Rebuilding my Carthaginians

Lately, I've been digging into a pile of Punic era figures to finish a long-stalled Field of Glory project.  I sold my Mid Republican Roman army last winter and in the process, I cannibalized my Carthaginian to build out the Romans.  I planned to paint up replacement battlegroups but then along came a gladiator project, 3 Impetus armies and my Maurice Ottoman army.  After 8 months delay, here are the replacements!  All Old Glory figure.

Numidian Light Horse:  My Carthaginian cavalry is generally outclassed or ignored in my matches so I'm going to try a different approach.  I'll max out on Numidian Light Horse (3 battlegroup) and take a Numidian ally which  allows a 4th BG.  That  should be enough to tie up enemy cavalry while sending one unit after the camp. Colors are variations on a brown theme but I do like the look of these fellows all massed up.  This time through, I deduced that the small blob at the bottom of some shields is a feather!

Cretan Archers:  I trimmed the red tunics with white but it had a Santa's elves meets Candy Stripers vibe.  I switched to sky blue but a darker blue would've worked as well.

Stompies!  The upside to painting figures a second time is the opportunity to change things up. I've been doing a bit of reading (a dangerous thing!) and learned that war towers were not used in the 1st Punic War.  In the 2nd Punic War, war towers were used BUT not on every elephant.  In fact, there is a line of thought that war towers were used infrequently.  This batch will be sans towers.  After filing away the ropes, I decided to use Green Stuff to make large tusks on 2 of the ellies.  You wouldn't think this would be diifficult but in fact, its quite fiddly in 15mm.  Oh, and I added a crash helmet for one of the mahouts.   

Thureophoroi: A unit of Thureophoroi is sitting in the painting pan. These guys will be tough to paint after the Xyston Thureophoroi I painted for my Pontic army. Even by Old Glory standards, these are poor molds.  Which begs the question, when did I cross over and become a painting prima donna?

Terrain for Maurice

I recently took a look at my terrain collection and realized I need to buff up my choices for Maurice. I made a trip to a big box hardware store and bought a 4' by 2' board of mdf (aka hardboard).  I'd been buying it from a local Blicks art store and paying dearly for it.  The cheaper stuff works just as well as the high priced product so unless you're loaded, grab your mdf from a hardware store.  The only downside is I don't have a table saw and it's a bit of work to chop up a large sheet with a circular saw. Going into this, I had 3 goals for my terrain:

1.  It must look better than a piece of felt.  Some people shoot for the stars.  I aim for the ground because I can hardly miss!

2.  It must be light.  Since I rarely host a game in my house, I have to drag my 6' x4' canvass terrain mat, a box full of terrain and my armies on the road.  It's quite a load and the more terrain I make, the heavier my terrain box becomes.  So this time, I'm not putting loads of water putty onto the mdf. 

3.  It must be versatile.  My current collection of terrain was bought or made for Field of Glory.  The terrain I'm making here is for Maurice.  As time goes by, there'll be more rules and systems to play so ideally, I want this to work under multiple rulesets.

First up was a marsh. You're thinking that right away, I violated Rule #3.  It's hard to pretend a marsh is anything other than a marsh but I made so it's sized to work under both Maurice and Field of Glory (if I push all 3 pieces together).

I mixed up a thick batch of water putty, smeared it on the mdf and dropped bark in to give it visual interest.  Then I covered it with a dark brown basecoat with dark green in the low spots where the  Woodland Scenics Water Effects will go. After it dried, I put a wash of diluted brown ink over it to muddy up the water.  Then some flocking and I've got marshes.  

British Dragoons for Maurice

I've been thinking of painting up a 2nd Maurice army to serve as a loaner for my friends who game only Ancients.  I'm thinking this might tempt them to game in the Era of Gentlemen and Philosophers, even though these fellows can hardly be mistaken for gentlemen.They're hard-pressed to put on a pair of pants before venturing into public, such is their love for the Gauls. Coarse as they are, my ancients-loving friends might one day be persuaded to serve as bayonet holders for my Ottoman army.

