It’s all Greek to me

I am working on my Dead Man’s Hand for the SCC officially but a couple of weeks ago Footsore showed off the free miniature for spending more than £40 in May.

First off I think it’s a lovely mini. Secondly I’ve been meaning to pick up some metal figures for Mortal Gods for a while. Thirdly Will power is weak in this household.

I added a bunch of minis to my cart and went to check what I already owned to see if there was anything I was missing. The problem with that comes with is remembering that I bought the two player starter box and have built none of them. Not one.

So a mini project to clear an old project to justify buying more stuff for it.

As far as I know, the two player box is the only way to get a printed copy of the rules. Back when I bought the set, I had been wanting to buy just the Spartan bundle with some add ons but not being able to get the rules except as a PDF forced my hand.

The core box comes with 38 Victrix plastics

• 2 x Mercenary Hoplite frames (16 miniatures)
• 1 x Unarmored hoplite frames (8 miniatures)
• 1 x Peltast frame (8 miniatures)
• 3 x Mini archer frames (6 miniatures)

It is described as being suited to making two forces or one larger one. This is a game I bought because others at the club already play and have forces so these are all for me. I know I don’t want any of the plastics for the hero models so I just built everything to be a multibase option. The game has three models to a base; round for ranged and triangles for melee.

While getting ready for painting, to break the monotony of cleaning models, I thought I’d sleeve all the cards. The cards themselves are a good weight and I’m sure they’d survive a good level of play without being protected but my history as an LCG player makes sleeping cards a compulsion.

For the first two thirds of the cards there wasn’t a problem but for some reason the last third were all fractionally too large to fit in the sleeves. So much for a quick job to break up the monotony…

Normally I batch paint in groups of five to ten minis. For some reason, and I can honestly say a couple of weeks on from the decision I still don’t know where it came from, I went with a batch of 34 for this box.

After looking at colour plates from a couple of Osprey books (Warrior 27: Greek Hoplite 480-323 BC and Elite 7: The Ancient Greeks) and knowing that the shield transfers are brightly coloured, I picked out five paints to do all the fabrics.

Citadel: Averland Sunset, Elysian Green

Vallejo Model Color: Cavalry Brown, Prussian Blue and Pale Sand

Everyone was primed white so that colours really pop. I was going to vary skin tones but I’m lazy so grabbed my go to Kislev Flesh. Everyone’s hair is black too. Again, lazy.

For the bronze I base coated in Balthasar Gold and then an all over layer of Sycorax Bronze ( a truly awful paint by itself but pretty nice over the gold).

One wash for everything because that’s just how I paint; Marine  Juice. Equal parts Nuln Oil, Reikland Fleshshade and Lahmian Medium. I just bought one pot of each and have now have enough wash to last me several armies. It is a nice warm dark wash that behaves a little nicer thanks to the extra medium. I was a little too heavy handed with it here because they all got a wash late one night. No tide marks but there are areas where I should have wicked extra wash away. Thankfully most of them are crooks of the elbow which will be covered by the shields.

Next up it is time to start on the shields.

I cut a load of them off the sprue before I remembered what a pest it can do to paint them. 20 of them are being painted on the sprue then, 7 are blu tacked to a tongue depressor and the rest are wherever it was I put them for safe keeping.

The backs all got a couple of coats of Cavalry Brown, details in US Olive Drab (also a Vallejo Model Colour). The fronts had the same bronze treatment as the armour and then the white was touched up to prep for the transfers.

Fairly sure you aren’t working on a real historical project if you don’t have transfers from Little Big Men Studios. These ones have to be ordered directly from Victrix to fit their plastic hoplite and peltast ranges which is a pain in the arse but such is the life of a hobbyist who refuses to freehand.

This is the point the army was at by the end of May. I hadn’t finished them all so clearly I couldn’t place a new order with Footsore… Aye, right.

A week later and there’s a wee box of lovely metals to start on next. Really need to get on with those transfers first though. And basing. Still, always important to know what the next stage of the plan is right?

That’s this lot done, 34 plastic Greeks. A mix of peltasts, archers and hoplites. There are a few still on sprue that I’m saving until I know what I’m going to do with them. I knew from the start that I wasn’t going to use them for my hero models which is what the numbers allow for. The Footsore metals are too tempting to not have them leading my forces.

This was my first time working with Little Big Men transfers and it was delightful. So much easier to apply than I was expecting. They also do so much of the work for an army. I have a Bad Squiddo shieldmaidens army to work on later in the summer and I’m hoping I can grab some LBM sheets for them.

The basing material is Geek Gaming Scenics Mediterranean base ready mix and the group bases were rimmed with Steel Legion Drab.

This wasn’t the project I thought I was going to work on for the Spring Clean Challenge. I was going to work hard on scratch building my table for Dead Man’s Hand, a project I thought I was passionate about.

That’s not how hobby works though for me. It is closely tied to my mental health and I learned a while ago to flow with what I feel and not beat myself up when that diverges from Plans. Part way through the challenge I realised what I wanted to work on was painting minis. Something easy to paint and fun to paint. I had some Burrows and Badgers minis in the queue but then a second idea snuck up on me. It is halfway through the year and I haven’t played a single miniatures game. Not one die has been tossed in combat.

Enter the Footsore email I talked about in the first post. Mortal Gods is a game I bought during the first lockdown because I knew it was a game that gets played at the club I used to go to. I wanted to be able to get deeper into the club and play with people I haven’t before. The club started back in February this year and I haven’t been along yet but if I could get this box painted up, add in some special models from the Footsore offer, it would be a good kick in the pants to get there.

Here we are, a couple of weeks later and the Spring Clean Challenge has done what I needed it to do – chipped away at the unpainted pile and pushed forward my gaming options. I’ll have another post next week once I get to the Footsore bundle but first I have to work on another force for an imminent game. It’s time to stop being “just a painter” and get back to being a gamer.

Despite planning to work on a different project, I had a wee rummage in the delivery from Footsore and decided to clean up a few. One set of slingers to act as ranged reinforcements, a Styrix (musician) and two Heavy Lochagos.

There was a lot of flash but mold lines were fairly minimal. The lochagos and the musician get based on 32mm rounds as they roam the board on their own. The slingers are for another group base so they are on 25mm rounds (group bases are 60mm rounds)

This was slower than I wanted to get through this weekend (hayfever is a b*****d). I did manage to finish them off Monday night after work and got the basing done tonight. Once the first layer of PVA and base ready mix is dry, I’ll go back and spot glue sections to add a thicker layer like I did with the other bases.

Three of the figures were officially Athenian models so came with different shields with the Athenian Owl cast onto them. After painting them up, I hated how they looked. The detail is too tiny for my hands to do so I swapped two of them out with some leftover plastic ones. The last one I’ll need to rummage around to replace.

Officially everything painted including everything that I bought to “reward” myself for painting the core box. I have plans to expand in the future but I really need to play some games before deciding what to buy.

Hoping to get a game in at the club some time in July (visiting family delayed the planned game for this month). Given this was a back up project, only started in mid May, I’m genuinely really chuffed to have got a pretty substantial force finished.