Well, here we are again. I have painted a couple of blisters of Foundry figures - a Roman slave trader, plus slaves and Roman customers - and a set of Gallic civilians. Photos to follow soon.
I am expecting some dromedarii (Roman camel riders) to arrive from Warlord for painting ‘real soon now’. Alas, there seems almost no evidence for their use in Britannia, so I’ll paint and base them for use in North Africa or the Middle East. I have a few more legionaries, and auxiliaries, which I may finish the same way - then I just need a few Parthians or something, and some ‘desert’ terrain. There are still a few things to come from Warlord - like Macro and Cato (from the series of novels by Simon Scarrow), engineers; more cavalry; an onager; hopefully an elephant. So I won’t be giving up Romans, but the rate of release isn’t high enough to keep me happy painting - and my armies are ‘finished’ enough for some cracking good games as it is, so I don’t really need to paint more units - it really would just be painting for painting’s sake.
So, I am starting my Crusades project. I have bought a shelf-load of books over the past week, and the ‘Director’s Cut’ of “Kingdom of Heaven” (my primary source material!). I have also ordered some infantry for both sides - some Later Crusader figures from Gripping Beast, and some Arabs from Musketeer Miniatures, together with the (inevitable?) shield transfers from LBMS. The Gripping Beast figures have arrived already, with half the transfers. Very nice they look too - I’m going to paint these up as (rather ‘Hollywood’) Templars (they’ll be nice and easy to paint - lots of chainmail plus white surcoats won’t over-tax me!). I’ve decided to use the Knights/Sergeants variants as knights. I want the Crusader figures to look slightly earlier than the Gripping Beast’s range is intended to be. By leaving out most of the figures with great helms, that aim is more or less achieved, even if there are a few too many kettle hats. Poor knights will probably be represented by Normans, or early Crusaders, when I get around to it.
And I am thinking about terrain - palm trees (okay, the Middle East has ‘proper’ trees, but I want palm trees - I did say this was going to be heavily influenced by Hollywood didn’t I?), and desert terrain boards (which will, incidentally, come in handy for the dromedarii above, as well as the 3rd Century Romans and ‘desert Frontier’ tribesmen I painted a few years ago). It’s all getting me rather excited. It’s going to be very different to the Roman Britain project, which is no bad thing.
Thursday, 18 June 2009
