Thursday 13 February 2014

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.

12 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. The GW washes are letting me rapidly get toys on the table. Basic paint jobs look so much better afterwards.

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  2. Looking good already. Of course if you want to do Theban Greeks at the time of Epaminondas, you will want deep columnar stands as well. These deep formations made a mockery of Sparta's military reputation, thundering through their lines as though they weren't there. Which they weren't anymore withal...

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    1. Hi Ion,
      Thanks for your help on Wednesday - Kat was most impressed! I am thinking that if I do Thebans that I could do a 3 inch deep stand with a 1.5 inch frontage with the Spartans based as above.

      I have started work on my Tchagi hill tribe too...

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  3. You always make old figures look great. One question - are you using old tiles for the bases (They have some form of pattern on them) ?

    Thanks

    Paul

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    1. Hi Paul,
      The bases I use are cut from base sheets of MDF that sit on the bed of a rather snazzy router. They are viewed as a waste product and I was lucky enough to be able to get a number of bases laser cut from this material. as for making the old figures look good - it's all down to GWs talent in a can.

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  4. It's God's work healing old miniatures!

    And your banner photo is completely insane.

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    Replies
    1. Welcome Baconfat! I agree - but it does have a number of benefits! And yes, the banner photo is insane, and the collection has grown since that photo was taken in 2010.

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  5. Uncle Brian,

    Three years sounds like it is time for a new banner photo shoot.

    It makes me giggle as I imagine that's what Game Workshop's next edition Apocalypse game rules will encourage the table to look like.

    May I post the picture on my crappy blog? I've been thinking of highlighting other people's blogs once a week or so.

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    1. Hi Baconfat,
      You are welcome to use that picture in your blog. I don't think your blog is crappy - I rather like it, and I would guess that from the number of followers you have i am not alone in that.

      As to GW and Apocalypse, you may well be right. I would hate to think what the cost of putting down a table that big full of official GW product would be.

      as to a new banner shot - that is tempting, but it would take a huge amount of organisation.

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  6. I just realized, if you were to die right now, you'd win!

    You know the old dieing with the most toys saying.

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    1. From the amount of unpainted stuff I have left to do, that should be some time away. As to having lots of stuff - yes - but I have seen collections that make mine seem small by comparison.

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