Hindu Indians

Hi,

The following images show a DBA army-worth of Hindu Indians from a larger force I'm re-basing for a demo game I have planned for later this year (more on that over the next few months).
All of the miniatures are from Essex - I'd originally bought 3 DBA armies during a 3 for 2 sale they had a while back, but some of the figure choices provided weren't quite what I wanted so I've added to them since, buying individual packs here & there..

Anyway, first up we have a couple of images of the entire army arrayed. This particular DBA list, III/10c, allows for an artillery piece in place of one of the elephants and although I have painted up the bombard I'm not 100% happy with it. I've since bought some rocketeers which I feel better represent the artillery option, and I'll add those in once I've painted them up.

Next, the general and the elephants. I posted more images of the General's elephant in an earlier post, showing off the hand drawn details on the howdah canopy.

This section of the army can intimidate opponents, unsettling them before the battle has even started, and have the potential to win battles on their own. Used incorrectly however, they can become a liability.

I kept the saddle blankets simple. I've seen some beautifully painted elephant blankets on other miniatures, but I didn't feel confident enough to do them justice (I'll keep practising though).

These elephants come with 4 javelinmen & a driver (there's also an option to have bow armed crew) but aesthetically I prefer 2.

To break up the mass of greyish-brown, and to give the elephants a bit of individuality I painted flesh coloured areas on the trunks and ears to represent the de-pigmentation that can occur on Indian elephants.

Now we have the cavalry. I went with the unbarded horses here, choosing to use the barded cavalry miniatures a Rajput nobles in another command.

The bowmen. These are your core troops - excellent v's mounted opponents, but you need to protect them from heavier foot.

Essex provide a mix of poses which gives them a nice irregular feel. They are simple to paint (I managed 24 elements worth in 2 evenings) and look effective en-masse.

The Blade and Psiloi elements. The psiloi are effective at seizing and holding areas of rough going and can, with some luck and support, take out opposing elephants. The blade give you a means of going toe-to-toe with heavy enemy foot.

Finally we have the camp. This is a Persian command tent from Baueda painted up in red & green to match the colour scheme running through the army.

thanks for looking, and enjoy!!

Bob Mcleish

Hindu Command Elephant

As well as working on my 15mm AB napoleonics for DBN, I've been working away at re-basing, and adding to, my Hindu Indians for DBA/DBMM and possibly (although i'll have to check the lists) Tony Aguilar's brilliant DBA-RRR. It's also likely that elements of this army will see some HoTT action (the club I've started playing with tend to do 15mm HoTT).
Anyway, I recently finished an additional command elephant and thought I'd share a couple of photographs. The miniature is from Essex. The elephant's pose is a bit static, but I quite like that - it conveys a sense of a slow, purposeful advance. There are 3 head variants available within this code so there's a bit of variety there, but I would prefer it if Essex added even 1 other pose for the mahout and the command figure in the Howdah.
I painted the elephant with GW's Charadon Granite, a nice brownish grey colour. I didn't bother highlighting this, and just gave it a wash with my Klear floor polish & Peat Brown ink mix. For the Howdah and saddle cloth I've kept with the red, white & green colour scheme I've used with the rest of the army. GW's Dark Angels Green with Snot Green highlights, and Vallejo's Black Red & Carmine Red. To break up the expanse of grey I've been going backs and adding flesh coloured mottles and markings to all of my Elephants trunks and ears. For this I used the Foundry 3 colour flesh (5A,B & C).
The design on the Howdah canopy was drawn on freehand with a soft pencil before being painted. I've just started experimenting with freehand stuff and, although I'm happy with the results, I expect to see improvement over time..
The terrain in the background are some marsh & jungle sections I'm working on specifically for this army.
Anyway, that's it for now. Enjoy!

Bob Mcleish

Napoleonics - Peninsular basing

Hi,

After a few solo games of DBN I'm convinced they're the Napoleonic rule set of choice for me; smallish armies mean I won't get bogged down, and ultimately lose interest in, large painting projects, and it means I can, in a relatively short space of time, put together armies for the 2 campaigns that interest me most; the Peninsula and Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Russia.

