Just stop listening to me.

Recently I mentioned that I was looking at trying to figure out why I dropped my 28mm projects (other than money and space consumption being the issue). I have, in the last few days, been spending time looking over all of my old 28mm figures and I think I have it all figured out. For the 6mm range of figures there is no push or drive to increase the detail or quality of the figures as I paint them. I say this because I do not want to strain my eyes and I feel that the point of 6mm miniatures is being able to throw 5000 to 10000( or more) figures on the table and not even bat an eye. There is also that cost benefit as the price per figure for 6mm is very very small. It is also a way to tackle projects that I would never even be able to dream of affording or storing, such as the Eagles of Heresy project( masses of Titans and tanks is not something people can easily handle).

On the other hand, I look at 28mm figures and see the opportunity to add in lots of detail and to improve my painting skill. The Sons of the Emperor project ( still waiting for Kabuki to release the next figure that I am looking for) has kind of been a test bench for improving my painting skills. These results can be seen in the Lord of the Rings diorama that I made for my Dad last year. This has led to a revival of my Roman Legions and has such led to a revival of my 28mm Napoleonics.

Now this is not an all in revival, but it is a revival. I still plan on working quite heavily on the Romans and in the back ground begin the process of updating the paint job on my Napoleonics AND I am going to be redoing the bases for my Napoleonics. Thankfully in that respect I have been basing my miniatures with wood glue and all it takes to remove the figures from their bases is a few minutes of submersion of the base in water. With this new plan in mind I have gone through my 28mm Napoleonics, organized the storage of those figures, assessed what I have painted, what I have waiting to be painted, what I have yet to assemble, and what I need to close up some gaps in Battalions. This has led to some test paint jobs and to some test of the clean up process that will be taking place in the near future.

Big difference in paint job.

I will probably tackle the re-basing and repainting in a Battalion by Battalion process as I do not want to get in over my head. For the basing, I have been wanting to improve my basing technique for a while and I have purchased a lot of supplies to that extent. So look for lots of random stuff in the future.

Cohort Command

Quick update. Finished both of the two sets of command figures that I have for Legionary Cohorts(except for their shields). However, I only have a photo of one of the command sets. I have also gotten some Praetorians and I have begun putting them together. I have maybe enough figures for a Cohort, but I currently have to figure out what I am going to do for the shield design.

Additionally I have a few pictures of one of my Optios (Cohort Second in command). There will be one Optio for each Cohort and I currently have five others painted but no Shields as of yet.

As a side note I have also finally figured out how to properly put water slide transfers on. Took a little bit of research. I will have to try and figure out how to fix the figures I did a few years ago however.

Some parting thoughts. I have to laugh a bit, as it has been a long time since I have painted 28mm figures like this. The biggest shock was the switch from painting metal and then to plastic 28mm figures. If you are not ready for the change over, the weight difference between metal and plastic figures makes it feel as though you are painting air. Which is a weird feeling. The other thing I am beginning to look at is a way to make painting 28mm Napoleonics enjoyable again. I have a ton of unfinished 28mm figures and the variety of plastic 28mm figures has increased quite a bit since I last looked at them. No firm plans at the moment, just day dreaming.

Legion Command

As promised more Romans. These four figures make up an infantry command stand for one of the Legions I am working on. They represent the central command of the Legion and are based around the Legion symbol, the Eagle.

I have decided to start with the 10th Legion. The base color for this legion will be Red. And I plan on changing the color scheme each of the legions that I make. Once again the base is temporary as I have not made an order for new bases from Likto as of yet. I am still waiting for Warlord Games to ship the last order I made. So bases will not be ordered until later this month.

The observant watcher will note that I have once again changed how I paint flesh. I like the new look. It is not as fleshy pink as the Romans I painted previous to these figures, which is a good thing.

Romans? What did they ever do for us?

Anyone reading this right now is probably thinking to themselves "Romans? I thought we were going to see Gundams in the next post". Well that was the plan. And as soon as I feel like taking a bunch of pictures I will oblige and smother the blog in Gundam model kits.

Here is the real question that you should be asking yourself. Why did I start this project back up? As anyone who has been following this blog will note, I at one point shelved a bunch of projects in favor of working on some of my 6mm projects. The answer is as follows. When I first started this project I did not have a good focus on what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do what little I was working on at the time. And now I am pretty sure I have the kinks worked out. The biggest problem was the base sizes for the figures. The standard 40mmx40mm sizes were not working because of the need for extra depth on each base. I tried to use 50mmx50mm bases, but the extra width from those bases made the figures look too spread out. Solution get a different size base and with the help of Likto this can be done.

Second reason for doing this, it is my Dad's fault. Over the break I was able to spend a lot of time talking with my Dad. In these discussions we cover the Earth about eight or nine times. This year we hit on the subject of the Imperial Roman army several times and that started this little revival. When I got back to my apartment and started looking through what projects I could work. I realized that I wanted to be able to paint figures on the scale of detail that I had done for my Dad's Christmas gift. Combine the two and you get a revamped Imperial Roman Army project.



The good news is that I think that I will be able to use all of the figures I have worked on previously. They will just need to be removed from their bases and given a good was to give them the right look.

The other plus side is that I have a pretty good sized chunk of the figures I want to work with. This means that I will not have to sink a lot cash into the project to get started. I plan on making Cohorts sized at 24 figures to a Cohort on 3 bases. That means I am looking at bases sized at 50mmx80mm. I will probably try to make 2 or 3 legions with some other units thrown into the mix.  The bad news is that 95% of these figures are at my parents house.

In the mean time I have bought a few figures to give me something to work on and here are some of the results so far.

This is a Roman general. And as you can see he is heavily based on the movie Gladiator. I probably will not permanently base him on the base you see him on. That is there mostly for the purpose of keeping the figure was toppling over as he is a little top heavy.

That is it for now. expect more in the future.