Ancient Nostalgia

I mentioned in an earlier post that the 15mm ancients for DBA that I had rediscovered and am currently working on, had originally been destined for a sprawling "known world" campaign. Looking for my Italian Wars folder for a map of Italy based around the game "Machiavelli", I chanced upon the folder with my ancients bits saved and collected. It includes some sketches which I know Jonathan likes, so thought I'd share it on the blog - there being no new painted units to show...

It would have been in the mid-1990s as I was very keen on DBA and had been building armies slowly for several years. It was sometime around then that I started to develop ideas for my "Known World" campaign of around 105 BC. I was very influenced by an old boardgame I'd bought and played many years previously, Imperial Governor:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7934/imperial-governor-and-strategos

It is a typical hex and counter boardgame with a rather fanciful mix of powers - Rome, Carthage, Macedonia, Pontus, Syria and Egypt with leaders of different eras and even states mixed together.

Looking in my folder, I had obviously worked on converting the game map to my own purposes and adapting the rules. I had even drawn out the map in a small and large version, a fact I had forgotten!

The larger version was split across three sheets, the west:

And east:

I had also planned out the armies, influenced partly by the colours in the game. Please don't use as an accurate historical representation, even though many images and colour schemes were derived from the WRG books. Pontus in particular has variations on green simply because this was the colour of that state's counters in the game (so I cannot think of them except as "green"). 

Roman legion variations

Numidians

Seleucids

Ptolemaics

Mithridatic Pontics

My DBA armies were painted based on the sketches.

I think several things happened; I tried DBM which proved something of a disappointment and yet again I got sidetracked into variations, in this case the various Roman civil wars and lost focus to some extent. I know I was still painting DBA armies when I moved to Wiltshire in the mid to late 1990s and the last army I painted was the early Germans, having just  finished the Celts. I found the primed Parthians and more Germans which date from then recently. I can see I was looking to include in DBA things like hordes (which have been included) and naval (which have not) and at that time I built a lot of things like camps and terrain. Hence the sketches for my Roman marching fort:

Individual matchsticks were carved into the "pila muralis" - now you can buy them in strips from Essex Miniatures....

I was also planning ships and how to fit one on an 80mm x 40mm base....

Oddly, I have just completed two commercial models from Museum Miniatures of ancient galleys modelled to fit on such a base, so was surprised to see the idea has been long in the planning!

My rediscovery has in many ways helped with maintaining the enthusiasm for the current project and made me wonder if a "Known World" Campaign will eventually reach fruition?

The Gauls are massing....

Faced with a potential Roman invasion, the Gallic / Celtic forces continue to muster reinforcements.

I wasn't intending to buy anymore  painted figures from eBay, when some nicely painted Freikorps 15  caught my eye. There were some others, but these turned out to be unavailable and I settled for some average painted Essex as replacements. The usual story of missing weapons and in one case hand....so out came the super glue and baking soda and plastic broom bristles for spears or squashed flat for sword blades.

Before:

After repairs, touch ups and re-basing:

The chap with the replaced hand (from a Peter Pig elf! has been christened "Tuatha of the silver hand!"

I resisted rebasing (apart from swapping out a slinger) and ended up with another horde base.

I also did some painting, first some old Minifigs - a mix of new used eBay purchases and some broken remnants from when I painted my Celts some 20+ years ago.....new spears, swords, spear ends were needed, a couple just had their broken hands reattached. I debated more realistic hair shades with white highlights but went for a "Billy Idol" bleached blonde look - they have obviously overdone the lime wash...

This week I churned out some Galatians and Gaesati - as Stephen Caddy commented on VWC -as Father Dougal would say "they're all in the nip!"😀

A few random skirmisher figures were completed to complete stands for a lone slinger and javelinman

One area lacking was cavalry, so some assorted eBay remnants added to with some old Minifigs on original horses, produced a veritable horde of cavalry...

Originally, I was going to mix them up but ended pairing similar sized figures or manufacturers on bases. Minifigs and Essex.

Some got  fancy cloaks so rear views in all cases.

Freikorps 15 old and new redesigns

Donnington and Irregular

Again there were many with broken swords or spears.

Black undercoat, hordes white drybrush, water-based oils on horses, wiped off. Colours blocked in and armour drybrushed, then AP dark tone wash followed by touching up and highlights.

Still more to do - Germans and more Celts as well as Roman cavalry and odd things like fortifications for both sides.

Now for something different - Pete Foggin's Barbarossa

 On Martin Rapier's blog "Fred" was asking about the Barbarossa games at Hammerhead:

https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2026/03/hammerhead-2026.html

After a bit of a false start, I managed to get the rules out of Pete. They are designed for a participation game with the whole campaign of 1941 on one table with players taking the part of the Germans.

The rules:

Pete created the terrain from a painted cloth with stick on Scrabble letters for the locations! In addition he also created the 10mm figures and tanks...

The idea was to replicate one of those command tables seen in movies complete with long sticks to move units. These can be seen in some more photos from Pete of the game ay Claymore - bit on the small side but I have not been able to enlarge them unfortunately.

Pete has designed figures for Outpost, Warrior, Old Glory UK and QRF and some of his 10mm are commercially available here:

https://www.foggofwarminiatures.com/

The Tyneside Wargames club meet weekly:

https://tynesidewargames.co.uk/

Other large games are the 1914 Schlieffen Plan in 10mm like Barbarossa.