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.

Republican Romans.

Having finished painting a whole box worth of Italian Allies a couple of weeks back, I've finally got round to making a start on their Roman compadres.
Having used the classic red & off-white shields for the allies these chaps are going to be sporting natty yellow ochre scuta.

Not sure I can offer any documentary evidence to support this choice of colour other than the availability of ochre as a pigment, either as a mineral or from boiling onion skins.
The plan is to take advantage of the wet weather & finish a few more of these this afternoon, but the lure of red wine & a comfortable sofa may yet prove too much!

Just a quick side note on these Victrix boxed sets. These are certainly the best ancients figures Victrix have released to date, the detail is a lot sharper than exhibited on the Hoplite boxed sets & the choice of headgear a lot better. Some of the helmets in the Mercenary Hoplite set were weird to say the least.
My only minor gripe is the variation in size of the Roman heads

There are two definite examples ( LH4 & LH11 above) & a not so obvious third (LH10) where the heads are noticeably larger than the other nine. As I say only a minor quibble but its a shame it was allowed to slip through into the finished product, particularly as the Latin Allies boxed set didn't have this issue. Still at least there are sufficient alternatives provided.

We are Legion.

Finally got near enough a full allied legion to make a group photo worth while:

There are still a few more velites to add so their numbers match those of the hastatii & princeps. The triarii are a little over represented because only having 6 or 7 of them would have looked a bit daft. In the fullness of time I may double the size of all the units but for now I just want to put together a viable army.
To this end I have purchased a box each of the chain mail & square pectoral armoured romans from Victrix, these will form the basis of the next post.

Triarii.

A few more of the excellent Victrix plastics completed, the old lads of the legion this time:

Most of the depictions I've seen of Triarii show them kneeling with their shields leaning against the left knee, but there aren't kneeling figures in the box so that goes by the by. Anyway, if their knees are anything like mine after years of contact with wet ground I can only begin to imagine how much grumbling this would involve.