Goodbye 2018 - Looking back at painting through the year

Hello everyone

Another year has gone by and 2019 begins.  2018 was a great year for painting and out of all my years of painting it was 2018 where I got the most done.

That's not too terribly much compared to other people who paint out there! I do take my sweet time. But to me painting miniatures is a form of art, and I want my art to look as good as I possibly can get it to be.  Even if it takes me a lot longer to get the paint to sit the way I want it to on my models. I know there are tons of amazing painters out there who can paint world's faster than I do and still get amazing results!

Well, I guess my new years resolution should be learning to paint faster with just as much accuracy.

Anyways, here are what I finished / completed in 2018.

Triarii 

The Triarii were actually my last project in the year of 2018. I began this unit on November 1st 2018 and it took me all the way to the end of the year on the morning of December 31 to finish! I think this was the longest I've ever spent painting 8 minis... I did, in fairness, run a Kickstarter campaign on top of home based business so time wasn't as readily available compared to earlier in the year, but I am very happy with how they turned out. I think I did very well with the color schemes and the Little Big Man Studio decals.  I've said it before me, but to me their shield wall looks like art that suddenly starts stabbing you to death when you get too close. Watch out Carthage! ;)

Velites

These guys I consider "2018" work, even though I finished them sometime ago in 2017. This is because some shelving I set up in my old storage room collapsed and these with a bunch of other models fell and a good portion of them were forever destroyed. I managed to repair these guys and replace the complete ruined models, however.  You can see I've improvised with a few shortened / widened javelin heads as well as given the fellow with the yellow shield a gallic sword... The shields and tunics are slightly different shades of yellow and white , following my original colour scheme. 

Hastati

 The next two units for my Romans to come out were my Hastati. I stuck with the Pectoral Armored lads from Victrix and mixed in a few Velite converted bodies for some unarmored versions and to give them some variants in poses. For every two units of Hastati / Principes , I give one unit a "command" (traditional Warhammer thinking : Leader, Standard Bearer, Musician).  You can see on the commander and Musician in the back that I've given them chainmail to represent their importance. I also gave the Commander a Warlord Games Caesarian head instead of a Victrix one.

You'll also see the shields, plumes, and tunics are quite different from the Triarii. I wanted the Triarii to stand out as elites. The Hastati in my army make use of VVV water slide transfers (Veni Vidi Vici transfers) and their uniform / plumes are much more conforming. 

Principes 

Here are the "first men" of the army, the Principes. I only did one unit of them and my next Republican Roman project will be another unit of these to complete a whole division for Hail Caesar!.  In uniform they're very similar to the Hastati, but as you can see, they've got better armor and a fancier command group.  I had small shield LBMS transfers so I just stuck one on the standard bearer to look cool.

Commander

The General of the army. Or perhaps of just this first division.  He's from Warlord Games and only is available if you buy the Caesarian supplement book. He's not supposed to be from the Punic War era, but I figured with his winged / plumed helmet he would fit right in. I gave him a pastic Victrix hoplite shield , using a Battleflag waterslide transfer (which was easily damaged in its application, I do not recommend these ones).  His armor is fancier, and he wears an Iron helmet, unlike the rest of the army.  He's already won and lost a few games, so he's been quite important to the army and I think this is a great mini.

The Celts

Here are my Celtic Horsemen. They're old Wargames Factory models, so they are not the best plastics or sculpts out there, but I do like how I ended up painting them.  I use them as Light Cavalry in my Republican Roman army.  Rome has never had impressive citizen cavalry historically so I've decided to make use of all the mercenaries / auxiliary I possibly can, and these Gallic Cavalry are the first.  I used a mixture of the Wargames Factory's Celtic Cavalry and Ancient German Cavalry box sets (the better one is the German one, by far) and mixed and matched pieces.  The shield decals are again from Little Big Man Studios. LBMS only ever made Numidian and German Cavalry shield transfers for Wargames Factory, and I don't think any other of their old plastics have official transfers.

Here's Warlord Games "Celtic Civilians" and a single Wolfhound and a Black Tree Design Persian peasant.  Honestly, the BTD peasant could be used for any ancient barbarian civilian or soldier.  The Warlord Games civilian pack came with a puppy dog, three kids, and grandma, who is lifting up her skirt in preparation to hurl a rock at these children and their mutt. . . The kids are really weirdly sculpted, and their feet are bigger than grandmas.   I still find the pack humorous though, since Grandma looks like she'd fit right in with a unit of Gallic slingers. You DONT mess with grandma! 

Near the end of the year we launched my company's Iron Age Farmstead - a polyresin, prepainted set of Iron Age buildings to use in 25/28mm wargaming.  It was successfully funded and we're still currently in the process of getting all the pieces done up and painted, then shipped to all the backers who helped to successfully fund it.  I know I'll be using it in many of my ancients games.

