Scythians - The Archers

Scythian Archers - Or How I wasted 3 Weeks Of My Life

Because I am using Xyston castings for my Scythian infantry I ended up with some of the best designed and sculpted castings on the market. The Scythians are a colourful lot and their clothing has lots of contrasting trim, a mix of either fur or cloth stripes. I had a total of 72 castings to paint and the colour mix meant that there was a lot of mixing and matching of paints as I worked through them. I started to get bored painting them and kept getting distracted during August painting other things or working on small commissions which meant they seemed to drag out. In the end it took me a total of 21 days to complete these figures. As is usual Xyston castings are mostly clean and required minimal cleaning up before painting could begin. The DBMM army list allows you to use a maximum of 24 elements of Bw archers. They are a perfect fit with the other infantry I have already blogged. I still have eighteen elements of Hordes to complete which totals another 90 castings but I am going to take a break from painting Scythians for a while as I can use other Hd elements as a quick fix substitute if necessary whilst I work on a different army.

Angry Peasants - When That EBay Bargain Wasn't Such A Bargain!

That Sinking Feeling When That EBay Bargain Turns Up!

"Caveat Emptor"

When you spot that good deal on EBay and think that its only going to need a little tidying up to make them look OK on the table top.

The listing was totally honest and the pictures clear so I cannot claim I was misled in the slightest. They were well packed and arrived intact. Being second hand and fairly old I expected some damage and to my surprise only found two figures were broken, missing their weapons. I easily repaired these in 15 minutes so no harm there. I thought I could freshen up the bases but it turned out they were a mix of materials which had warped over time and were covered in old railway style flocking. So I ended up having to remove all 100 peasants from their 20 bases. The wagons were a different problem, they were fine out of the box except for the fact they were on very odd sized bases meaning that they were useless in their current form. So off with their bases for them too.

Here are the pictures taken from the EBay listing to give you an idea what I bought. For some players I am sure they would have been happy to use them as is and perhaps I was being too fussy.

So the refurbishing began in earnest, first up are the wagons. I must admit I had always intended to refresh the wagons and resell them on to offset some of my initial outlay. There were four wagons of an unknown make. One of the wagens is fully laden and too long to fit on a standard 40mm x 40mm baggage base so it ended up as a double sized baggage element. It OK on its new base, much to my surprise.

Each of the three smaller wagons were a perfect fit on a standard 40mm x 40mm baggage base and again the end result looks OK.

All of the wagons are now listed on EBay.

The 100 mixed peasants were a different problem. There were a few mixed makes in the lot and I knew that I had to be careful how I rebased them to make sure they didn't look odd. First thing I noticed was that I had nine shieldless javelinmen. I realised that these would be perfect to create three more Irr Ax X to go into my Welsh Army, so RESULT no harm done there and an easy win.

Three Welsh Irr Ax X elements 

Having culled nine castings from the original batch I knew I was now short of some figures to make up twenty Horde elements. I had four spare leftover painted peasants from when I had reused them to make up some Auxilia for use in my Catalan Company army. In the end I managed to create sixteen Irr Hd O elements using a total of 80+9 castings out of the 104 I eventually had available. This means I had 15 leftover castings which have gone into the spares draw along with some other peasant castings. Whilst I was rebasing the castings a mate from the club casually mentioned that he needed four elements of Irr Hd O for his Feudal English army, this was after I had part based all the figures. He normally bases his own figures so they all match and I was lucky enough to have been able to sell him these elements part based. I made four batches, each of four elements to ensure each batch had a decent figure mix.

Here are some pictures of each batch which will probably all end up back on EBay to enable me to recoup some of what I spent on buying them in the first place. Hopefully I might even make a profit?

Four x Irr Hd O elements [Batch 1]

Four x Irr Hd O elements [Batch 2]

Four x Irr Hd O elements [Batch 3]

Four x Irr Hd O elements [Batch 4]

Early and Later Polish - Part 12

Feudal & Medieval Polish - Part 12

I have not posted anything on the Polish since February because as you might have noticed I decided to take a break from them to work on other projects. Various commissions, the Scythians and lots of baggage elements have taken priority. As part of the latest baggage commission I decided that as the EBay price was too good to miss I would bulk buy yet more Baueda tents. I ended up with six of their 15MDV-b tents which I decided would be painted up for my Polish Army, the colour scheme also makes them suitable for use with my as yet unfinished Serbian army too.

I have already completed four empty wagons from QR Miniatures [Part 4 of the Polish sequence] for the Poles so have now altered two of them which now have Serbian banners on the side which will be posted when I am ready to work on the Serbs.

Here are the eight Polish baggage elements.

More Ancient Camptastic Elements

Yet More 15mm Scale Baggage Elements

I was asked by a clubmate if I could provide him with a pair of Medieval tents for his Condotta army. Whilst I don't tend to keep a supply of spare baggage elements for sale or to paint being the sort of person whose happy to help out a mate I went online and checked EBay for suitable tents. First stop was searching for Baueda. It instantly came up with some items and I placed a large order for two suitable tents for the Condotta, two more for my Attalid Pergamene, two more for my Abbasids and six more for my Polish/Serbian army.

I have not painted all of them apart from the batch of six for the Polish/Serbian army and also took the time to rebase some old Hovels Bell Tents as well as some old Medieval supply wagons.

First up are the Baueda items:

I removed the shields from the top of the canopy as requested so they can be completely generic.

They are sold as Medieval Tents.

Baueda 15MDV

Next are the last two missing elements to complete my Attalid Pergamene Baggage.

They are sold as Ottoman tents.

Baueda 15OTM

 

These are for use with my Abbasid Army and Arab Conquest.

They are sold as Persian Tents.

Baueda 15PRS

Having finished my missing Attalid Pergamene tents this has allowed me to dispose of my original tents for this army.

They are sold as Greek tents. They will go on EBay in due course.

Baueda 15GRK 

Now for the odds and sods.

I purchased some Hovels Bell Tents many years ago, they are now discontinued. I still have all eight but have been painting them up differently for use with odd armies. These were in poor condition basing wise so I repainted two of them in red and rebased all four of them to freshen them up.

Hovels 4AC5

 

These wagons came as part of a EBay purchase of Angry Peasants. They were on very old style flock basing and each base was a very odd size. I have no use for them at all but decided that they were worth the effort to rebase so I could then sell them on via EBay.

There were three small empty wagons and one large laden wagen. All of them are ox drawn and suitable for use in almost any European army from 500 AD onwards. I have no idea what make they are but after rebasing and a fresh coat of sprat Matt varnish they have come up much better than I had hope for. I based them following the usual DBx style as this seems to be almost universal nowadays