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.

I've been working on lots of scenic stuff

I needed to get lots more trees and hedges for 15mm wargaming and I've been working on them for weeks now. The word for this is BORING! but it had to be done.  Here are all the things I've done. Apologies for the picture quality. I was in a rush and used a camera that isn't really designed for close-up flash work.

First, here is an orchard. The trees are quite large for 15mm.

The trees are on bases and can be removed for ease of access to troops etc under the trees.

Next, a couple of small coppices. Again, the trees can be removed. These are a mix of large and small trees.

Twelve more small trees here, again on separate bases;

These will work well as trees lining fields or around the edge of a village, I think.

Next I have lots and lots of hedges of various kinds;

And to finish, some large free-standing trees and poplars to line roads;

I reused some old rough roads made from cork tiles as the bases for some of these items and used tongue depressors for other pieces.  

The flock and ballast stuff comes off very easily, but a blast with Hycote matt spray varnish seems to have stuck everything in place pretty well. 

The trees were all bought ready-made and came unbased, so I had plenty of flexibility as to how I used them. I bought them from K&M Trees. Nice stuff and quick and efficient service.

This figure is HUGE

This figure was a freebie that came with  the latest copy of Miniature Wargames magazine. It is for a game called "Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings", which I'd never actually heard of before. Anyway, it is in 38mm scale, which seems pretty unique.

Here is the finished item, next to a 28mm Victrix Roman auxiliary cavalryman;

That is ridiculously big. Here are two more pictures of the Big Guy.

I only made him up and painted him for something to do. I've no intention of buying into a game system that uses such large minis as standard. The thing is this, though; I could see a point to him once I'd glued him together and undercoated him in black.

I think that he would be fine as a gigantic Daemonic Knight, probably as a Warlord for a Saga; Age of Magic warband, such as my Otherworld one, or for a Dragon Rampant force, which is why I used a fairly classic Chaos colour palette of black, bronze, brass, steel and red. His helmet has a weird flaming-looking crest, which I decided would look pretty good as actual flames, so that is how I tried to paint it. 

He was actually pretty easy to paint, because of the size of the model. I liked the idea of his daemonic steed having brass hooves, and they seem to have worked quite well. I left the slight amount of visible face black, to give the impression that whatever is inside the armour is Not Of This World.

Annoyingly, after I'd taken the photos, I noticed a few grains of ballast clinging to his horse barding, which I have now removed with a paintbrush.