Teasers....

Just finished the Banst army after what feels like a boxing match of several rounds!

I'm so knackered, I can't be bothered to have a proper parade.....

So until I can get them marching and take some decent photos, here's some teasers...

First, the flags....for so few they gave me no end of trouble with touching up and fettling....

Then, when I got the bases labelled and scraped the paint off the magnetic tape on the bottom, and got the b***ers lined up and glued down, I still had to play Tetris to get them into the box!

I also got hung up on the flags; wasn't sure of the colours and whether to add numbers. In the end just went with what I had. Look OK on the figures....

This week I have mostly been......painting Spencer Smiths

As I thought I'd been neglecting my existing projects, I decided to tackle the half-finished army of Banst...

It was a bit of a change to swap to normal acrylics on a black undercoat after all the flats using Contrast paint on white...

To be honest, I'm not sure how the Contrast paints would have coped with the heat (I use a palette); as it was I had to extemporise a wet palette to cope with the paint drying too rapidly.

Quite aside from the challenges mentioned, I have to say I found it a slog to finish off the army; not sure why, but it didn't come easy. It was only when I completed the last of the infantry that I felt I was going to get them finished....

Still need to varnish, make flags and base with labels. Those jobs can be done after work next week and will hopefully keep up motivation. Still feels like there's a fair bit to do on the project.

Here is the army in their box, painted and on temporary card bases for painting:

The |Elector (top left) looks on with his son-in-law (middle) and Von Reuthen - more Fimo "Grotesques":

Infantry:

Cavalry:

Artillery:

The Elector, Erich Helmut Graufuchs, Kurfurst von Banst is an interesting character; when creating his personality, he turned out to be: War Dominant (equivalent to highest military skill), scandalous past, clumsy, elegant and a martinet.

Creating a matrix for how states view each other, it turned out he was either neutral or hostile to everyone else! In many cases, this was reciprocated! These seems to be a back story involving two Hrvatskan twin sisters, married to the rulers of Dupanen and Sinistria which may explain the scandal in the past and current hostility!

I see the army as one using innovations along the lines of Marscall du Saxe and his Legion with Neoclassical helmets....

His son-in -law is Gunter Elster Wealth high as main motivator, a well practised intriguer and unfit.

Herbert Kiefer Graf von Reuthen is Wealth (moderate), huntsman, friends in high places, elegant and a martinet...

Clearly discipline is strict in the Banst army...

A proper parade to follow when finished.

Yet more Swiss Reislaufer

Finally worked my way through the remaining Swiss.

Command (with a French flag this time).

Pike (finished)

Halberds

Zweihander

And finally for the Swiss my interpretation of Cardinal Schinner (with a stray French Gendarme).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matth%C3%A4us_Schiner

I also took delivery of the remaining "possible Hyborian Zinnfiguren in the style of Tony Bath (provenance uncertain)". I spare the reader any pictures of how they arrived bent into something resembling a creature from a  David Cronenberg film!

Unbent, still a few breakages including missing heads from elephant riders! After spending a couple of hours unbending I couldn't face getting out the super glue....

A Hyborian mystery?

One of my obsessions is Tony Bath's Hyboria campaign - from encountering it in Battle then Military Modelling magazine in the later 1970s and early 1980s.

Some of his ideas have ended up in the Soldier King project, from his Setting Up a Wargames Campaign,

Famously, Tony Bath used flats, homecast copies with units painted in the colours he designated for each of the nations. Anyway, hunting eBay, I came across some mixed lots of figures which included some of these:

I thought "they look familiar" and after a bit of searching identified where I had seen something similar:

Copyright https://classicwargaming.blogspot.com/p/hyboria-tony-baths-flats.html

It was the colours and the use of a letter on the shield.

There were also these which again were vaguely familiar...

Same figure is here with different colours....

Copyright http://www.rudi-geudens.be/html/tony_bath.htm

The figures themselves are made of very soft metal, probably lead and consequently have suffered a lot of damage from bending, paint flaking and breakages.

I cannot directly attribute them to Tony Bath, but they are almost certainly homecast, do not appear to be factory painted (I've seen examples of some of the figures in original factory colours) and if not from him are probably contemporaneous. They mimic the sort of colour schemes he used, although I have yet to find a full list of what he used for each nation, just Aquilonia, Nemedia and Turan which none of these match exactly. It looks as if there were colour combinations....

There was also this figure:

Now Donald Featherstone's Wargames Battle of Trimsos has a "Thurn" not "Tharn" regiment....

The lettering and colours look a bit like some authenticated Tony Bath figures, but I cannot be sure these are too. All I know is they came from a fleamarket or auction sale.

The figures have required un-bending and repairs and desperately need the paintwork repaired. This has left me in a quandary; do I go for conservation in case they are actually original Hyboria figures or do I repaint to a better standard? Do I keep the colours?

The idea would be to make DBA sized armies (the number of figures don't give much choice in the matter) for Hyboria. The consensus on the VWC was to repaint completely.....

They will probably go on the back burner but I'd be interested in opinions on conservation or repainting from any blog readers. Additionally if anyone has more information whether these are Tony Bath's figures or not, I'd appreciate any comments....

Postscript

Some more similar figures have turned up from internet searches:

https://wargameamateur.blogspot.com/2011/10/ancient-flats.html

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=248078

I note the comment "the provenance is uncertain."

I am expecting the rest of the seller's figures - around 280!