As I was looking at the options for Seven Years War armies, it dawned on me that I'd never painted a tricorn hat.  And wasn't that #22 on my bucket list?  Good lord, time to stop procrastinating and get my lace on! My friend Mark was working on his British-inspired ImagiNation army so I asked if he had any units I could train on, er, paint up.  As luck would have it, he had a dandy SYW British Dragoon unit in the wings.

The beauty of painting outside your comfort zone is that, well, it's outside your comfort zone. The downside is that there are probably ten good reasons why it's outside your comfort zone.  For me, I haven't read much on the Seven Years War and I had no reference material for the armies or era.  I sent Mark a text asking if he had any inspirational material for his British Hussars.  Oooops. Wrong word.  I learned that Hussars and Dragoons don't mix, unless it's on a battlefield.  After a bit of bumbling out of the gate, here are the results:

These Old Glory figs are crisp and loaded of detail. To my surprise, I discovered that each Dragoon carried more gear into battle than paratroopers took into Normandy.  A brace of pistols, a musket, a sword, three separate ammo packs and a bed roll.  They were Death on Hooves. If I do paint up a SYW  army, I'll be ordering it from OG.

Next week, I'll try to turn this mdf board into terrain for Maurice.

Maurice Ottoman Army finished!

I wanted to do Janissary in black.  Of course, black by itself would have left the figures looking like I'd primed them and put them on the tabletop. So it was black, dark grey highlight and a lighter grey highlight after that.  In other words, not too black when you're finished!  Here and now, grey is my new black.

And the inspiration.

No matter the continent, century or cut of cloth, combatants always look crisp in crimson.  I think it holds true here.

Inspiration:

9 foot, 4 cavalry, 3 irregular foot and 5 cannons-the Maurice Ottomans massed up.

That's enough to give me plenty of options in my campaigns so I'm calling the Ottoman Project bitirdim (if you guessed finished, you are a clever lad or lass).  In retrospect, I could have build this army to more closely parallel its 18th century counterpart.  I'm embarrassed to admit this didn't cross my mind when I started out down this road. I didn't realize OG carries a Seven Years War Ottoman line or that the SYW figs are in marching order.  What I've done is painted up an army and at the finish, realized that technically, I'm on the Imagi-Nation road.  It was a short drive and I rather like the view.  I'm now ready to get a campaign going so all is good.

As is my habit, we'll exit the brief Ottoman Project with The Pogues "Turkish Song of the Damned."  Here's hoping Mark's British army will be doing the two step off the table's edge when they meet my Ottomans in Maurice!

Ottoman Janissary for Maurice

This weekend, I had the pleasure of playing my second game of Maurice.  It was a nail-biter with the game going down to the wire. The deciding rolls were preceded by good-natured hooting, hollering and high fives.  Before you deduce that we're a bunch of hooligans, let me just say Maurice is flat out fun to play.  It's so much fun that it's pushed everything else we play off the plate.

The game is driven by action cards used to activate forces and modify actions on the field.  I grew up in the era of wargaming without cards and as a result, I sometimes view card driven games with a bit of suspicion. No more.  The  action cards are where Maurice shines.  Each player has a hand of cards and actions/activations on the field cause you to use your cards.  As the active player, you are limited in which forces you can activate and use.  During your turn, your opponent can play a card that interrupts an action or activity.  This means that every turn unfolds with surprises, a punch and often a counterpunch. At the same time, you have to pace yourself because you don't want to run out of cards and have your attack or decisive action thwarted.  No cards means no actions for a turn.

Maurice also incorporate a system where you can choose the national attributes for your army, meaning that one army can  have a different style of play in each campaign.  This is in contrast to Field of Glory and other systems where you have to paint up a whole new army if you're looking for a different style of play.

