More Austrian Infantry

1st Division, III Corps

Here's the latest from the painting bench, 88 Autrian line infantrymen. I finished these about a week and a half ago.

Historical Gaming Club: Caesar in Gaul

The historical gaming club met on Saturday for another Warhammer Ancient Battles game, this time pitting 1000 points of Marian Romans against the same strength of Gauls.  Seven students came to the game, but we only had room for four commanders, so we ended up playing two seperate games.  I provided the figures.

1st Game Gallic Commanders: Matt and Josh

1st Game Roman Commanders: Sam and Caleb

Romans Advance the Skirmishers

Gallic Cavalry Charges the Numidian Horse

Gallic Battle Line Advances

Roman Battle Line Moves to Engage

Gallic Cavalry Destroys the Numidians

Roman Infantry Try to Shore up the Flank

Gallic Cavalry Break and Run

Gallic Infantry Charge Roman Skirmishers!

Gauls Destroy the Roman Right, Sweep into Roman Rear

Gallic Veterans Lap around Roman Legionaries

Gallic Infantry Break the Roman Left

The first game resulted in a resounding Gallic victory.  The Gauls used their weight of numbers to crush the Roman left flank.  Some astonishingly unlucky Roman dice rolls resulted in the complete destruction of their line.

Game 2 Gallic Commanders: Jonah and Parker

Clash of Infantry in the Center

Roman Legionaries v. Gallic Warriors

The Romans Start to Break

The Roman Line Collapses

I often read how hard it is to win with barbarian armies.  That hasn't been our experience.

The individual barbarian warrior has the exact same combat stats as a Roman legionary.  He has a saving roll of 6, while the Roman saves on a 4, 5, or 6.  The Romans fight their first two ranks if they're charging, but since the barbarian warrior's charge range is 10" and the Roman legionary's only 8", the barbarians should be able to negate that advantage every time.  The warrior costs 5 points; the legionary costs 16!  The legionary just is not three times as effective as his counterpart.  They're very nearly equal.

The result is that a 1000 point Roman army has 48 legionaries.  A 1000 point barbarian army has 100 warriors.  The Romans don't stand much of a chance.

Now consider that the Roman skirmishers, armed with javelins with an effective range of 4", cost 6 points each.  The barbarian slingers, with an effective range of 9", cost only 5 points each.  In both our games, the barbarians won the skirmish battle rather easily and inflicted real damage on the Roman main line.

Painting Gaming Miniatures with Craft Paints

I've received about a dozen emails asking for a post that details my painting technique, and four of those have specifically asked me to address the use of craft paints.  I'm happy to lift the curtain and show you how the trick is done.

Before I start, I have a disclaimer to make.  I know my limitations as a painter better than anyone.  I've never had any success--any--with using washes.  I tend to use the paint straight out of the bottle, not thinning it a bit, so that my figures can look a little puffy in areas.  So I'm no Kevin Dallimore.  I've won painting awards, but I understand that I did not win those for the excellence of any individual figure.  I won those awards because of the quality of the army paint job.  And that's my strength.  I can do a pretty good paint job, and I can crank it out over and over again in very little time.  If you're looking for the very best painting technique, look elsewhere.

Of course, if you're looking for the very best painting technique, you should probably be painting 200mm figures or 1/4 busts, not wargaming armies.  My technique will let you field large, well painted armies.

I don't have a hobby store nearby, and I don't fancy ordering hobby paints through the mail.  I've had bad experiences doing so, where the shade I got wasn't even close to what I thought I was getting.  And at $4 a pop, a few of those mistakes each order add up.  I buy all my paints and brushes at two stores: Michael's and The Creative Element (a local art supply store).  For those of you outside the US, Michaels is a craft store, and it carries a wide variety of items: scrapbook supplies, artificial flowers, art supplies, woodworking supplies, home decor, art prints, and fabrics.  It's not a hobby store at all.  They have a couple shelves of cheap models, and that's about it.  But they do have an entire aisle of craft paints.

I try to buy Delta Ceramcoats whenever I can.  The other brands are cheaper, but in general the paints don't have as much pigment in them.  Some of their shades, however, are very nice.  I included the paint bottle I used for each step in the photographs below.

