Legionary 2017 – Exeter games show
The annual wargames show in Exeter
This year’s show lived up to expectations. Plenty of great looking games spread across history with quite a few non historical games. The Star Wars competition looked spectacular with all the space maps joined together. I was so impressed I forgot to take a photo!
A good variety of traders with plenty of stock meant temptation but I mostly managed to resist. And an impressive bring and buy where I got a couple of bargains.
Helms Deep besieged in Exeter
The Exmouth Imperial Wargames Club who run the show had a good looking siege of Helm’s Deep game. The fortress itself was very impressive with the stone beautifully painted. Talking of painting I was impressed to hear the elves had been painted for the game.
Napoleonics in America
Another game that caught my eye was Graham Cookson’s War of 1812 game. The smoke effect on the rocket team looked most convincing!
Catching up
As usual the show was a great opportunity to catch up with people. I had my annual chat with Martin Goddard from Peter the Pig who seems to be making the Russian army of the Second World War on a 1:1 basis.
I was interested to hear from Helion Books that Bicorne Miniatures are to release a set of figures depicting the Royalist Oxford Army. Good news for English Civil War collectors.
I look forward to next year’s show
Legionary 2016 – Exeter’s Games Show
Lots of games and Star Wars
The show lived up to expectations this year with lots of games to enjoy. The standard of both demonstration games and participation games was high. The MDF houses in Graham Cookson’s Dad’s Army game even had wallpaper in.
There was a Star Wars X-Wing tournament with all tables filled plus a big armada game. I was really impressed by the quality of the ready painted models. Not so sure about how very close the models get in combat. As Hawkwind said space is big and deep and empty.
My game of the day
I really liked the sci-fi game that used Dropzone Commander card buildings with lots of flock to create a post apocalypse city. The way the colours changed across the board and the central building was the only clear spot added to the atmosphere. It had a look of JG Ballard’s novels to me. Apparently it took an awful lot of hairspray to get the flock in place!
Close up of the Ballardian Sci-Fi game
Sci-Fi game showing the edge of the clear zone
ACW game with balloon wranglers and band to the fore
Hello Peter Pig
Any show is good for catching up with old friends. Seeing lots of people I’d not seen for a while was one of the best bits of the day.
Knowing Martin from Peter Pig from my days in the games business it was a good chance to catch up with him. Very tempted by his Sudan range still!
A great day out and shopping too!
A good venue complete with cafeteria and bus service added to the day. Some people thought it was a bit cold but I prefer that to a warm and whiffy show!
View across the hall
MDF Viking ship with Roman signal tower in the background
Plastic 28mm Persians 1 planning
From chatting to a 28mm Early Achaemenid Persian army
Discussing the new version of the DBA ancients rules with a colleague led into how he’d always wanted a hoplite army. Given I’d always fancied wargaming the invasion of Greece by Xerxes in 480 BC before we knew it we are planning armies.
We agreed on larger figures simply because Tony was keen on them and plastic ranges make such an ambition affordable. I certainly wouldn’t have agreed to get a 25/28mm size Persian army in metal as with all the cavalry and hordes it would cost a small fortune!
Persian and Greek Wargames Factory boxes
Planning out the Persian host
Having settled on DBA I looked at the Early Achaemenid list. Double bases for the Immortals and sparabara infantry increased the body count but using light infantry instead of hordes reduced it. Well, reduced by a small amount! Once I had worked out what I needed I looked at the Wargames Factory range of Persians.
Happily they cover all the troop types I needed and I set about planning the figures I needed. I then got a bit too enthusiastic and decided only Big Battle DBA would do justice to the battles of 480-479 BC. Some thinking later and I produced the army and list of figures needed at the end of this post. The number of figures was slightly daunting but having more time at home because of a health problem meant I had time to assemble them.
In the course of thinking about the army I used the usual references for wargamers from Duncan Head’s book on the Persians to Field of Glory army lists. Plus this made a great excuse to buy Tom Holland’s new translation of Herodotus!
Checking figures against the army list
Recruiting the plastic Persians
Happily I found some boxes on eBay and then North Star Figures had a sale of Wargames Factory at the right moment. Even so I found after much sorting out and assembling of figures more were needed! Caliver Books provided my last recruits so it was just planning how to paint them.
All figures are multi-part so lots of sprues
Painting 28mm Persians
Whilst the Wargames Factory Persians are not the finest figures on the market they provide the basis for a good paint job. I realised if I did that painting my miniature Persians would take longer than the campaign lasted! So I decided to go for the good old block colours and brown varnish technique.
This is also known as “the dip” method as marketed by the Army Painter company. I use a similar approach of painting in the basic colours in almost toy soldier style. I let them dry completely and then apply a coat of Ronseal acrylic varnish with a brown stain in it. Using lighter colours than you usually would helps the varnish stain combination do its work. The stain varnish combination provides instant shading and looks ok on the gaming table. A bit crude for 28mm size figures perhaps but gets them on the table.
Big Battle DBA Early Achaemenid Persian army list
General and sub generals 3 bases of 3CV = 9 figures
Cavalry 3 bases of 3CV = 9 figures
Light Cavalry 3 bases of 2LH = 6 figures
Immortals 3 bases of 8BW = 24 figures
Sparabara infantry x bases of 8BW = 72 figures
Hillmen 3 bases of 3AX = 9 figures
Medising Hoplites 3 bases of 4SP = 12 figures
Light infantry 9 bases of 2PS = 18 figures
There is an option to replace the light infantry with hordes but that would be another 63 figures to make and paint…
Box of ancient Persian infantry with the lid off
Goblins for Warmaster and BOFA
Only 10mm high but hordes of them
Older gamers will recognise Warmaster as Games Workshop’s mass fantasy battle rules from 2000. BOFA stands for Battle of Five Armies which was the later Hobbit version. Both games use bases of 10mm metal or plastic figures based in elements on 20x40mm bases, with three such bases forming a unit.
The goblin horde arrayed
I was painting the goblins from the Battle of Five Armies box set. This produces eight units to make the goblin army. That’s a total of 336 (8 times 3 bases each with 14 goblins on) 1cm high goblins to paint!
Fast painting hordes of goblins
I wanted to get these painted quickly because of the number of them. Plus I have another eight units to paint! I tried two techniques.
First was the traditional black undercoat to provide dramatic shading and lining. This creates almost a cartoon effect and by dotting in glowing red eyes worked well.
Goblin unit painted with a black undercoat
Second was using a coloured acrylic varnish produced by Ronseal for treating wood over bases colours. This is the same as the technique known as the “the dip”.
Goblin unit painted with brown wood varnish
The full horde seen from above
