Painted Romans

I have painted my first box of Romans.  I still need to put the decals on the shields and attach them, but I'm counting these as painted for April.

Command

Romans!

I have assembled the first box of Warlord Romans.  I have two of the boxes of twenty Legionaries with a scorpion.  This is one, out of the way.

Box art from Warlord Games.

Celts!

As you may remember, fascinated as you all are by all of my doings, I bought a box of Warlord Celts in February.  Rather, SWMBO bought them for me as a Valentine's day present.  They arrived in March and sat for a couple of weeks.  I have finally gotten them assembled. 

A Celtic Warband, marauding across my desk.

Look what arrived in the mail

Last week I finally received my order from Warlord games.  After picking up the Hail Caesar rulebook, and looking through it, I decided that I was going to take the plunge and pick up a Roman army.  My wife ordered this for me for Valentines day.

Monthly Retrospective 1

What did I accomplish this month?  A big part of the reason I keep this blog is to motivate myself to get things done.  I'm always happy to play; it's harder to get myself motivated to build terrain and, especially, to paint.

I painted twenty six models.  That beats my goal of twenty a month.  That's a success and having the month end deadline definitely helped.  I'm a "beat the deadline" kind of guy.  Tournaments, challenges, those work to motivate me.  Those twenty six are completely done, to table top standard, except for grass on the bases.  I plan, eventually, to come back and hit all of them with some more paint to spiffy them up before the Mayhem in the Mountains tournament in September.

I also played quite a bit this month.  I got in seven games, which is almost two a week.  I can't really complain about that.  One of them was a teaching game, which is always a good thing.  More opponents are always good.  I hope to be doing a lot more of those this year, leading up to and following the Hobbit, since we have a two or three year window where GW cares about the game.

Basing

As noted below, I have quite a few new figures inbound.  These are all historicals, Romans and Celts.  Coming from a GW background, I like my minis individually based.  Add to that the endless variety of historical rules with their basing arcana and I have been at a loss as to how I am going to base these models.

I've decided that I will base them individually.  I can build movement trays of whatever size is necessary for the rules I'm playing.  I am, very strongly, leaning towards round bases.  The reason for this is simple, I want to be able to use them for skirmish games.  I want to use the Lord of the Rings SBG rules.  These need round bases.

If I use the GW War of the Ring movement trays I can fit eight round bases on a tray.  Two of these will suffice for HC, especially if my opponent is using the same style.  So!  Problem solved you say!  Not so fast.  I am having a hard time finding the bases I need.  I found an ebay seller who sells 100 for a couple of pounds.  Great.  Only the shipping works out to be three times what the bases cost.  There are a bunch of sellers who sell in smaller quantities for more money.  I'll keep looking for the solution to this one.

This leads to the next part of the question.  Using Romans and Celts in a skirmish game, what stats will I give them?  I know there is a yahoo group dedicated to alternate uses of the LotR rules.  I also happen to know the author of Legends of the High Seas, so could ask for advice from him.  I want to work this one out on my own, (though I may still hit up Tim for advice).  I'm thinking, right now with no play testing, that I will use Uruk Hai for the Romans.  For the Celts I'm leaning towards orcs, though that is still not a great fit for me.  It may take some fiddling but I'm going to work this out.

Painting Progress

With all of those Romans on the way I need to get cracking on finishing up my Haradrim.  I finished six more today, the Abrakhan Merchant's Guards.  That leaves me with twelve archers, the hornblower and the heroes.  These guys need some touch ups, and the whole army will get highlights and such once they are all done.  I'm trying to get these to table top standard so that I don't have to feel ashamed to throw down at the shop.

I've been nervous about these guys because I'm still not sure how I'm going to do their flesh.  They are going to be dark skinned, but I have to play with it and figure out the recipe.  Since these guys have so much flesh on them, they will show any mistakes the most.  For now I got around that by just leaving them the basecoat color.

Group shot, I need more lights for photography.

Valentine's Day Presents

My wife got me a, somewhat, late Valentine's Day gift. 

Two of these:

Hail Caesar - First Impressions

I received my copy of Hail Caesar in the mail yesterday.  I'm still working my way through it but from what I've read so far, I like it.  This book does not take itself too seriously.  The rules appear to be common sense and reasonable.  The central premise is that these rules are for friends to sit around a play a reasonable game together, not for tournament play.  I enjoy tournaments every now and again, but week to week, I play for both myself and my opponent to have a good time.

On first read through, these rules look like they may deliver what I'm looking for.