Having finally settled on a ruleset I've started re-basing my 15mm Napoleonics for use with DBN rules; all of the elements are on a 40mm frontage, with the majority of the infantry on 20mm deep bases.

My usual basing colour scheme of black/graveyard earth/bone wouldn't really work for the more arid Spanish peninsula, so I needed to find some colours that worked. A recent Wargames Illustrated (#263) focused on Desert warfare and contained a feature on desert basing colour schemes. They suggested 4 colour palettes none of which was specifically designed with Spain in mind, so I just went with the one that I found most aesthetically appealing. I ordered the relevant colours from Maelstrom Games here in the UK (decent prices and free P&P) and started gluing figures to bases..

The paints arrived and, as usual, I decided to finish one base completely to make sure it was the effect I wanted.

I covered the base with PVA glue, dipped it into a box of sand and set it aside to dry. I started off by painting it black, followed by a heavy drybrush of Vallejo's English uniform (921), when this wa sdry a lighter drybrush of Vallejo Green Ochre was applied (914), with a final drybrush of Vallejo Dark Sand (847) to finish off. Once this was dry I glued on some small patches of GF9 parched Straw static grass, and a couple of clumps of GF9 Spring Undergrowth flock. Finally I glued on a small piece of olive coloured shrubbery (from a big bag of Woodland scenics foliage I think)

I'm quite pleased with the effect and will use this colour scheme to produce some matching terrain..

Best regards

Bob Mcleish

Napoleonics

Hi,

Today I painted up 4 Peninsular British infantry for my DBN army. The figures are by AB and, along with some of the Fantassin ranges, are probably the best looking 15mm Napoleonics around (although they're closer to 18mm).

The bulk of my 15mm Napoleonics were bought painted - the prospect of all that lace and fiddly crossbelts, just didn't appeal. I was also underwhelmed at my previous attempt; painting some Battle Honours Brits a couple of years ago. Anyway, I'm quite pleased with todays result and have some Highlanders undercoated and waiting on my painting table for tomorrow.

Regards

Bob Mcleish

Jungle Shrine

Hi,

I thought you might like to see the overgrown "Jungle Shrine" terrain piece I've recently finished. The Psiloi element on the steps uses 15mm Indian Javelinmen from Essex Miniatures.

I got the statue figurine for £3.00 from the homeware section of a discount department store a while back, but it had just sat on my gaming shelf gathering dust waiting to be used.

I was getting close to finishing off my Hindu Indian BBDBA/DBMM army and the desire to make some army specific terrain and baggage was just the inspiration I needed..

The jungle plants are sections of artificial aquarium plants from a local Tropical Fish store, and the base is 2.5mm MDF, with the edges & paving stones shaped with a craft knife. Once I'd glued the statue to the base I undercoated the whole thing black (the statue was originally a garish gold colour), and simply drybrushed it with gradually lighter greys. I then washed some areas of the statue and steps with GW's Thraka Green wash to give an impression of lichen and mould on the stone. As I wanted to convey a sense that this shrine had been neglected, or forgotten, and was gradually succumbing to the ravages of the jungle I glued sand onto the steps, and added plants and static grass in areas where I thought windborne seeds would gain a foothold.

At 160mm x 120mm it is makes a good sized Built Up Area (BUA) for DBA & DBM.

bye for now..

Bob Mcleish

A quick update

Hi all,

It's scary to think that I haven't posted anything here since July!
The last few months have fairly flown by and in that period my life has undergone a couple of changes; most significantly the birth of my son Arlo on the 12th of October. He's gorgeous, and I love him to bits, but I still can't fathom quite how someone that small, and who sleeps so much, can consume so much of your day...!?
The 2nd change relates to my work situation - basically a major restructuring at work provided me with the opportunity to take Voluntary Redundancy. Arlo's birth, a decent VR package and a desire to work for myself made the decision quite easy and I finished work on the 20th of November. I'm treating the time between now and the New Year as a bit of a holiday before knuckling down and getting my business up and running early in 2010.
Despite not being at work I've found it very difficult to actually find time to sit down and paint some miniatures although, as Janine is keen to point out, I still seem capable of finding more than enough time to buy more miniatures, rules and other "wargaming rubbish"..!
T'was ever thus!!