After our first game in June, my friends Mark and Brent agreed to paint up Maurice armies in 15mm to run in an Imagi-Nation campaign.  I realized that I could use much of my 15mm Later Ottoman Turkish army in Maurice including:

• 5 wicked looking pieces of Ottoman heavy artillery  
• 4 units Ottoman cavalry
• 4 Ottoman command stands
• 2 Irregular units

With these units in hand, I only needed 9 units of infantry to complete my Ottomans for Maurice.  I put in an order for 160 Old Glory Janissary and out came the brushes! For my first batch of 5 units, I painted the base color in a dark blue, then a wash shadows, a mid tone and a highlight over the mid tone.  I generally don't do triads in 15mm as it's a bit of work for a smallish payout.  I think the results here are decent if subtle. The highlight does help them pop a bit and in 15mm, that's an effect I like. You can judge for yourself.    

For the sake of the photos, I put them in column but most of the time, they'll be fighting in a single line of 4 bases.  For the hard core Maurice folks, you'll notice that my Janissary are in a single line per base.  I did try to base them in a double line but I didn't account for the fact that 50% of the Old Glory figures are in firing poses.  As such, you can't properly mount a double line of figures on a single 40mm x 30mm base.  In the 17th century, the Ottomans were a throwback army so I'll attribute their odd appearance to that fact.  If you want to build an Ottoman army with a double line per base, pass on these Old Glory 15s and find a line that does Janissary in march order.

Edit:  Its been pointed out that there is in fact an OG line with marching Janissary.  You have to do a word search for "Janissaries" and it'll turn up the SYW Ottomans.  No photos available on the website so I'm taking this on the word of someone who told me on TMP.  Thanks for the correction!

Here was my inspiration for these units.

1 year!

Time to crack a beer in celebration, maybe 2 because it's the weekend.  To my readers, thank you!  I started blogging because I wanted to get back into the practice of writing. Also, I knew posting pictures of my miniatures would motivate me in my projects.  One year later, blogging has been a success on both counts.  I've also discovered that if you ask, fellow hobbyists are always willing give feedback and share tips & tricks.  There is so much talent in our field that it's really quite humbling.

If you've linked to my blog and I haven't linked back, shoot me an email so I can fix that. Also, blogging is about eyeballs so if you'd like to cross link blogs, just let me know! My email is in my profile.

I searched for the best birthday photo I could find and here it is...Marilyn Monroe in a dress that was sewn on.  I'm hoping she'll breathlessly sing "Happy Birthday, Mr. Painterman" to me in my dreams.  I do have a very active imagination.  After all, that's why I'm in this hobby!

Enough with the tomfoolery.  I'll start posting my Maurice Ottoman Army project later this week and then after that, I'll post my Impetus Gauls.

Road Trip Pt 2 -Schwimmwagen!

Long Island, NY: At the conclusion of Part 1 of the Road Trip, I was facing a return trip to NY for 2 days of work on Long Island.  Traffic stacked up as I got closer to the Big Apple.  Then the sky opened up and  down came a torrential  rain. Traffic slowed to 20 miles an hour, then 10 and then we were at a complete standstill. Inching forward, I saw a 3 foot geyser of water shooting up and out of a manhole onto the freeway.  Old Faithful, Long Island edition, was turning the freeway into a river.  Every driver was locked in a Darwinian struggle to survive by forcing their way into the high point on the freeway, the center lane.  With my Minnesota plates, the natives took pity on me and politely waved me in...NOT!  As I sat stuck in the rising river, I started to sweat.  My car was less than a month old.  I hadn't made my first payment and if the water got up into the engine block, it would become a $20,000 brick.  I cursed the rain. I cursed the gypsy who'd cursed me. I cursed my decision to buy a Toyota Camry instead of the World War II Schwimmwagen. Wasn't this exactly the situation the salesman warned me about? And wouldn't the M42 machine gun have helped open up a spot in the center lane?  When I finally forced my way in, sans machine gun, it was hydroplaning and white knuckle driving for the next two hours. Welcome to Long Island and enjoy your workcation!

