Warrior Miniatures Army O' The Month

This is the second 100 piece army I purchased this year from John Holt of Warrior Miniatures.


http://www.warrioronline.demon.co.uk/

Here's the whole lot:

This is sold as The Army of Xannthippus, and meant for the First Punic War. Here's what you get:

18 Spartan Hoplites, in two styles:



18 Carthaginian Hoplites:

6 skirmishers:

4 War Elephants:

6 Numidian Cavalry, one piece castings, in two styles:

3 Carthaginian Heavy Cavalry:

The elephants come in kit form:

They go together quite easily, I assembled mine with white glue and super glue. Over all a fun army to paint with lots of variation. The elephants are the stars of this group, the least attractive are probably the skirmishers. The hoplites are quite nice, but they have the basic problem of all hoplites and that is the long spears. John includes more than enough, and has various styles of spears available in the set. Sharp eyes might spy several figures returning a Roman pilum. But the long spears do suffer from handling, I broke several and gave up on the lead ones. I instead used the stand by, 20 gauge florist wire from Michael's. And even then I broke off a couple during the photo session. The shields stay on fine, but those spears are a headache.

As for the cost?
It was 40 pounds UK for the army, plus shipping which came to 55 pounds. In Canadian money that was $90. Starting to get pricey, but still a bargain compared to other manufacturers. It's the long distance postage that bumps up the price. 40 quid is just $66 Canadian otherwise.

So you end up with the core of Hannibal's army, as these guys could easily be used in any of the Punic Wars, although this set was probably meant for Bagradas in the First one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bagradas

I ordered yet another Warrior army a while back. This one is a bit slower arriving, so I'll hopefully have it painted up in April.

I have to admit I'm enjoying painting these various armies, and the minimal cost is an incentive to experiment with different eras.

I'll post some more of my regular plastic guys soon. I have a hankering to do Edgehill.

Bye for now.







Just A Curiosity

I recently was looking in a Dollar Store when I spied these:

It immediately reminded me of the Games Workshop 6 x 4 foot battle terrain they were selling a while back. I toyed with the idea but passed, as they were over $300.
But these are cheap!

So I bought a few and went home.
Here is what they are:

Sadly though, there is only one pattern. I was hoping there were a selection of three or four styles.
So these 1 foot by 1 foot plastic tiles are somewhat limited.
Anyway, I painted a couple just to see:

A basic desert sand being over ridden by my Caesar Hittites.
And a verdant green:

This time topped with some large 1/72 scale Romans, copies of Elastolin I think. Here's another shot, basic paint job with miracle dip.





Well that's it. A shame there aren't other terrain variations, it has potential beyond the price (less than $2 each). I had envisioned mounting 4 on a cardboard base and using putty or plasticene to smooth over the joins.

Stand Ins

I often check out board games for the minis inside. A while back I found a version of Risk! called Risk! Godstorm:


https://www.amazon.com/Avalon-Hill-4098337-Risk-Godstorm/dp/B0002Y0QXA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487955537&sr=8-1&keywords=risk+godstorm


From the box it looks like you get some nice hoplites in armour and some Viking looking guys.
The price is around $30 range and you get a whack of figures.
I ended up with some 300 guys all between 1/72 and 25mm high. They are made of a vinyl like plastic, so they are softer than esci type figures but not floppy.
NO hoplites though.
What you do get are 300 of the same figure in 5 colours. The figure has leggings similar to dark age figures, trousers, rough tunic with oddly ornate sleeves and long hair. He has a caveman barbarian looking spear and a rough wooden shield, more like a small targe, with metal studs.
The odd thing is that he's a lefty.
Spear in his left hand, shield in his right.
So these aren't front rank soldiers.
But they might do to fill in the nameless ranks of barbarians or rear rankers in another army.
So here's my first attempt, not quite done yet but here goes:

They need hair touch ups but otherwise they're there. A barbarian horde.

I also painted some to back up my Warrior Miniatures Saxons:

With the Miracle Dip you can see the odd shoulder detail, best ignored in my opinion.
Here they are backing up my Saxons:

They do pad out an army.
Not bad for stand ins.

Crusade Miniatures Polish Army From Warrior Miniatures

Hello. Good to be back blogging again after a disastrous autumn computer wise. A couple of hard drive crashes and a failed android battery left me stymied. So I settled into painting more.
This time I thought I'd make a departure from the plastic realm and show a 100 piece army I purchased from John Holt of Warrior Miniatures:


http://www.warrioronline.demon.co.uk/


He has many 25mm figure ranges and features 100 piece army deals.
I've been a customer over the past 25 years, so I settled on trying some figures that I haven't tried before.
He has in his line some medieval sets under the "Crusade Miniatures" line.
here's the link:


http://www.warrioronline.demon.co.uk/crusade/index.htm


I ordered the Polish army.



This is the army I painted. They are nice figures, crisp and clean and feature a nice degree of detail. I base coated the infantry with a brick red and painted them in earth colours. The cavalry I base coated in white. Painted with acrylics and painted with "Miracle Dip", ie Minwax Tudor Stain for that shaded gloss look.
The army comes with a couple bags of accessories in the way of spears, lances and axes. In point of fact, the infantry have enough side arms to select pole axes or spears for the entire company.
Here are some more pix:

The knights are interesting, having winged helmets. IIRC Funcken has a picture of these sort of knights in his books:
http://dev.artvalue.com/image.aspx?PHOTO_ID=2657085&width=500&height=500


One quibble. The figures are cast in a nice hard metal that allows minimal adjusting. And by minimal I mean almost none. I dropped the red fellow and his wings snapped off. A quick repair with white glue and super glue did the trick.


The infantry are a nice lot:

I used the pole axes, but I had enough spears as well. I think they'd look fine without a weapon as they have a sword and scabbard. Nice pose and detail, I think they could stand in for many different armies.

These two units are archers, one has axes and shields with their bow and quiver slung.
And now the cavalry:

Listed as Kazak cavalry I left the spears off them as they tend to be a bit soft in my opinion. The figures are kitted out with axes and bows, so they aren't naked. Very useful types I think, from ancients to medieval.

Heavy cavalry. These guys needed their lances.

Dramatic looking, they certainly stick out from the drab looking infantry.

The remainder of the 100 piece army. I suppose I will mount them individually. As you can see I had one casualty in shipping. He might make a good flag bearer.
So what was the damage?
Not much.
Listed at 35 pounds, plus shipping to Canada it was a total of 50 quid, which worked out to 80 dollars Canadian.
I ordered in early January and John shipped within a day or two. Two weeks shipping and I was painting. I did a quick job on these guys, but I had fun, and they were easy to paint. The clean figures took acrylic paints like a dream. I liked the small rectangular bases that made fitting them on my wooden bases very easy, I didn't have to trim any.  So I can recommend these figures for anyone looking to put together a small force or a DBA style army. two or three of these sets would make an impressive wargame army.
In fact, I ordered another army (different era) in early February, and I received it yesterday.  I've already painted one unit and started another. I'll post soon. Perhaps I'll do "Warrior Miniatures Army of The Month"?