The figure we'll use as our exemplar is a Foundry Marian Roman legionary.  Romans are one of the easiest figures for me to paint, and one of the quickest.  This entire paint job, including breaks at each step to photograph the miniature, took only 40 minutes.  Without photo breaks, and using an assembly line approach, I can cut that time in half.

Step 1: Priming

I base the cleaned figure on a popsicle stick, three figures to each stick.  I prime the figures with Rustoleum's flat black enamel spray paint.  I've tried Gesso, but it leaves too much bare metal in recessed areas.

Step 2: Silver Drybrush

I haven't ever found a good acrylic silver or gold paint, so I use the little $.99 Testor's enamels.  You might remember these from the models you built when you were a kid.  I use a broad, flat brush for the drybrushing, and I don't keep it very neat.  Anything that gets mistakenly painted silver will be covered by other paint soon enough.

Step 3: Brown Basecoat

The sandals, pilum shaft, sword grip, and helmet get an undercoat in Brown Iron Oxide, a very useful paint.  All of these will get highlights in other colors, but the brown undercoat provides a nice base.  I've switched over to a 000 fine point paintbrush for most of the work that follows.

Step 3: Red Basecoat

The tunic gets a Cinnamon undercoat.  Again, this is a very useful color.  I use it for all my reds.  Cinnamon is a sort of reddish brown or browninsh red.

Step 4: Leatherwork

I use Autumn Brown as my main leather color most of the time.  I used my broad, flat brush to drybrush the sandals, and I used the 000 fine point brush to pick out the leather bands on the chainmail and the leather bits on the sword scabbard.  Autumn Brown is not as well pigmented as some other colors and goes on a bit translucent, so I tend to use a large amount of it.

Step 5: Wood Grain and Sword Grip Highlights

I paint the fiddly details with a 10/0 fine point brush.  This particular brush is almost at the end of its life, but it still has some use left.  I use Territorial Biege (a tough color to find) to paint the grain of the wood and to pick out the leather grips on the sword.

Step 6: Gold Drybrush

I go back to Testors enamel paint for the bronze helmet.  Sometimes I paint the detail with a fine brush, which gives the helmet a nice gleam.  I want my legionaries to look a little more worn by active campaigning, so I used my broad, flat brush to drybrush the gold.  Here I am very careful not to get gold on the shoudlers or pilum head, but I don't mind getting some on the face.

Step 7: Flesh Basecoat

There are three different shades I use for the flesh basecoat: Dark Flesh, Cayenne, or a shade I mix myself from Dark Brown, Territorial Beige, and Medium Flesh.  None of these shades covers the black very well, so I really glop the paint on.  It takes a while to dry, but it does cover the primer pretty well.

Step 8: Tunic Medium Coat

The Cinnamon tunic now gets its first highlight.  I use Red Iron Oxide for my Romans, leaving Cinnamon showing only in the crevices of the tunic folds.

Step 9: Flesh Medium Coat

I use Medium Flesh as my main flesh tone.  It's quite a bit darker than the Fleshtone paint, and it works very well for wargame figures.  I start with the face, then do hands and arms, then paint the legs, then pick out the toes.  By the time this step is done, the figure really is ready for the wargame table.  But for this demonstration, I'm going to add three more shades to really make the figure pop.

Step 10: Leather Helmet Strap

This figure has a strap extending from his cheek guards to the back of the helmet.  I paint the strap with Brown Iron Oxide and highlight it with Territorial Biege.

Step 11: Flesh Highlights

This is really an optional step, but I'm starting to use it more and more on my figures.  It doesn't take much time, and it helps the flesh to pop.  For this Roman, who is showing quite a bit of flesh, it's an easy way to improve the figure's appearance.  I use my 10/0 brush and dab a little Fleshtone on the tip of the nose, the chin, the knuckles, the toenails, and the centers of my Medium Flesh.

Step 12: Mixing the Tunic Highlight

As I wrote earlier, Romans are prett easy for me to paint.  One reason is that their uniforms are not very ornate.  Another is that they acutually have uniforms.  I can set up my assembly line and crank them out without changing paints too often.  But a third reason is that I have all the shades I need ready at hand.  This isn't the case with every army.  Often I have to mix my own colors by adding a little black or white to another color.  For Romans, I only have to do this with the tunic highlight.