Long Island is no trouble to navigate with a Schwimmwagen!

Long Island Railroad:  My family had some much needed down time on Long Island and we were told the best way to get into Manhattan was by train. After grabbing seats on the train, my wife, son and daughter sat in quiet contemplation. Quiet got off at the next stop and in its place came loads of 20somethings, swigging alcoholic beverages in brown paper sacks. Alcohol on a train?  I assumed it was prohibited but in a strange twist of fate, drinking on this date was mandatory!  The group across from us was loud even by NYC standards. Not all learning takes place in a classroom and my teenage kids got loads of it during the 90 minute ride.  Every story was peppered with the words "naked," "drunk" and "vomited,"...sometimes all three back to back! We'd apparently booked the same car as the cast of "Jersey Shore." Once the train reached standing room only, the drunken cacophony was off the charts loud.  A bottle of Champagne was "popped" and a passenger screamed "I've been shot!" I wished I'd been shot as a ride in an ambulance with sirens going would have been much, much quieter.  

I once worked as a trained investigator but my powers of observation  failed me on this day. Not my wife.  She looked on her iPhone and in short order, flashed it at me showing that today was the NYC Gay Pride parade. We were riding the Pride train!  Of course, how did I miss that!  For those of you not in the know (i.e. me) the NYC Pride parade is the largest in the nation and nearly all of the revelers were taking the train.  The parade marked the first anniversary of same-sex marriage in NY, so there was much to celebrate.  As we exited in Manhattan, there were many shouts of "Happy Pride!" although I couldn't hear them on account of having gone deaf during the ride.  I only wish I'd known beforehand so I could have dressed appropriately and brought my own alcohol.

Long Island Ferry:  After 2 harrowing days of work, I walked onto a main road and waited for my family to pick me up.  It was 4:00 and I'd booked a 5:00 ferry to get us off Long Island.  Brilliant plan, right?  Except I didn't account for the cruel gypsy who had it in for me. The first sign of our impending debacle was a call from my daughter saying they were at my work address and couldn't see me.  Well, it wasn't like I'd turned invisible.  I was the only idiot standing on the shoulder of  four-laner in rush hour.  Our refurbished GPS, El Diablo, had dialed up a random location again...arggg!  I walked a block to a residential address and told my daughter to punch it into the GPS.  Then I waited. And waited.  And waited.  Finally, the family car showed up and off we go to Port Jefferson for the ferry.  According to MapQuest, we were fine because the drive takes 20 minutes and we had 40 minutes till the ferry left. MapQuest didn't take into account that the traffic lights on Long Island aren't timed. We rolled from one red light to another until the clock showed 4:58.

Hallelujah!  We could see the Ferry but not which parking lot to load from.  We took a left which naturally was the wrong way.  I asked a native girl how to get to the Ferry but she'd been struck with an affliction that made her speak like she had a mouthful of marbles. Desperate, we circled around.  My helpful suggestions to my wife were not going over well as we made another U-turn. Out loud, I speculated that the Ferry was only for Mentalists who can close their eyes and divine their way out of the maze.  Or perhaps you have to take a Ferry to get to the Ferry? My wife found these clever observations "not helpful," except that she said it nn the manner of a salty sea sailor who, by the way, could actually find and operate a Ferry.  I shut up and lo and behold, we stumbled on a line of cars loading onto the Ferry.  We were the very last car to board!  A nice young man waved us to the left, changed his mind and then waved us to the center lane.  My wife hesitated and the young man made the mistake of saying "Come on, come on!" with vigorous arm waving.  That was all it took for my wife  (aka Mount Pinatubo) to erupt.  She stopped the car, rolled down her window and yelled "Excuse me!!!  I've never done THIS before!"  My kids groaned with embarrassment and I feared she'd get us booted.  This being New York, it was just another exchange between denizens and no blood meant no foul.  The fact that'd we'd made it on to the Ferry AND our car did not roll into the ocean meant that finally, the gypsy curse was broken.

