Marching ever forwards......progress filler report

Or as Stew would have it a "PBJ post"!

I was conscious I had not posted since June. Truth be told, weekends had produced little of note - heat, exhaustion from work meant minimal progress. 

I took a week off as a much needed break from work, thinking I could clear some backlog of painting. Alas! I trusted to the weather forecast as being "less hot" only to find how wrong that forecast was!

Stuck in the amber zone with temperatures reaching 30 degrees, painting has been minimal. The first part of the week was windy enough to prevent spray priming, so sadly it doesn't feel like much was accomplished....

I did manage some painting using Contrast Paint, Army Painter ink washes as when the heat allowed, touch up with acrylics. My patent method I now think of as a "wash and brush up"....

Today I got around to basing the previously painted cavalry.

The excess basing "slop" ( a mix of Polyfiller, PVA, acrylic tube burnt umber and a bit of sand) was used for some hastily constructed ditches...

I also varnished the painted Celts, a mix of Essex, Freikorps 15 and Minifigs (all second hand eBay purchases), the latter being already basically painted received a wash and retouching with a bit of detail added here and there.

Here's the near completed stuff.

I also managed to clean up and prime more bits:

Remaining Celts

Germans and baggage:

Original German host awaiting paint:

So you may ask, why do I need more barbarians?

The answer lies in the potential choice of rules. After considering many, I am beginning to settle on Strength & Honour, nominally designed for 2mm. I see no reason why you cannot use 15mm, it being the base that's important.

I'm aiming for 80mm wide bases. 50mm deep for Legions and close order warbands, 65mm deep for loose order - 5x DBA elements for Romans, 6x elements for barbarians. Cavalry 4 elements on a 80mm by 65mm base. Skirmishers thinner with just 2 elements side by side unless massed.

This meant looking at how many bases the figures would fill and what additional painting was needed.

Camping it up....

Due to work and the heatwave in the UK, progress has been slow. Attempts at painting being hampered by the paint drying on the brush....

I did manage to finish off the barbarian camps that had been prepped....

In addition to the simple palisade, a simple ditch and bank.....

Then a wagon laager...

While I had some base mixture left over, some Gallic auxiliary cavalry were finished off.

My attempts to make progress on the Imagi-Nation Interwar Balkans was frustrated by the hot weather. Some highlights and touch-ups were made.

Ruritanians

Graustarkians

Transbalkanians

Hopefully, with cooler weather forecast, more progress can be made with painting in the coming weeks.

Little steps - weekend progress

After another busy week at work, I managed to get a little done (as well as fitting in a VWC meeting).

Caesar's War progress has been partly derailed by trying to decide on a set of rules; I was going to adapt DBA, but am now veering towards Strength & Honour, or a version of the same. For a start the bases will be 80mm (2x 40mm element frontage) and in 15mm, I don't think they need a grid and there are some bits I either dislike or intend to amend. There are bits I like and others that seem - a bit contrived or unnecessary. In any case it is not intended for solo so there will be tweaks whatever I use.

It has meant some of the command figures and things like ships may not be needed. There were bits I will still need.

On the Caesar's War front it was a case of waiting for a still dry day to get some priming done - bits for camps mostly. 

These use commercial pieces from Museum Miniatures and Tin Soldier and are for the "Barbarians" be they Celt or German. Simple ditch and ditch plus rampart.

Wagons for a laager.

I had cut out some bases so can give an impression of what they will look like.

Ditch which can split into two

Wagon laager

Ditch and palisade

I found myself with little time for painting and was struggling to get motivated, so decided to do something other than Celts, Romans or Germans!

A little while back Alan of https://tradgardland.blogspot.com/ had embarked on some splendid Interwar Imaginations using Strelets figures:

https://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-army-of-transilvania.html

https://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2026/03/volare-cantare-units.html

https://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-few-transilvanian-recruits.html

https://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-army-of.html

And it inspired me to try something similar:

https://aufklarungsabteilung.blogspot.com/search/label/Interwar%20Imaginations

Well after priming white they have lingered in a box awaiting Contrast Paint and AP wash treatment. This weekend I managed to get some test colours of Contrast Paint splashed on the three sprues.

The army of Ruritania

The army of Graustark

The army of Transbalkania

Partly this has been kickstarted by discovering Jim Webster's Klashnikov Tribal rules:

https://www.amazon.fr/Jim-Webster-ebook/dp/B0CWCHL2XD?language=en_GB&currency=GBP

There is also a campaign and logistics add on:

https://www.amazon.com/Kalashnikov-Tribal-Logistics-Wargames-Rules-ebook/dp/B0G276SB9X

It envisages rather scruffy disreputable wars involving regulars, militia and thugs, with AFVs and artillery being generic MGIAT (My-God-Its-A-Tank) and allowing for generic aircraft, so  I can field some wonderful biplanes.

The Strelets winter figures are suitably scruffy looking so fit perfectly into the idea of small Balkan nations fighting ultimately pointless territorial conflicts with hints of medieval savagery!

I have found Alan's method of painting on the sprue difficult; I would also like to try his method of AP washes on the basic plastic - I don't think it will matter if there is a range of uniform colours as this will add to the scruffy appearence.

Caesar's War progress

Perhaps unadvisedly,  I dug out all the painted Gauls from the various boxes to check on how many I actually had in a painted state....

To misquote Zulu... Centurion - "scouts report Gauls to the South West ......thousands of them!"

 There are 24 stands of cavalry and 6 stands of light horse....

"Solid" warbands and hordes

"Fast" warbands and hordes

Skirmishers

In the interim, I had painted more cavalry

Gallic

Roman

I have also cleaned up some camps for the Gauls and Germans

Any more Gauls will be four to a base or hordes or command stands and there are still a mob of Germans to finish!

I suspect there has been something of a "project creep" going on although I do need a lot of barbarians to represent the forces in the game on which the campaign will be based. Certainly into Big Battle DBA territory now!