Artillery!

After having a challenging experience at the Dorset Dodderers against an army with a Heavy Artillery unit in it, I decided to bite the bullet (or "large stone" I guess?) and pick up a proper Roman/Greek stone thrower unit to add to my collection.

This also meant having an opportunity to use some more of Donnington's excellent Roman artillery crew - great little characterful figures that I have already utillized for the "artillery on carts" (which appear in the  ADLG rulebook on page 137) - but the question then became where to source the engine itself?

In the end, after some debate with the CLWC massif I plumped for Xyston's Heavy Stone Thrower - which comes with some Greek-looking crew, giving me the dilemma of potentially wasting some figures (Yoiks!!!).

The solution to this issue was...magnets, or more specifically, some very thin magnets I'd had kicking around for ages, most probably bought to hold the turrets on resin-cast tanks (before hard plastic kits totally replaced them in the wargamers pantheon.. before being replaced by 3D prints in turn..). 

This allowed me to base up two sets of crew, and repurpose the artillery piece itself to be used by either.

 Add in a small ballista that I found kicking around in the bits box (in 15mm scale - not the full size one I saw at Vindolana) and suddenly I have two sets of interchangeable Heavy and Light artillery. 

Here's the rather over-crewed Light Ballista version of the Roman artillery base.

And the same tiny engine with Xyston Greek crew. The chap holding up a stone missile must be rather dissappointed...

Here you can see the magnets embedded in the two bases, and the corresponding magnet glued to the bottom of the large engine.

This Xyston piece is incredibly crisply cast. 

The Greek crew are simply painted with my current go-to "white" technique of Army Painter "speedpaint" Holy White with a top layer of Army Painter Matt White semi-drybrushed on top, leaving the shading that the Holy White generates visible in places.

The metal elements are Enchanted Steel, again from Army Painter, and the engine itself is ArmyPainter Hardened Leather speedpaint on a white undercoat.

Same engine, different crew from Donnington. 

Ready to ping !

It's a Ballista!

 At Warfare last year I lent my now-venerable 28mm Patrician Roman army to someone to use in the ADLG competition. 

The paint job is a little darker than I'd probably do today (aka its slathered in ArmyPainter Soft Tone to within an inch of it's life, and so looks like it's been on campaign in Germania without a Legionary Laundry Cart in sight for a whole winter season) however seeing it on table again made me somewhat nostalgic for the days when it was pretty much my only 28mm army - so I've decided to give it a bit of love and attention.

That currently means a slow stepwise addition of some fairly generic "Gothic/Frankish" infantry from the super-cheap Wargames Atlantic "Generic Hairy Blokes" set (some of whom have already appeared here), and also this rather spiffy "EIR" era bolt shooter from Warlord Games.

I'm aware that some of the Warlord Imperial Romans can look a little on the small side compared to the more recent Victrix sets, and even the GB Late Romans who make up much of my army's legionaries - but this bolt shooter will, if it ever gets used, stand on it's own so the size comparison won't matter at all.

I am also aware that the lorica segmenta armour is wildly anachronistic for a "Patrician" era Very Late Roman army, but again, this looks so cool that I can live with that any day of the week! 

The whole set is hard plastic, with just the two crewmen.

 

For a piece that will rarely be used I decided to do a simple Contrasts paint job, with the ArmyPainter Leather being used on the wooden parts of the bolt shooter itself as well as the belts and petruges of the legionaries. 

The armour and steel arms of the bolt shooter are done in my new go-to of Enchanted Steel, again an ArmyPainter paint (thanks Will Morriss for suggesting it to me!).

The chap with the bandaged head is especially cool - the "dried bloodstain" on the front of his head bandage is down to accidental drift of the Dark Oath Flesh GW paint I used as a base layer on all of the flesh on the figures - it came out better than I could have done deliberately, so I'll happily take that and run with it too! 

The artillery are now ready and waiting to ping some barbarian leaders at unfeasible distances!