Ancient Refurbishments.

Since I have had a degree of success in refurbishing Napoleonic, AWI, and WW2 figures, I decided to give refurbishing ancient figures a go. After all, brown wash is timeless!

One of many boxes of figures.

I obtained from Glenn a vast number of painted 1/72 scale figures - the vast bulk of them from various HaT sets. They were all based on sections of polystyrene. I have wondered if this was to either to protect the figures during gaming, or to make it easier for a child to use?

Figures were removed from the bases and sorted into groups. These are Hat Greek Mercenaries.

A mix of Persian Bow from Hat and Italeri.

I decided to base the figures using the same size stands I use for Volley and Bayonet. This is because I like the way numbers of 20mm figures look on stands of those size.

HaT Thracians, touched up and washed.

Refurbished Zvezda Greeks.

I've put two ranks of figures on a stand.  A Greek phalanx was commonly eight ranks deep.

Of course once I have sorted out these painted figures, I still have vast amounts of unpainted ancients figures to deal with.

HaT Macedonian Phalangites..
 I put this on the bigger base in order to get a better visual effect, and because they were generally sixteen ranks deep.

So far I have been viewing the basing of the figures as being experimental, while I figure out how to get the best visual effect from these figures. The idea is that I will also be able to use these as a teaching aid when teaching Classics. I am still toying with the idea of creating up some formations on a one to one scale.

Hat  Punic Elephants.

And finally some War Elephants. This doubles my holdings of War Elephants, and may spur me towards finishing painting up these ones that have been neglected in favour of other projects. Of course I may yet get more elephants in the meantime.

Elephants!

One of the projects that I have been working on for some time is building up Punic and Roman forces suitable for wargaming the Punic Wars, and also suitable for use as teaching aids. Hat has produced a range of figures which are perfect for this project, the only snag being that I have to base and paint them! The rules I am intending to use will be a homebrew set based on Frank Chadwick's Command Decision and his unpublished set of ancient rules. But for now some much better pictures...

Two of the six War Elephants from the Hat set.

While still a work in progress, I am quite happy with how they are turning out. According to what I have read on the matter it appears that there is some debate about the usage of towers on the backs of Punic Elephants. The available evidence doesn't seem to rule out towers, but doesn't rule them in either! Happily for me, this means I can keep the towers because I think they look cool!

A frontal view of the beasties!

I still have to base these fellows up before they can join a Punic Army. The shields on the towers are either going to be painted as polished bronze or have a suitable Punic insignia painted on. Choices for this insignia range from a crescent moon, a palm tree, or a horse standing in front of a palm tree. The symbol of the Brotherhood of Nod is also tempting.

The Elephant Storage System (ESS)

After the sheer number of earthquakes and aftershocks, decent storage has been a major issue. So I decided to make a custom ESS for all six elephants. The idea is to paint the outside of the box so that I can also use it as a terrain piece - A Punic elephant stables.