Italians, Romano-British and changes in direction

It has been a productive week. I managed to move forward on two projects. The first is my East Front Italian project.

CSIR - Italians In Russia: 1941

I completed my second Infantry platoon. I also have another squad completed that will form part of my third platoon whenever I get around to painting that. Somehow I was under the impression that I had painted enough infantry for both 2nd and 3rd platoon. I was in error. Apparently I have no ability to count.

Here are some pictures of the miniatures. First up is the group shot of the platoon.

The platoon consists of the Tenente, his runner and two squads. Each squad is split in two parts - a nine man LMG team and an 11 man rifle section.

Here is the platoon leader and his runner.

What I did with this platoon is I changed up the basing. I left some dirt portions of the bases visible. The previous platoon began to look to me like they were walking on a golf course. Take a look and let me know what you think. Am I better off in covering the base with flock or leaving some of the dirt exposed underneath?

Dux Britanniarum

The second item is my 15mm Dux Britanniarum Romano-British army. I had been on a stuck point with this army for quite a while. I really enjoyed painting up my Early Saxons. But these guys.... Well I am just not sure what happened. The armored fellows were fun but the warriors just annoyed me. I like the figures, I just did not like painting them. Well here is what I have finished up.

First up are my nobles. In the rules, your starting are your lord and his two subordinate nobles. You also have a hero for the force. Well, I have not gotten to my hero yet because I wanted to paint up a priest first. Won't use him for the first few games but I liked the figure.

After the nobles came the Comanipulares or elite troops. These fellows are heavily armored and armed. Splintered light has some fun command sections that I included in this grouping. They play no role in the rules but so what. They are fun and look pretty good to me.

Here is another shot of them in a line.

Now I am still stuck on the Warriors. I have 15 of these poor fellows on painting sticks at about 70% completion. I should be able to knock them out this week. I had a radically different idea of what levy troops would be during the play testing of this than Rich placed in the rules. I created a levy force of peasant levy. These are farmers with various farm implements. Here are what I have finished. Eventually I will have three groups of six of these troops.

The more I look at them, I really like them but they need some additional rules to make them viable in the rules. I think I may tinker with this for a special (unless Rich beats me to it).

I am thinking of changing my force and separating out my warriors that I have into warriors (cloaks and/or helmets) and standard levy (shield and spear only) to match up with the rules better. I will need to buy some more figures from Splintered Light to finish this out if I go in that direction.

I have some Picts that are sitting in a drawer that I will not touch (no, honest, I really, really won't.) until I finish off these guys. I plan on having a small cavalry force to add to the Romano British with both light and heavy cavarly. At this point I only own 2 mounted figures for them. However for my Saxons, I have 8 or so mounted figures. That seems somewhat backwards to me somehow.

Speaking of Saxons, I am planning on getting some reinforcements for these guys too. I have my eyes on the Khurasan miniatures Germans with spear and francisca to serve as allies for my Saxons. Once the Picts make their way onto the painting table, they will serve as an entirely different army and as mercenaries for either side.

Lastly, I have decided to rebase all of my Dark Ages to put them all on US Pennies. Brian, who I am trying to organize a campaign with, is also basing his on pennies so that would make things line up a bit better.

Well that is it for this installment. Let me know what you think.