27 September 2008

Empire Greatswords, part 4

A little bit of modification was in order for the standard bearer of my Greatswords unit.





I'm not yet brave enough to try a hand-painted flag, so I cut the staff from the right arm piece, just above the hand.  After a second look, I also removed the remainder of the staff that I had left above the hand.  It would be a lot easier to mount a new staff to the hand, rather than attempt to line up the two sections:



Looks reasonably straight!


And, the finished (but unpainted) product:




A little bit of decoration for the top finishes it off.

Now, for some flags.  I think that I will try to talk Feawin into helping me out with that, as she is much better with computer graphics than I am.  The base colors will be those of Nordland - blue and yellow.  I think that the flags for the core units, spearmen and swordsmen, should be a bit plain, with the veteran troops, like the Greatswords, adding some more detail.  The Army standards will need to be large and dramatic, as befitting an Army of the Empire.


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13 September 2008

The 10mm Distraction...

I received my test packs of 10mm minis from the WarStore during the week, so I thought I would post a brief review of them.



I was actually hoping to get some of the Greek selections, but they were not in stock.

Each pack comes with 30 minis.  I was a bit surprised to see that they come as individual minis; I was expecting them to be in strips like the 10mm selections from Old Glory.  I prefer individuals.  No need to cut the minis from the strips in order to match the basing style.



These minis are from pack AR1 - Early Imperial Romans.  I received 17 of the pilum-armed troops, and 13 with gladius.  There is a bit of casting debris, but all of it is easily removed.  These are really nice looking minis!  They are 11 mm from sole of foot to top of helmet.





These are the troops from pack ARP-2 Republican Roman Princeps.  Again, they are well-cast, some debris is present but it is minor.  The plumes on the helmets are rather large.



This pic includes the two command figures that are in ARP-2.  The signifier's base is small, and the mini did not want to stand up for the pic, so he is leaning up against the backdrop.  You can also see the size of the plume on one of the troops.


I am actually pleasantly surprised at the quality of these minis.  I was half-expecting that I could just use a Tékumel-style paint job as a quick and cheap conversion, but there are a reasonably accurate representation of the era.  I will not be using these as a substitute for my 28mm Tékumel minis, but I am looking forward to doing a historical project with 10mm minis in the future.


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