From 2024 into 2025

Well, this should have been a review of my achievements in 2024 and a list of my plans for 2025. However, as regular readers will know, I suffered as huge flare-up of arthritis in both hands last year, which pretty much threw all of my plans way off course. When I was able to paint again, I concentrated on some quick wins by painting stuff that I wanted to paint and not things that were long-term projects. So, really, my 2025 plans are pretty much based around a few of the things I was supposed to do in 2024 plus a couple of new ideas. I'm not going to bother listing anything. Just getting various stuff done will be a win as far as I'm concerned.

I will be trying to focus on Midgard, though. This is because I already have two or three armies that might easily be repurposed for Midgard without much effort. These are Principate Roman auxiliaries, a force that is almost complete but just needs some archers, a Dominate period Roman army that really just needs a couple of mounted leaders and maybe some skirmishing light cavalry and, thirdly, a fantasy Norse army based around my Bad Squiddo shieldmaidens and some jötnar and other mythical beings. 

I do have a fourth fantasy Midgard project, which will be a Warhammer Old World Empire army with human foot and horse and some ogres, all based around the Wargames Atlantic conquistador sets of foot and mounted troops plus the Landsknecht ogres. I think I'll need to find a suitable Battle Wizard from somewhere, too. 

I do have one small urgent addition to my 18th century Syldavian and Bordurian imagi-nations, too. I won't say what it is, because it will be required for Winter Wonderlard V at the beginning of February.

So, that is pretty much all I have to say about future plans. 

Three mounted Roman leaders

These are all from the Victrix pack of Early Imperial mounted Roman generals

First, here is a character that I'll probably use as the praefectus cohortis for my auxiliary troops, or maybe as the praefectus equitatus for the cavalry alone.

Next, I have a more senior leader, so I've put him on a base with a second mounted figure;

On the left, we have a very senior centurio, perhaps a legionary primus pilum or the centurio of the first century in an auxiliary cohort and on the right is an army commander, who might be a legate or a tribunus militum.

Clearly, these will be serving as heroic leaders in games of Midgard. I also have some small two and three hole movement trays which I'm using for leaders on foot. 

I've completed the rebasing of my Victrix Early Imperial auxilia now, so they are all on 12cm frontage movement trays. The force looks pretty impressive, but I have auxiliary archers to finish painting to provide some serious long range firepower.

The backdrop is, of course, by Jon Hodgson.

Six various figures

 I finished off six more figures, you'll have to scroll down to see them all.

 First, these were from the Victrix British chariots set that someone game me. I decided to paint them as a Druid and a Gallic or British Warrior Queen. 

Next, two more officer types using the last two bodies from the Victrix Roman auxilia set. They are an Optio and a Centurio;

Not sure what I'll use them for, but the Optio could fit in with the dismounted Decurion I posted previously.

Finally a pair of figures designed to represent the same character with and without his armour.

 This pair are for our long-running D&D campaign. They represent a character who the party has just rescued from a band of Goblins. The figure on the right is him at that point. All his war gear is missing and he just has a borrowed sword and the clothes he was wearing them we liberated him.

The figure on the left is him once he has acquired a new helmet, mail shirt and shield. The armoured figure is a Gripping Beast plastic Saxon Thegn and the unarmoured one is from the Gripping Beast plastic Dark Age Warriors box. Clearly, in his captivity his beard has grown bushy and later on he will have found time to give it a nice trim.

The shield transfers in all the photos are from LBMS.

Gripping Beast Later Roman Cataphracts

I say "Later" Roman but these could fit in pretty much anywhere from the time of Hadrian until the 5th or maybe 6th century.

I've mounted them in groups of three to give me two units of 6 riders, which I can use for Sword and Spear or, more likely, the new Midgard rules from TFL. 

I've already got my Midgard rules and I'm looking at creating a Late Roman army using my already quite large Gripping Beast collection of Late Romans, which you can find elsewhere on the blog by searching for them. I've got more cavalry to get assembled and painted, which would give me more heavy cavalry and some horse archers. I'm also painting up some Saxon Thegns who I think will serve perfectly well as Germanic foederati with a few Roman-style shields mixed in with the round ones and some suitably generic shield transfers. After all, they are all just blokes in mail with shields and spears.

Reveille 2024 at Lincombe Barn Wargames Society

 Yes, it's nearly time for Reveille again, it is next Sunday, 24th November;

The show is, as you can see, at the usual location and there will be the usual variety of traders and games to observe and even join in playing.

Looking forward to seeing as many people as possible.

Another (final) group of Roman auxiliary infantry.

These are the last infantry figures for my Cohors I Syldaviorum Equitata auxiliary cohort project, apart from a couple of leaders who I am working on.

I have a group of eight auxiliary infantry plus a dismounted decurion from a cavalry turma, clearly detached for some kind of mission. These are pretty much the end of the auxilia, although I recently bought a pack of the Victrix Roman auxiliary archers, which at some point I'll work on and use eight of them to replace the Aventine archers I painted up originally. I haven't got anything against the Aventine guys, but I rather fancy having all the troops as Victrix ones. The archer set allows me to make up 12 Western-style and 12 Eastern-style archers and I've always liked the appearance of the so-called Eastern archers (a cohort of these, the Cohors Prima Hamiorum Sagittariorum recruited in Syria) actually served in Britannia on Hadrian's Wall and were based at the fort we know as Housesteads.

Anyway, I've now used up the last eight green LBMS shield transfers, so I used one that my auxiliary  cavalry carry for the leader's shield. I don't think it really matters. The Romans often detached officers for all manner of purposes.

I am thinking about using my auxiliary cohort for Midgard when it is published and how I can get the troops on the right sized bases. I think that the answer lies with Warbases movement trays which just have a lip all the way round, allowing me to drop these smaller sabots inside.

An Outlaw band plus a Big Surprise (at the end of the post)

I've been working on these, on and off for the last couple of weeks. The figures are from the Oathmark Human Light Infantry box but I've used them to create a band of outlaws to use in Never Mind The Ruckus games.

First; two groups of bowmen;

Next, a group of men with spears and staves;

And next, two leaders and a mysterious Black Knight (don't Outlaw legends always have one of these?);

As I said above, these are all Oathmark figures, except the Black Knight who is from the Perry Men-at-arms on Foot plastic set.

I like the figures, even though they don't look particularly historically accurate. They definitely look like something from a film.

So, as legendary screen outlaws living in the woods, green has to dominate their wardrobe choices and therefore these are the Men of the Holly Wood (and they are all wearing tights too), in which case, the Black Knight has to be Sir Antony Courtois of Falworth (even though he isn't carrying his black shield.

I could easily use these guys as Rangers of the Dunedain too or for Rangers of Shadowdeep. There are plenty more of these in the box to be made up, so I have lots of options here. I think more Dunedain might be a small project, but probably not in green.

Now, for the Big Surprise;

Yes, it is the last Giant Spider from the Wargames Atlantic box set. I had thought I'd lost the head and thorax but I was tidying up all my computer and other cables and found it on the floor under my desk. I decided to paint this one in a completely different colour scheme, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Here is Big Spidey with an outlaw for scale;

All of the pictures feature a backdrop from one of my Handiwork Games Jon Hodgson backdrop books.