, and so far the results are looking pretty good, I may have to do another Phalanx now, to replace my Epirote one!!

Hope Aventine return to the Pyrrhus range, and finish it off, with some decent Oscan types.