At this point, I was not in a New York state of mind.    

The last 4 days of our trip passed without a major incident. Boston was a gem of a city, our collective favorite. To all of you Boston gamers, keep a spot warm for me because I might be back to live there one day!  With a few hours to sightsee, we took a tour of the USS Constituion and then walked Bunker Hill.  Then off to Rochester, NY and a brutal two day drive home.  On the way back, my son said it had been the best family vacation ever and my daughter said it had been the worst.  Technically, they both were right.

14 days, 9 cities, 7 colleges.  Despite the Fates conspiring against us, we survived.  What is the saying?  Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  We were like titanium at the finish line.  Hell bent for home, nothing could stop us from returning to our city, our friends and family, our dog, and most importantly, our own beds.  Lost in the telling were hours of family time.  Stuck in a car for 9, 10 or more hours at a stretch,  we had the privilege of hours-long adult conversations with our teenage son and daughter.  I'll always treasure our crazy road trip and the time we spent together as a family.

The Happy Family.  We survived!

In the Pan

I'm fairly methodical in my painting habits.  I usually finish one project before moving to the next.  I work like this because of a genetic disorder that causes me to obsess unnecessarily over order and disorder.  My clothes are organized by season, style and color so why not use those same techniques with my painting?

Right now, I'm getting a little wild and crazy. I've got 200+ figures cluttering my workspace in various states of done.  24 Numidian lights just need shields to be finished and then they're ready to be based.  But nooo, I had to go off and start painting loads of Janissary musketmen for a Maurice army.  Ancients and gunpower era side by side on the painting table-this madness has got to stop!

Next week, I'll post  the second and final installment of the College Roadtrip.  Then it's back to the projects!

A broiler pan from our stove doubles as a painting queue.  Don't tell the Mrs! 

Wild wild horses, we'll ride them some day.

Hey, its not like we can paint ourselves.  Get cracking!

Road trip + gypsy curse!

I've mentioned that my son wants to be a composer.  Here in America, our music conservatories are on the East Coast and we live in the Midwest.  Since my son is 17 and off to college next year, it was time for a college road trip to scout out his top choices.  Our first challenge was his list of 7 colleges to visit. I was thinking of a number between 1 and 3 but my son had different ideas.  Clever boy, he formed a cabal with my  wife which I could not crack, dent or negotiate with.  Cabal 1- Dad 0!  In a portent of things to come, there was a meltdown at work that required an impromptu and immediate visit to Long Island, NY.  Since I going to be in the area anyway, we rearranged a few of my son's college visits so I could squeeze 2 work days into our family road trip vacation. Yea work!

A reasonable reproduction of my family just before launch.

I believe good planning, organization and a GPS will see you through a big trip like this and why not?  It's worked for me every other family vacation we've taken.  I don't believes in ghosts, voodoo or bad mojo. Nevertheless, I began to suspect that we were operating under a gypsy curse due to daily misfires, mistakes, challenges and even debacles. Want proof? 

Baltimore, MD:  The hotel in Baltimore was nice, being right across from a baseball park.  Unfortunately, there was a motorcycle rally nearby. The Harley Davidson crowd believes that the louder their glass pack muffler, the less likely it is that a car will drive over them.  These overage and oversized rough riders were roaring up and down the avenue in front of our hotel all night long.  I lost 5 years of my hearing and a full night's sleep on that stop.

Philadelphia, PA:  We drove into downtown during rush hour.  In Philadelphia, the downtown streets are extremely narrow on account of the thinness of its citizens.  Apparently a lifetime of eating Philly cheese steak subs with cheez whiz has caused the good citizens to waste away to next to nothing, much like their roads. Despite a brand-new talking GPS, I could not find our hotel. As it turns out, it was a brownstone walk-up with no parking, pullout, doorman or anything at all that might signal that yes, this is a hotel!  I had to unload the luggage from the trunk of my car in bumper-to-bumper traffic, blocking up the right lane entirely while the locals gave me a brotherly "Hello!" honk on the car horn.

