6mm Hail Caesar: Syracuse versus early Carthage

I've been busy painting my Hoplite army and I'm now able to field a fully painted 300 point army of two divisions. I took them out to face my friends' early Carthaginians. I used the Syracusan list as they were the Hoplite army most often facing the boys from North Africa. I've embedded commentary on the game in the images in an attempt to make the action more clear. I think I should start using arrows and such more to make movement clearer..

It was a close victory for Syracuse. It's not clear if Carthage would not have won of the game would have progressed further but it seemed a bit unlikely that they would break both of the Syracusan divisions. It feels like games of Hail Caesar seem to drag on a bit after the main clash. Maybe a mod to make armies break more easily once the line is fouled up or reduce the number of divisions needed broken for the army to quit the field? The rules state that you have to have more than half of the divisions broken for the army to quit the field, but it really doesn't work with two divisions. Maybe settle for one broken division for two division games and it might look more what it's supposed to.


In other news, I got Phantom Leader, a solitaire wargame of air missions over Vietnam. It's pretty fun and definitely a challenge.

The game doesn't need a lot of space and you can put everything away between campaign missions

Here's where the magic happens. You have to choose your avenues of approach to the target and decide how to engage the enemy in the area. There's also a ground target to destroy.

Warmaster: My first 10mm models done

 I've never played Warmaster or Warmaster Ancients, it seems I've ended up with three armies for the game. Models for the game have been quite pricey after Specialist Games was discontinued, so when I've been able to score good deals for the models which are becoming increasingly difficult to come by (outside Ebay), I haven't been able to resist. Now I have armies for the High elves, Orcs & Goblins and the Undead. I suppose I'll have to start painting some and I decided to start with the High Elves.

Here's a unit of spearmen and the first 10mm models I've ever painted. They're surprisingly time consuming to do. Compared to 6mm, I'll probably be able to paint three times the number in 6mm compared to the time I spent doing these. It's not the level of detail either, these elves aren't that complex to paint. It's.. something. Maybe it is just my lack of experience with the scale, who knows.

Anyway, the Orc army I have poses another dilemma. It's halfway through painted, you see, but the work that someone has done for it is ok. I'll let you judge:

I'm thinking that maybe instead of stripping them of paint and repainting them, I'd try to finish the paintjob someone else started. All the bases are unflocked etc. so it wouldn't be that hard to finish what has been started. I'm jsut wondering whether they will feel like playing with someone others' figures when I haven't done 100% myself. What do you think? It would definitely save me a ton of trouble..

New units for my Greek project

We've all been there. Starting a project and then losing motivation to take it forward. I had that with my Ancient Greek army after finishing the first Hail Caesar division last year. I had a fresh batch of 96 hoplites halfway painted and suddenly I felt like painting something else. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get myself to doing more of those shield designs. I painted a whole Epic Armageddon army and a variety of other things just to avoid doing them.

Well, I regained my motivation a while back and finished 200-ish new hoplites in quickly. It's a small number for 6mm, I know, but they seem pretty time consuming to do. I spend two or three evenings completing each batch of 100. Here's the latest:

Some "regular" hoplites with varied colours

Another angle

Here's some of Baccus' "unarmored hoplites". I gave each of them red clothing and limited the palette on the shields so I can use them as Spartans or other elite hoplite formations. I didn't want to give all of them the lambda shield emblem as the Spartans adopted it in the later Peloponnesian war period and I want to do the earlier periods too.

Another shot.

Some psiloi I finished last year, but haven't photographed yet.

I have a hundred more hoplites to do, but I'll have a break from doing them now. I have some cavalry and archers as well so those will give me some variety. I still need to order some light cavalry, peltasts and slingers before I can call this one done..