However, I have emerged from this gaming & painting hiatus; joining the Wakefield & Ossett wargames group. They meet weekly and play a wide range of games & periods. I've been along twice now, getting my 6mm Early Imperial Romans into action against Ian's nice 6mm Sarmatians one week, and controlling a couple of commands of some Chinese army in a game of DBM last week. My recent DBx gaming had mainly been DBMM, so I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed playing DBM 3.1 (which used to make my head hurt) - compared to the myriad factors and bound specific outcomes of DBMM, DBM 3.1 was refreshingly straight forward and I look forward to playing it again soon (just as soon as I've unlearned some DBMM stuff!!)

HoTT-wise, I've managed to pick up another pair of old style GW Dwarf Gyrocopters which, once painted, will give me the option to field a significant aerial threat.
Other recent purchases are a bit "rule heavy" and include the Piquet: Hostile Realms Fantasy rules - they're en-route from the US, but I'll post my initial thoughts once I've got them and had a read through. I've also bought a copy of the Age of Eagles rules, which are based on the popular Fire & Fury ACW rules. I've read through them and they show a lot of potential - I'm playing Fire & Fury tomorrow night which should give me an idea of how AoE will work in practice.

During a visit to Go Outdoors with my dad in October I found, in their fishing tackle section, a Prologic tackle case which could have been designed with 15mm DBx armies in mind; 5x compartmented trays, 2x smaller trays in side pockets (perfect for dice, counters etc) and an A5 sized zipped top section (currently housing terrain) - as if all that wasn't enough it has an internal pocket which is the perfect size for DBA/DBM rules and army list books. No doubt it will strike some as a bit "nerdy" - getting excited by a "box", but I've always found storage of armies a real pain in the backside!! I'll post some photographs and more product details within the next couple of days.

Anyway, that's it for now..

Bob

6mm DBA interlude...

Hi again,

Despite my best efforts I was ambushed, distracted and ultimately sidetracked by the F1 Grand Prix and "Le Tour". An afternoon hogging the TV for minority interest sports come at a price, and I had to do a number of chores afterwards before I could get the paints out.

So, the Dwarf miners remain, for the moment, unfinished..

Anyway, over on the Fanaticus site I mentioned that I would post some photographs here of my 6mm Early Imperial Roman DBA Army, so here we go..

First off a couple of images of the army arrayed. There are a few options within the Early Imperial Roman force but I decided to keep it simple to start with as I planned on using it to introduce my son to DBA. With this in mind I went with 3x Cv, 4x Ax, 4x Bd and 1x Art. The figures are all from Baccus who, in my view, produce the best 6mm figures around..

Next we have the 4x Auxilia elements (Ax in DBA). These guys are great for clearing bad going and half decent in the open too. The DBA rulebook suggests doubling the number of 6 mm figures per base but I found this unsatisfactory for foot and opted instead to use how ever many figures looked right. In the case of Ax I used 3 strips of 4 figures, giving 12 per base and allowing me to easily identify them from the rear - sometimes an issue with 6mm figures (especially given my eyesight)

Now the backbone of most Roman armies, the Legionaries. These have 4x strips of 4 figures per base, giving the impression of a large body of close formed troops. I didn't bother with lightning bolts etc on the shield, feeling that they weren't worth the effort at this scale, particularly when viewed from 2 -3 feet..

The cavalry, including the General element. I decided to stick with the suggested number of figures per base for the mounted troops. 6 figures look good and fit nicely on the base.

Last up, the compulsory Artillery piece. Nice little models that were easy to assemble and quick to paint.

These were all based using my standard technique, although I didn't use the longer static grass.

take care

Bob Mcleish