Following that are a bunch of plastic farm animals I did up for the Farmstead's advertising. They are from Warlord Games and I was happy to use some of those 20 x 40 mm bases that some companies supply.  They worked perfectly for many of the animals as you can see.  Warlord did an awesome job on these critters - my only complaint is that some of the animals links break easily and are horrendously skinny.

Other Stuff

The rest were side projects or experimental stuff that turned out decent enough to keep on using. I played a lot of Frostgrave alongside Hail Caesar! so some of the work was used for that game. 

Here's a whole bunch of dry brushed stuff. Wraith, Ice Spiders, Snow Leopard, Dire Wolf, Polar Bear..  I did not put as much effort into these compared to my ancients, and they painted up extremely quickly because I mainly drybrushed them after the base coat and wash. The wraith, came prepainted. I just thought it was cool and needed a quick mini for the game.  Save the wraith, these are all Reaper Bones miniatures.  I think the ghost was from D n D wizards of the coast...?

These Reaper Miniatures are also bones. Cheap statues that were dry brushed quickly for Frostgrave. 

CD scatter terrain. I always saw people using these, but never got around to making them, but near the end of the year I had an evening off and just sat down and made some.  The CD is the base. I shattered some rocks in a park and gathered the shards , washed them, then glue gunned them down on the CD. Then I just put textured paint on the rest of the parts - followed by a paint job, wash, and dry brushing each stone and piece of earth.  Then I just added variant patches of different colored grass and some bushes. I'll be making a few more of these, and still need to make Tim S a few as he rather liked them and asked if I could make him a few. 

I had these old Lord of the Rings ruins sticking around my collection for such a long time so I just decided to glue them all down on an oval plywood base and paint them up with Walmart acrylic paints. Turned out nice for some ruins.  

Stuff I did not paint . . . 

So some parts of my collection are items that I did not personally paint. I have been using these for unit fillers in my Roman army until I get my own models painted up.  And they've served me well.  When you field something you yourself have painted, however, you just have a much more happy feeling, so I don't have as much joy playing with these as I do with models painted by my own hand. Still, they're all other people's works of art, so I thought I'd just share them anyways. 

Hoplite commission work by Paul White. I did not order these, nor pay him to paint these up. They're from Warlord Games, and he was selling them for a decent price for the paint job... my original plan was to give them to a friend to start playing with some models to get into games faster, but he ended up wanting to just paint his own stuff, which I understand entirely. Thus, I now have them and have used them for a few of my games as Roman mercenaries. The single commander there has always taken command of my "mercenary" division. 

Finally, this Elephant and these Numidians were painted by a fellow named Grant Dyck, who was originally going to play Hail Caesar! with the lot of us. However, his true calling for painting comes in the form of Micro Armor, and he just preferred painting that scale over 28mm.  Or perhaps ancients was not his thing. Regardless, Tim S and I ended up splitting all his Numidians and I kept a good chunk of the Numidian forces.  These guys unfortunately took a fall with the Velites I own and I had to repair them - A good chunk of the Numidian infantry were destroyed but I repaired what I could. They've been really useful for my games, but once the rest of my Romans are done they too will be phased out of my game play, though the Elephant will probably still find some use from time to time!

Once I have a full division of Romans I plan to keep these minis painted by other folks as demo models... that is, allow other people to use them in ancient games if they want to get a feel for wargaming. In this way I don't have to lend out stuff I've painted on my own.  I prefer handling my own toys and do not feel as bad if stuff I didn't paint is being used.


That's it! Not a whole lot, but it really is the most I've achieved model collection wise in my life. 2019 will be a busy year, but I plan to include a lot more painted models in it as well.  My next projects will include some Cretan archers, some Greek commanders, and some Victrix hoplites because I want to play Mortal Gods and Mens of Bronze - skirmish based wargames that are due out in March and April 2019 that focus on mainly hoplite warfare.  Secondly, I will be building and painting some late 100 year wars minis because our local gaming group wants to do Lion Rampant and we have chosen that era for the game.  And of course I have another unit of Principes and the other half of the Roman division to do. . I'm finding that it is better to focus on a main project, and do these little side projects to keep interest going.. So I will keep on trucking away at my Romans, but have these Greeks and French forces in between the Romans if I get tired of painting the same sort of lads over and over again!

Ah, and the YouTube channel. On my last note,  Kickstarter and running Amazon stores from home really have drained a lot of my time, and I've got some Hail Caesar! tutorials and walkthroughs to also finish there!  I hope I can get more videos out in 2019. We'll have to wait and see!



Thank you all for reading. Looking forward to 2019!