I take the dab of Red Iron Oxide left from the tunic midshade and add a tiny drop of white.  I want the tunic to look faded, not pink!  I use a toothpick to stir the paints together.

Step 13: Tunic Highlights

Using my 10/0 brush, I pick out the very top areas of the tunic folds.  I use this color very sparingly.  It's easy to overdo this, and the result is a pastel tunic.  We want to avoid that.  It makes the warlike Romans look strangely effeminate, and we don't want the ghosts of legionaries past to haunt our die rolls.

Step 14: Painting the Base

I'm going to flock the bases, so I don't need to do too much here.  I slap on a little Dark Brown and call it good.

Finished Figure

So here is the result of 40 minutes' work.  Again, without photography breaks, and by painting 60-100 figures at once, I can average about three of these per hour.  That doesn't include prep time, of course, nor flocking and texturing the bases, but I can field a well painted army very quickly.

15mm Revolutionary War British Line Infantry

The line infantry make up the bulk of my AWI British army, with ten of the fifteen close order infantry units.  Eight of my line infantry regiments are Minifigs.  The other two are Jeff Valent.

Minifigs British Line

The Minifigs are very attractive figures, although I would have prefered a marching pose.  The muskets are held far in front of the body and at a slight angle, making the figures difficult to rank up.  Each figure wears a backpack, and I carefully painted the regiment numbers in Roman numerals.

Jeff Valent British Line Advancing

Jeff Valent British Line Firing

The Jeff Valent British infantry come in two poses, and both are good.  The advancing figures hold their muskets more across their bodies, making them easier to rank up.  I really like the firing poses.  Something about the soldiers' stances make them seem very realistic to me.

The only thing I don't like about the Jeff Valent line are the cast flags.  They're a bear to paint, and I don't think they look as good as the paper flags.

Second Day at Gettysburg

Today our little gaming group met at Jon's house for a refight of Gettysburg.  Jon provided the table and the armies, and he acted as referee for the game.  The figures are all Old Glory 10mm on 2.5" by 1.5" bases.  The rules are Jon's homebrew Civil War rules, based on Republique.  I commanded the Army of Northern Viriginia and Austin commanded the Army of the Potomac.

Sickles' position at the Peach Orchard

Longstreet's guns prepare to fire on Sickles

We began the action at 4:00PM on July 2nd.  Sickles' III Corps was in an exposed position, and I prepared to attack him.

The battlefield looking north

I swung Hood's division to the right, moving straight toward Little Round Top.  McLaws began to attack Sickles' line.  At the top of this photo you can see Ewell's II Corps moving to attack Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill.

McLaws bogs down

Right from the start, my attack ran into trouble.  Cotton balls indicate morale hits, and McLaws' division was hurting.

Union reserves occupy Little Round Top

Austin got the V Corps moving very quickly, and they won the race for Little Round Top.  Hood's division took heavy losses without gaining any ground.

McLaws' division begins to run

While Hood ground to a halt, McLaws' men began to run from the fight.  They inflicted only two hits on Sickles' corps and failed to take any of Sickles' positions.

II Corps runs into trouble

Meanwhile Ewell's corps failed to move the federals from the two hills on the Union right.  Rhodes' division (top) took heavy losses from US artillery.  Early's division (bottom) suffered more casualties than any other division in the army.  Two whole brigades were destroyed, and the other brigades mostly ran for Gettysburg town in a rout.

Early's division out of the fight

Here's Early's division, torn to pieces by federal guns.  Johnson's division of Ewell's corps did manage to carry Culp's Hill with no losses at all, but the rest of the Army of Northern Virigina was a mess.  In desperation, I threw A.P. Hill's corps right at Cemetery ridge, but they too were repulsed.

Austin victorious

Austin looks happy because this battle was never really in doubt.

MacPhee defeated

And here I am, contemplating the folly of secession.

It was a rough day for the Confederates.  Maybe I'll have more luck next time.  Jon did make us a tasty Massaman curry, which softened the sting of defeat.