Enyalios!

DBx Bases: 0/177 + 0/18
15mm Spears: 0/451
DBA Corps: 0/16
Saga Points: 0

Because I rent, I keep the area around my painting table covered by a plastic dropsheet, which I replace each year. This way, I stop my landlord’s carpets from being dotted with splashes of paint, and other detritus from the hobby. The sheets aren’t anything fancy – just plastic painters sheets I pick up from the local hardware store – but I justify that the cost is definitely less than having to pay to replace the carpets when I finally move out.

And because it was December, and I was starting a new project, I used the opportunity to also do this cleaning, rather than leaving it to the new year and having to tear everything apart mid-project – not just replacing the sheets, but also clearing up my work area, since it tends to get crowded with abandoned and half-finished tasks, left over materials, general debris, dust, etc etc.

So with a refreshed work area, dust blasted, left over projects put away (you don’t want to see my study right now), I was free to begin working on my Hoplites.

But where to begin?

Well, I actually had done some prep work earlier in the year. I started by painting up an OpForce for Mortal Gods – this allowed me to test some of the colours that I was considering for my main force.

I had also started on some of the characters and elites for my Athenians, although these ones were somewhat more complex

Finally, I had done up a point of SAGA Psioli, but we’ll get to them later.

But for the main project, where do I start from? Well, we start at the very beginning – MVP (minimum viable product). Paint the smallest amount needed to put a DBA Corps in a game, and work out from there – adding elements to allow other forces to be used, add allies, etc.

In this particular case, this meant that the first Corps I would be painting was I/52e – Early Hoplite Greek, Early Athenian Hoplite 668-541 BC. Its a fairly straight forward force consisting of:

• Hoplites with General (Sp)
• Hoplites (Sp)
• Hoplites (Sp)
• Hoplites (Sp)
• Hoplites (Sp)
• Hoplites (Sp)
• Hoplites (Sp)
• Hoplites (Sp)
• Hoplites (Sp)
• Hoplites (Sp)
• Psiloi (Ps)
• Psiloi (Ps)

Hopefully I can get this completed before my Christmas break is over.

With that decided, I figured the best place to start would be the command elements. Not only would this match the character models I had already completed, but it would allow me to complete the unit of SAGA Elite Hoplites I had begun – I had decided early on that the Elites would be wearing the metal Cuirass armour, whist the regulars would be have Linothorax.

The other thing I needed to do was t0 clean up the metal models that Xyston had sold me. And generally speaking, I was quite happy with what I saw – no real casting issues, the detail was there. If there was one complaint I had is that the models had probably a little too moulding flash compared to what I like.

But in that particular respect, it isn’t a show-stopper for me. Unlike some of the stuff I’ve gotten from Forge World, which had similar amounts of flash, these models did not have casting misalignments to go with the flash – unlike FW, where if you saw this amount of flash, you wondered how badly aligned the moulds were (I had a few models that I had to bin because they were misaligned up to 1.5mm, and that’s just too much to try and scrape over).

I also did a quite a few headswaps for this batch, as I wanted all the Athenian elites to have Corinthian-type helmets.

Finally, I decided on how many minis I would need. One thing I had already determined is that Generals/C-in-C’s would have a standard on their base to mark them out, where as Captains/Sub-Generals, would not, or at least replace the standard with a trumpeter instead. Add to this a decision to paint up four elements of Elites, as the Athenian elite hoplites, or Epilektoi (rated as Sp(S) in DBMM, as opposed to Sp(O)) has a limit of four elements in DBMM. I’d painting up more than I intended, but it would finalise one of my army choices for DBMM, and cut down painting for when I did the second Athenian Corps.

As the crossover to SAGA, three new Elite Hoplites, a Veteran Hoplite to act as their unit leader, and a new character (medium armour).

Lets see how quickly I can get this lot done!