Ancients progress and butterfly distractions...

Some short sessions after work and weekends have seen me clear the decks of 15mm ancients in progress.

Both were supposed to be "quick wins" as the figures were bought painted and "just" needed rebasing...

So much for plans! It turned out the rebasing was a major project and for the Romans, the re-touching turned into virtual repainting! The previous owner had not undercoated and bits of bare metal showed up. Irritatingly, the shields had been edged with brass which took several coats to rectify. Anyway, they are done now.

By way of a "before and after" I give you the Germans:

Before - as bought:

There was also a base with a lone figure - Herman the German - some mates were dug out:

I contemplated rebasing but rejected the idea - Herman was moved slightly to make room. The figures were nicely painted and close to my style - until I'd rebased I didn't notice how many blonds there were....a bit of a "Children of the Damned" look.....

After rebasing:

Herman's mates included a slinger converted to a standard bearer with club and the Minifigs chief from the generic command pack - more Sarmatian than German and as I painted him with an uncanny resemblance to Noggin the Nog.....

https://www.nogginthenog.co.uk/

Perhaps I should have painted him thus...

There were some stray Pompeians - painted a long while ago - I think of them as Evocati - recalled veterans.

And the Romans to form the new raw Legions for the campaign.

Before with some touch ups:

And fully finished varnished and rebased:

More Germans and Celts await paint.

Now butterfly distractions.....

A lot of the blame for this can be put down to Alan Gruber of the excellent Tradgardland Blog (https://tradgardland.blogspot.com/search/label/Hot%20club%20de%20Carpathia) who really inspired or re-inspired me with his post:

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

Using the Strelets Rumanians as the first of his imaginary interwar nations. 

Like Alan, I like the chunky Strelets style - not all their figures are in this style and I understand one of their sculptors was killed in the ongoing war in Ukraine (http://www.deartonyblair.co.uk/2025/02/anton-derbilov-reality-of-war-strelets.html). 

In any case, in addition the the Romanians, they also do Hungarians and Italians as well as various WW1 and partizan figures in eastern European garb.

Alan cannot take all the blame. Indeed, he blames Bob Cordery for his series of posts on his Belle Époque armies ( https://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-army-of-kingdom-of-ashona-is.html).

I have had a long running desire to "do" something along imaginary Interwar lines - I thought about taking Soldier King forwards, bit that seemed a mammoth undertaking; similarly, I toyed with using my Latin American country of Costaguano and its neighbours San Angeles and El Bravado for some ABC wars:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_countries

None took off or the plans spiralled into huge projects. Following Alan's post the seed planted long ago began to germinate. More cross-pollination had been dormant from the excellent Greg Horne's Duchy of Alzheim:

https://mavisming.blogspot.com/2015/12/long-live-borduria.html

Tin-Tin inspired (yet another influence). Searching the internet for 1920s and 1930s Imagi-Nations revealed comments from me about moving to a more generic "Graustark v Ruritania" background....

For the uninitiated, these are imaginary countries from romantic / adventure fiction popular in the C19th and early C20th set in vaguely eastern European principalities, indeed Bob is a fan:

https://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2013/05/an-to-z-of-ruritania.html

I had encountered Graustark elsewhere; Frank Chadwick in one of the versions of Command Decision gave a fictional ToE  for a battalion from Graustark. More tellingly, he also postulated both countries as real Balkan states in Space 1889, providing details of flags and armies in that era:

He also includes Transbalkania as another minor state - from yet another series of books (https://avramdavidson.com/the-adventures-of-doctor-eszterhazy-avram-davidson/). 

Frank Chadwick locates them squarely in the Balkans between Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria and on the borders of Austro-Hungary. Very much "Grand Budapest Hotel"!

With such synchronicity, who  can resist the temptations of 1920s and 1930s tanks and tankettes and obscure interwar aircraft?