Lion Rampant Retinue Begins To Take Shape.

Another wet one today in the disputed lands twixt England & Wales so an excellent opportunity to catch up on some admin'. Work on the Highland/ Island force for Lion Rampant is making steady progress with the first two units ( of men at arms) complete bar the heraldry, which is a job for later on today provided the weather doesn't clear. If it does I'll be out on the bicycle to blow the cobwebs away and have a sneaky pint down the local!

The archers for my retinue are already underway but have yet to decide where to source miniatures to represent the two units of 'Fierce Foot'. According to Claymore Casting's Facebook page they have figures for Irish Kern in the pipeline which together with the already available Ribalds would probably look about right, but a dredge through some other manufacturers catalogues wouldn't go amiss.

The republican roman project is also continuing to progress well, although nothing worthy of a photograph as yet. I have a feeling based on previous years that all this progress may be about to grind to a halt, generally speaking when we get into BST the work load & available daylight hours go up leading to a corresponding downturn in miniature painting. It does pay the bills though, so have to be philosophical about it.

More Pesky Islemen.

Despite my good intentions of carrying on with the roman project before embarking on anything new I have been sidetracked into painting more of my recent purchases from Claymore Castings.

Nice miniatures & really straightforward to paint, this opinion may change when I have to tackle heraldry. For some reason folk from the Western Isles had a penchant for quartering their arms which translates into being a bugger to paint at 28mm size, maybe time to investigate decals!

Lord of the Isles.

Following our yearly excursion to WMMS our most local war-games show, I have fallen prey to the cult of the new & taken to painting a few of my purchases from said show:

The first of my Lion Rampant retinue courtesy of Claymore Castings. I bought 6 packs of their Highlander/ Islemen packs from their Medieval range & very nice they are too, similar in size to Perry miniatures but almost flash free & very cleanly cast.
I also purchased the Lion Rampant rulebook because this system seems to offer a fairly quick game with reasonable (60 ish figures) forces, something I need to strive toward with my busy work schedule.
Also purchased was a facsimile copy of an Italian fencing manual circa 1640. European martial arts are another of my interests which I sadly get very little time to practise.

fig a.

Never got to do anything quite this violent at sixth form fencing club, though a friend & I did used to fight outside of said environs with sharp steel weapons & improvised armour. Could so easily have ended in tears ( see fig. a above).

More Romans.

Again I have taken the opportunity presented by torrential rain here in the Marches & put in some time at the workbench.

Really starting to hit my stride with these now, another couple of days & I will have this unit & its accompanying velites completed. Next job after that is to make a start on a unit with the pectoral armour, the intention being to use the mail armoured figures as princeps & triari and the pectoral armoured figures as hastati; though this may be subject to change for aesthetic reasons.
One thing I do need to do is source some suitable cavalry, thinking either Crusader or Gripping Beast at the moment but more research is needed before spending any hard earned cash.