Once we got to our room, we opened the door to see...a single bed for our family of four.  I called dibs but the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the rest of the crew was such that my wife went down to the lobby to explore our options.  No, we could not have a cot or pullout due to a supposed "fire code."  Yes, they had one room left and if we didn't pay for it quickly, some other schlep was going to buy it out from under us and we'd have to sleep in the streets. Ca-$$$-Ching! Sold to the weary family from out of town! When my son and I went down to our room, we named it "The Mole Hole." The room was a long hallway, thin (like the local citizens) and dark.  All it lacked was worms!

May I bring your bags up to your room?

New York, NY: The closer you get to New York City, the worse the traffic gets. In a huge stack of cars crossing the George Washington Bridge, I glanced nervously at my GPS.  A decision point-GPS said to take a left but the signs said to take a right?  Did I see that right?  I had seconds to decide.  In a panic, I threw the decision to my wife by belting out "Which way, honey?!!"  She fretted and mumbled so I stuck with the GPS, which naturally was a huge mistake.  I found myself on a series of descending ramps taking me to Manhattan at rush hour.  

I'm normally a calm, cool, and collected gent.  I rarely swear.  The verbal dam burst as the reality of my mistake sank in.  I was driving into the heart of the carpocalypse known as Manhattan.  At rush hour.  F bombs peppered the air as I cursed my GPS and then the satellite which couldn't send a signal to the GPS as it kept repeating "Recalculating!  Recalculating!  Recalculating!" without it doing anything of the sort.  After 10 harrowing minutes, it finally threw me onto a side street and back up to the George Washington Bridge, one slow-moving block at a time. Cruel gypsy!  The swear jar would be filled to the brim after this one.  

I'm the blue car in the middle.  No, not that one...

New Haven, CT:  New Haven showed some promise as an interesting spot on the map but then the curse kicked in.  I picked a restaurant that served something we don't have a lot of in Minnesota-soul food.  The neighborhood was a tough one and the restaurant didn't have air conditioning on a night that was 90 degrees.   We didn't let that dissuade us. We sat and talked and talked and talked. After an hour of talking, I saw an employee stroll in with a bag of groceries that I'm certain contained the ingredients for our dinners. Dinner took so long to serve that we were rushed to find and visit the Lighthouse my daughter was looking forward to. I tried to punch it into GPS but being a lighthouse, it didn't have a street address.  Desperate and trying to beat the sunset, we drove in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean but of course, we couldn't find it. I mean, its only a lighthouse.  On the beach. How easy are those to find?  We did find ourselves in a terrible neighborhood with competing dealers on street corners.  I was wondering if I was being a little paranoid when one of my kids said "Mom, you have got to get us out of here.  What are you THINKING???" Yes, it was that scary.  Even so, I was tempted to roll down my window and ask "Mr. Dealer, sir, do you have anything for gypsy curses?  No?  How about stressful vacations?"  Sometimes your best adventure awaits you on the path not taken.  

As I was dragging our luggage down to the lobby the next morning, I saw a huge road construction machine working the street in front of the hotel.  I remember my Spidey senses tingling and a thought like "Uh, oh, this can't be good."  My wife pulled in with our car and the machine proceeded to dig a 3 foot trench in the road we needed to exit on.  Really, I would not have been surprised if Gandalf himself had popped out of the trench in a hardhat, an orange blazer, and a "STOP" sign in hand, shouting "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!" Ho-hum, another day, another obstacle.  7 days down, 7 to go and that cruel gypsy was not finished with us yet.  To be continued...

Field of Glory 2-which way forward?

