Rebasing Old 15mm Figures

Old Ancient Figures Rebased Ready For Sale

As part of my ongoing Project Lead Mountain I am aiming to not only paint up all of my outstanding 15mm ancients era metal but also refurbish older figures in my own collection either to keep or resell.

Having decided I needed a little break from endless painting I had a trawl through the figure storage to see what is next in the queue for the new base treatment.

First up were four bases of Classical Era Slingers. They were based on thin card that had started to warp and this was covered with two different types of fine sand meaning that none of the elements actually matched. Having rebased them I now have a small Slinger Battlegroup which is on EBay for sale. The bases are my usual magnetised MDF bases finished off with Vallejo Earth Brown paste, edged in Raw Umber paint and completed with gravel, flower and static grass tufts and a fresh coat of matt spray sealer. The end result is quite nice considering how old these Minifigs castings are.

Next up are 24 Mikes Models Dark Age archers. I am not sure which figure codes they are and I have not listed them for sale yet. They have a bit of minor damage to a few of the bows which I can easily retouch if I do decide to sell them. I ended up storing them in my Welsh army collection because I had room and they are suitable to go alongside the spearmen.

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]

Attack 2017 Devizes

DBM 500 AP Doubles at Attack 2017

I came 7th out of 12 entries

I used the Welsh List Book 3 No 19 DBMM v2 Army List

C1 29 E/26.5 EE/9 D [25% = 7 EE] CinC

C2 29 E/26.5 EE/9 D [25% = 7 EE] Sub

C3 22 E/20 EE/7 D [25% = 5 EE] Ally

C4 22 E/20 EE/7 D [25% = 5 EE] Ally

Army 102 E/93 EE/46.5 B

Game 1 v Welsh [Jer and Richard] 5-5 draw [they came 3rd] A long hard fought game where my South Welsh with two South Welsh internal allies and lots of Ostmen fought another South Welsh army with Manx Viking ally. – some confusion over the march move rule that persisted through all four of my games meant we ended up in a solid slogging match.

C1 27 E/25 EE/8.5 D [25% = 6.5 EE] CinC

C2 34 E/30.5 EE/10.5 D [25% = 8 EE] Sub

C3 20 E/16 EE/ 5.5 D [25% = 4 EE] Ally

C4 19 E/18.5 EE/6.5 D [25% = 5 EE] Sub

Army 100 E/95 EE/47.5 B

Game 2 v Ottomans [Dave Madigan] 5-5 Draw [he came 2nd]. Another 5-5 draw where neither side could gain any advantage. The Irr Bw S Welsh archers of the MM2 list supported by the Ostmen meant that if neither side could get the perfect match up. One of my internal allies was unreliable and just sat there watching the Ottomans which decided to sit out of range of their front whilst they tried to take apart my wings. Dave tried a flank march which never arrived until it was far too late to influence the game.
C1 24 E/21 EE/7 D [25% = 5.5 EE] CinC
C2 20 E/18.5 EE/6.5 D [25% = 5 EE] Sub
C3 21 E/18.5 EE/6.5 D [25% = 5 EE] Sub
C4 7 E/7 EE/3 D [25% = 3 EE] Ally
Army 72 E/65 Ee/32.5 B

Game 3 v Burgundians [Derek & Stuart] 4-6 loss [they came 9th] the confusion over how the march move rule worked meant my flank command of infantry was delayed by three Reg LH I when they should have been quickly pushed back to the table edge then eventually fled off. This allowed the Burgundians to close into my other large flank command and eventually break it. I tried a flank march which failed to arrive. I eventually rolled a 6 with this command 4 rolls after the game had finished!
C1 19 E/18.5 EE/6.5 D [25% = 5 EE] CinC
C2 19 E/18.5 EE/6.5 D [25% = 5 EE] Sub
C3 19 E/18.5 EE/6.5 D [25% = 5 EE] Sub
C4 10 E/10 EE/4 D [25% = 2.5 EE] Ally
Army 67 E/65.5 EE/33 B

Game 4 v Anglo-Norman [John and Andy] 4-6 loss [they came 5th]. This was their second game against the Welsh. They flank marched with William of Ypres’s command [C4] which took ages to arrive. I anticipated a flank march and deployed accordingly I only ended up having four elements fled from that table edge and these ended up in positioned where I wanted them to flee to. His dismounted knights being Irr Bd S were virtually impossible to kill and the game developed into a slogging match. When time was called I had lost my C2 command with little damage done to their commands.
C1 26 E/24 EE/8 D [25% = 6 EE] CinC
C2 26 E 24 EE/8 D [25% = 6 EE] Sub
C3 26 E/22 EE/7.5 D [25% = 5.5 EE] Sub
C4 16 E/16 EE/6 D [25% = 4 EE] Sub
Army 84 E/86 EE/43 B

Each round was a hard fought game because the MM2 list has made the Welsh very hard to beat frontally. I realised that given the standard of players on the tournament circuit we normally get that it’s an army that will be hard to win with unless you get lucky with the right enemy army in the draw and that its difficult to also beat by most enemies. I am pleased that I held the 2^nd and 3^rd placed players to a draw as this would not have happened four years ago.

I gather that due to there being two similar South Welsh armies in the tournament the five other teams that ended up playing against the Welsh didn’t appreciate the experience too much. [One team ended up playing against both Welsh armies!]

Some pictures from during the weekend.
During Game 1

Game 2

Game 3

Unfortunately I was so engrossed in my last game I forgot to take any pictures.