Midgard : Britannia (Building Interlude 2)

The bases and movement trays for the Celtic chariots arrived a couple of weeks back as mentioned in a previous post. I wanted to complete the last two bases of warriors prior to starting work on them though. Over the last couple of days I have glued up the two remaining chariots, undercoated all three of them plus their crews, and adhered them to their movement trays. It was only after doing this that I realised that I should have painted them first as there are some very awkward looking places to reach now, ha ha - oh well!

The Three Chariots prior to Basing and Painting

Warbases did a fine job in creating some lovely custom movement trays for my chariots - I used their standard 95x40mm pill bases as the starting point and asked them to incorporate two of them onto their standard 120x120mm Midgard trays. They work very well indeed - the chariots proved to be a fine fit.

Chariot Bases and Movement Trays

As the chariots are larger, more complex miniatures I am going to count them as a little bit more than the 3/6 (9 in total) count that I have been giving them so far. As each model consists of a chariot, 2 horses and 2 crew members I will count each model as 5 figures in total - 15 figures in all. Maybe if I paint vehicles or multi-piece items in future I will reconsider the total worth, but for now this makes sense to me (and makes the completed numbers more appealing). I know, I know, you can justifiably point out that I didn't count my mounted figures as two figures, when maybe I should have done, but to paraphrase Gimli, "They still only count as one!" 

Celtic figures progress (106 of 133 completed)...

• 106 figures based and ready for use with the Midgard rules set
• Leaders and Champions (6 metal figures)
• 1 base of druids (4 metal figures)
• Mounted warriors (2 metal/plastic figures)
• Chariots and crew (15 metal figures - 3 chariots, 6 horses, 6 crew)

And the remainder...

• 40 Standard and elite warriors (plastic figures)
• 8 Javelinmen (metal figures)
• 2 Slingers (metal figures)

Whilst evaluating my progress and contemplating what else needs doing, I took a look at some potential new units that could be built from the remaining unpainted/prepped Romans and Britons and the Warbases movement trays that are left. Here are the raw numbers (I may have missed a few figures, but I will add them in as and when I find them) - I will try to create as many new units as I can from these and hope that I do not need to purchase any more movement trays for the forces going forward. That being said, the numbers I already have should be enough for most 300 point army eventualities, and I wish to complete another couple of projects before circling back to this one.

Romans...

• 54 Plastic figures:
• 1 complete box of 30
• 24 on sprues (4 leaders, 20 legionaries)
• 2 Optios
• 1 Western Spearman
• 1 Eastern Archer
• 9 Balearic Slingers
• 12 Numidian Cavalry
• Artillery:
• 2 Scorpions + 4 crew
• 1 Ballista + 3 crew
• 1 Onager + 3 crew - for some reason I got a Caesarian rather than Early Imperial onager, so the crew are historically incorrect for this army - ho hum!

Britons...

• 40 Plastic figures - 37 upper bodies, 47 lower bodies (due to using ten uppers for cavalry) on their sprues -  plus 3 already constructed
• 32 Standard Warriors
• 8 Armoured Warriors
• 8 Javelinmen
• 2 Slingers

Unused Movement Trays...

• 4 Warrior ranked bases
• 5 Warrior non-ranked bases
• 5 Skirmisher bases
• 8 Mounted Warrior bases
• 1 Chariot base
• I need to create/order bases for the artillery - these need to be worked out in detail

Whilst thinking about other uses for these bases, I was reminded of my goblin raiding party figures. I may use some for those figures so I can begin creating a Midgard army for my old skool figures. I have a load of figures based up for Hordes of the Things that I never got around to playing with. If I can remove them from those movement bases and clean them up, I could use them for Midgard too. And that would also give me a few dwarf units to get me going.

Timeline - I began this project back on the 6th of June. I have managed to complete 13 movement trays/units in about 10 weeks so far, so I have hit my target of an average of a base per week. Some were more achievable than others so I got more than one base in per week, but there were a few moments when I wavered a little, although I just about managed it. Now to complete the remaining figures in the list.

Midgard : Britannia (Building Interlude)

This post takes a slight detour from the rest of the series. Here I will report on the building and undercoating of some of the non-Midgard based miniatures. Like with the Romans, I have decided not to paint all of the Celtic collection at the moment - I'll save some of them for a later challenge/project. Here is a list of those that I have worked on over the last few days so that they can be painted...

The Chieftains and Champions (see also comments further below) - three each from Warlord (on the left) and Foundry (on the right). There is a marked difference in scale, with the Foundry figures showing their age by being that much smaller, but they should still work well together. I had started a little bit of painting on a couple of them whilst playing the campaign but never really built up any enthusiasm at the time...

Six Chieftains and Champions

The Druids are all from Warlord Games. I have re-used an older photograph of them cut to size...

Four Druids

Here are two more Mounted Warriors to go with the eight already painted - these used 2 of the 36 bodies that were still on the plastic warrior sprues. I decided to do one as a banner bearer just in case one is needed for other games in the future, and because they look good...

Two Mounted Warriors

And finally, the chariots and crew. I completed constructing one of them by the time I posted this missive, but it turned out a little wonky - oh well, never mind. I will hopefully do another update when the other two chariots are constructed and all three are subsequently undercoated. I am toying with grabbing the Boadicea chariot from Warlord to complete two Midgard units worth (two chariots per 120x100mm base), and to give the army a super-special leader. I will also need to get a couple of movement trays organised for the chariots from Warbases to complete this part of the army.

One Chariot and three Crews

I spent a good few hours over the last couple of days assembling all of these miniatures and spray undercoating those that were not already done so, with the exception of the chariots as mentioned previously. I actually enjoyed taking the time out from painting to do some modelling instead. The updated painting list now looks like this...

All of the Celtic figures that were based for Midgard (78 of 106 completed)...

• 3/4 bases of standard warriors (30/40 plastic figures)

• 1/2 bases of elite warriors (10/20 a base each of plastic and metal figures)

• 2 bases of slingers (8 metal figures)
• 1 base of female warriors (10 metal figures)
• 2 bases of archers (8 metal figures)

• 2 bases of mounted warriors (8 metal/plastic figures)

• 2 bases of skyclad warriors (8 metal figures)

• 1 base of hounds (4 metal figures)

Others that I will complete now that they have been prepped and/or undercoated...

• Leaders and Champions (6 metal figures)
• 1 base of druids (4 metal figures)
• Mounted warriors (2 metal/plastic figures)
• Chariots and crew (3/6 metal figures)

And here is a list of the rest...

• 34 Standard and elite warriors still on their sprues (plastic figures)
• 8 Javelinmen (metal figures)
• 2 Slingers (metal figures)

Whilst re-jigging everything to see what was left to paint, I noticed that the leaders and champions consisted of seven metal figures but there was a single plastic figure on the second Elite Warriors Midgard base (the other nine were metal) that I still need to paint. So, I swapped them over and put the plastic elite warrior to the side. I now actually do have a base of ten metal elite warriors but only six metal leaders and/or champions as showcased above.

Once the Midgard based and leader types have been completed I will have plenty of options for a game, so I may run out the Romans as their opponents again for a one-off battle from the Chronicles of Midgard supplement. I will then look at getting some Lord of the Rings figures painted so I can get in a bit of fantasy gaming - maybe another mini-campaign?

So, when I put in the order for those chariot bases, at the same time I will order some standard Midgard movement trays for the Lord of the Rings stuff. First up I think I want to get an orc army organised, then decide whether I want to use Gondor or Rohan as their first enemy.