Field of Glory was first published in 2008 and by the fall of 2010, the authors started collecting feedback for version 2. It's been rumored the update would be published this summer but there's no official announcement on their website.  In the meantime, the FoG forum is rife with speculation. There was an post heralding a big announcement coming in June, which has since slipped to July.  The player base is restless and getting more anxious by the week. They want to know if there'll be changes to the basing system.  They want to know what the significant changes are before painting up new troops.  Rumor has it that Romans might not be quite so powerful and/or that barbarian armies might be a bit more powerful.  It's also said that Light Horse won't be quite so good in version 2.  Until the update goes to print, all this uncertainty fuels speculation and spirited debate over the merits of the changes the authors might make. 

4 years on, some of the FoG regulars have moved to other systems and eras. Others, like Madaxeman, (the fellow who maintains the excellent FoG wikis) left FoG Ancients for FoG Renaissance on the grounds that it's a superior system.  When  version 2 is published, some will undoubtedly be disappointed to see their favorite army, troop type or style of play negatively impacted and quit the rules entirely. Others will continue to use the original rules. Those who purchase version 2 will determine the success or failure of the revision by putting it to use (or not) on the tabletop.  Unfortunately, the publishing of the revision will likely continue the winnowing process that is currently under way.

I think our local gaming group, Twin Cities Field of Glory, illustrates the challenge.  Our group has been around since 2009 and as our title hints, FoG is the only rules we play. Our events are held in a public venue in hopes that we can turn some of the lookers into players.  Also, we announce our events in an email blast to a local Yahoo miniatures group. In the last year, we failed to recruit a single new member and worse, three members drifted off.  Interest in our FoG ReCon event hit an all-time low this spring when we couldn't agree on what we were doing until a week before the event.  Members complained that a three game tournament was too tiring so we dialed it back to two 600 point game.  Proving that you can't please everyone, the 600 point format went over very well with everyone except one player who railed against it before, during and after the event. Sigh.  

After ReCon, I tried to jumpstart our moribund club by proposing league play, 600 point double matches and a FoG Renaissance demo. I also suggested we open up our club to non-FoG gaming.  Four months later, not one of my suggestions has come to fruition and our club is closer than ever to extinction. Like the Righteous Brothers sang, "You've lost that loving feeling."  Can the authors bring it back with version 2? I surely hope so but in the meantime, I've decided to start seeing other people, I mean, playing other rules.  

Hell yes, you can join our club!  

How does your gaming group communicate?

Our gaming group is communication challenged. We announce the date and time of our meets via email but typically, only one or two members respond to the request for a headcount.  Consequently, we have no idea who'll show up until the day of the event.  The lack of feedback hamstrings our ability to plan. One members recently volunteered to run a special event in August but only two people confirmed so that special event is likely off.  I asked the guys via email if there's another format they'd rather use for communicating club business but ironically,  I received no response.  Communication FAIL! That's the setup for today's poll:

How does your gaming group communicate?

3 Legions ranked up

Every project should start with a good deal of planning. Upstream planning prevents downstream headaches, like discovering your army is too small or the troop mix is not quite what you need.  In case you haven't noticed, I'm lecturing myself.

When I painted up my Mid Republican Romans in January, I went small. I was eager to move on and paint my  Pontics so I quit the Romans early. As my Pontic army grew, I realized I needed to circle back and buff up my Romans so that they could be the equal of the Pontics on the field of battle.  Smack in the middle of my other projects, I stopped to order up and paint Triarii, more Hastati, Pricipes and Velites so I could field 3 large legions in Impetus. The upside is, they do look sharp all massed up!  Corinth, bar the gates.  The boys are back in town!

Firemonkeyboy posted photos of his excellent command stands for his Impetus army.  The rules don't require them but I liked the look enough that I did the same. Like the Romans used to say, in for a Solidus, in for a Denarius!

Roman camp, 3 legions and now command stands...I declare the Roman project finito. And we'll exit to the exquisite harmonies of Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson singing "Roam." Seriously, there isn't a lot of Roman themed pop music that I could think of so this will have to do.