Belgian Chocolates & Ludus Gladiatorius

I do like Belgian chocolates, but some years ago when offered some, I was taken with the box as much as the contents.

The contents were scoffed pretty quick and I claimed the box and have been holding on to it ever since to be refashioned into an arena for my 15mm gladiators.  However, like so many planned projects, nothing happened for years but recently when clearing out a cupboard I came across it again and decided it was time to do something about it.

So, here it is.

The images, including the Ludus Gladiatorius board were all found on the net and printed out on A4 label paper, cut out and stuck onto the box.  The playing area has a layer of ferro-sheet underneath and all the figures (and pillars) are based on magnetic tiles.  There are a couple of layers of foamboard in the box lid such that the inner sits up higher to create that nice amphitheatre look.

The figures, IIRC, are 15mm Chariot Miniatures that have been painted and waiting years for somewhere to play.

I am making record sheets for players and cards for use as a QPS, the latter can also be used for dealing out gladiator characters.  The card designs, see examples below, will be printed out on label sheets cut out and stuck on playing cards.

Well?

Old-School 25mm Ancients - WiP

The next batch of 25mm Ancients in my topping off process is complete, and are presented here for the record.

These hoplites were all based, repaired and touched up, including a flesh-wash.  These give me enough, when deployed in two ranks, to occupy three 6" squares, and thus give me three more units.  The lefthand 'green unit' were, like the bowmen in the previous post, inherited from a friend but were one figure short of four bases worth.  I only had to paint one extra to match in, the newbie is in the rear rank of the photo below.

Of the other 32 Hoplites, the rank and file, were recently bought ready-painted from eBay during this 'topping-off' process as I thought their painting style was a good match for the 'green unit.  I must stop calling them the 'green unit' as they were clearly intended to be Thebans with their shield emblazoned with the club of Herakles.

What the dolphin on the shields of the hoplites bought on eBay implies is unknown (to me anyway).  This eBay lot had enough hoplites for two units when I added some my friend's command figures - they were in his phalanx units but I don't like the array of pikes broken up by command figures so had been sitting around unused for some time.  The painting styles were a good match and, apart from re-touching, I only added black lining and dolphins to the command figures for them to blend in rather well.

So next, are one base worth's of figures each for Persian armoured cavalry, Companion cavalry (with shields) and Arab camelry ... but I have been distracted down a rabbit-hole so these might not be done as soon as I'd like - see the next post to find out more on this.

Topping Up Old Ancients - WiP

Been a bit unwell lately, nothing serious, so progress has been slow.  Nonetheless, there has been some progress on rounding off my old (1970s), 25mm ancient army - the oldest wargame figures I have retained from my earlier years.  This is an overwhelmingly Hinchliffe collection that started off as Alexandrian but very quickly got bent to a Seleucid force.  After all, who can resist war elephants, scythed chariots and camels!  

The first in the batch were some Syrian / Babylonian bowmen.

These were already painted and based as inherited from an old friend.  Back in the day they were useful for rounding out WRG armies as they were Irregular D and only cost a point each.  All I had to do with these, was add ferro sheet under the bases so they would be secure in my magnetised transit boxes and then texture and paint the bases to match the rest of my collection.  I've kept the figures gloss in memory of my friend whose army was a nice shiny one, but I did just do a quick brown wash on their faces.

While the bowmen above were done to complete the refurbishment of my friend's figures the rest of the batch was all about rounding out existing units to better match the rules I use.  My figures have been used with WRG (5th Ed. IIRC) through to DBM while also stepping outside the 'WRG' world with sets ranging from Ian Beck's 'Shock of Impact' to Simon Miller's 'To the Strongest'.  While I like the simplicity of the DBx rules I have always found the movement frustratingly pernickety.  In contrast I like the grid movement in 'TtS' but find the combat fairly bland.  Clearly, it's possible to have the best of both worlds - DBx on a grid and now I have some nice battle mats with 6" crosshairs on which to do my gridded games.

Using a 6" gird means having even numbers of bases in a unit it requires two DBx bases (6cm wide) to fill the square.  Needless to say, I have odd numbers of many troop types in my armies!  Hence the desire to knock up an extra base for some of these BUT ... being a bit OCD, the issue is making sure the additional elements match my painting from many decades ago.  

First, some Thracian cavalry, both new and old (three of each) - hopefully it's not too easy to spot the differences.

The leading base of figures are easily identified as new as I couldn't resist a quick head-swap and added shield to create a 'leader' for the group.  The reason there are not one, but three, new bases of Thracian cavalry is simply because I had eight of these already cleaned and primed in my spares box.  They were also already attached to their horses, so I painted them while mounted, not something I usually do and will try to avoid in future.

Next, a base of Numidian cavalry, with an old one for comparison - again a pretty good match (IMO).

Others in this current batch are an element each of some Cappadocian extra-heavy cavalry, Companion cavalry with shields, Arab camelry and the retouching and rebasing of 48 Successor phalangites and 36 Hoplites.  I shall be busy for a little while yet - the scale of the challenge can be seen by all the bases awaiting their figures in this photo.