Carthaginian Spearmen WIP 2

I can't really take credit for these. Those shield transfers by LBMS really make these figures look sharp.

Holy cats has it been a busy month! My wife and I decided to put our house on the market and buy a new one right now (RIGHT NOW!) to take advantage of a favorable real estate market. That's been a major time sink, but I managed to squeeze in a few painting sessions, enough to get these Carthaginians nearly finished. I still need to do some proper basing, but it was nice to at least hit a milestone with these.

Awesome Hoth Explosions

I was puttering around the internets and came across this gigantic "Battle of Hoth" diorama. Pretty neat, but the thing that really caught my eye were the realistic explosions.

Those are awesome! I'd love to be able to create something similar for wargaming barrage markers. Creator "Zipidi Dooda" helpfully uploaded a tutorial for creating them to YouTube:

Spoiler Alert: At the end of the video Zipidi warns against leaving the integral lighting element lit for more than a few minutes lest the entire explosion catch fire. That's a little TOO realistic. Still, I bet a scaled down version using cooler LED lighting effects might work.

Showdown of the plastic Romans. Round 1!

Warlord has finally released their plastic Caesarian Romans, a set of figures I've been dying to get my hands on for months. I've been using Wargames Factory's similar offering for a few years, and while I agree the sculpting on them is a bit odd, I think once painted and ranked up they are more than acceptable. I'm planning on investing in a large number of late Republic era legionnaires, so I want to make sure I choose a manufacturer that look good and don't dent my wallet too badly. My first thoughts on deciding which to pick up after the jump.

Hail Caesar Skirmish #8: Our Favorite Game Yet

It's been a crazy busy week for me, but I did manage to get in another small skirmish of Hail Caesar the other day. We don't yet have enough figures painted up to match the army sizes suggested in the rules, but this was our first game where we had enough figures for it to really feel like an ancient set piece battle. After action report and thoughts after the jump.

Reaper Bones Slow Crawl

It looks like the Reaper Bones kickstarter is making progress. I just took a look at this video update of all of the completed figures available in the basic Vampire level package...


That's... that's actually pretty intimidating. And I added on bonus figures. *Gulp*!

Hail Caesar Skirmish #7: Back to Basics

Before children, my wife and our friends Rob and Laura would meet regularly to play games. Catan, Ticket To Ride, Roborally, and more hit the table at least once a month. Since we all started infecting our houses with time-eating rug rats, our game nights have become infrequent at best.  The stars aligned the other night though, and we managed to get a game night with all four of us. Surprisingly  the game I was informed we'd be playing was Hail Caesar . Find out how teaching two wargaming newbs the art of ancient warfare went after the jump.

WIP for Crusader Miniatures Carthaginian "Libyan Spearman"

This big block of 32 Carthaginian spearmen are going to take quite a while to finish, but I figured I could post a progress update. A few more progress pics after the jump.