DBA Early Germans

 As announced in the previous post related to the Early Imperial Romans, the Early Germans are on the warpath too, and now ready to contest the battlefield with the Romans.

The army is composed of 12 elements, in accordance with the DBA rules. I've tried to mix as many sets as possible to get a 'warband' effect. The figures come from 8 sets from 6 different manufacturers: ESCI, Revell, Hät, Caesar, Strelets and Linear-A.

The bases have been made with the same method as for the Romans.

The Early Germans army is mainly a Warband that gather warriors from one particular tribe or from a confederation. No less than 9 Warband elements here:

Some close-ups on two of them, the first is the General (3 Caesar figures + a chieftain with his blue plaid by Linear-A):

Then we have an elements of archers as Psiloi:

And last, two elements of cavalry, one heavy and one light:

Now that the basing method has been validated with the Romans, it proved much faster to base another army, and still fun to do.

Hope you like them :) Tell me if you prefer the Roman Empire or the Germans !

Germanic warrior, 1st century AD

 It seems that this website is dedidated to Ancients these days. After the Celtic Gaesatae, I've painted a Germanic warrior from the 1st century AD. And if we accept a slight distortion of space (northern Italy / Germany) and time (3rd BC/ 1st AD), you will discover this warrior face to face with previous post's Gaesatae in a panoramic view :)

Here you are:

Dramatic, isn't it ? The exact opposite of a plate by A. McBride from the Concord books showing a wild German attacking a Gaul chieftain, whose richer clothes showed that he was influenced, and probably softened, by his Mediterranean neighbours.

Let's focus on the Germanic warrior. No conversion this time: the figure comes from Linear-A set 10 Germanic Warriors Set 2 (Command).

I love the Ancients range by Linear, because they make a real effort to make original figures in new periods, or fill the ranks of existing armies with very welcome additions (Tarentine cavalrymen, for instance). This figure is no exception, because of his dynamic pose as a chieftain leading his warriors in the assault. But I must admit that I faced difficulties in removing flash and mold lines, so the result isn't as good as I wanted. 

To paint this figure, I was partly inspired by this picture found on the website of a German reenactment society, the Chasuari Group:

Their purpose is to reconstruct the daily life of the Germanic people in the 1st century AD, exactly what I was looking for.

Hope you find him accurate :)

See you soon.

2020 Advent Calendar: Day 15

So far, this calendar has displayed only one rider, a French Hussar. It's probably time to show some more, at the head of another fierce warband.

For Day 15, we have a look at a group of Ancient Germans on horse.

 

In ancient times, the area between the Rhine and the Danube was covered with forest. When the Germanic tribes were going to war, they gathered in warbands and fought mainly on foot. As in the Celtic world, the noblemen could buy horses and fight as riders, so most Germanic armies had a few cavalry units with them.

We can see below three riders armed with javelins and shields, running out of the cover of the trees. They look rather impetuous...

Of course they're not alone, since they're heading the main warband of their tribe. Or they going to attack the Roman fort of day 13 ?

These Strelets figures will be based together as a 3Cv element for DBA or L'Art de la guerre.

Hope you like them. See you soon :)

Early Germanic army complete !

At last, I could paint the last warriors that I needed to field a complete DBA Early Germans army.
And since I've created a small scenery for Christmas (see the previous post), I used it to take pictures of my army in ambush in the woods in winter.

To be honest, my interpretation of the DBA list is rather loose. In the picture above, we have:

• 8x4Wb, the main warband
• 2x2Ps, the skirmishing archers
• 1x2LH, the light cavalry
• 1x3Cv, the medium cavalry

But I have enough more warriors to add 2 more 4Wb elements, and stick to the list.

The last painted figures are displayed below: 2 riders from Strelets Batavian auxiliaries, and 8 warriors from various manufacturers (Hät, Strelets, Caesar and ESCI).

Close-ups:

You can see that the Strelets seem more suitably dressed for winter than the others, but maybe some extra strong or fanatic warriors could fight half naked ?

The Cv element is composed of Hät Gothic riders painted a long time ago - they're ok in an Early Germanic army, in my opinion.

A few more pictures:

One of my objectives for 2018 is fulfilled, hourra ! Just need to base them (it will be a 2019 objective I guess :)).

I suppose you won't be seeing more Germans before long ! Hope you like them anyway.

Germanic warband: reviewing the troops

In the previous post, I displayed my ancient Germanic warband, and asked if you, dear readers, could identify the origin of the various minis, in spite of the blurry pictures (it would have been too easy, otherwise).

I received several answers in the comments and was really impressed by the knowledge, and the quality of the glasses of the contributors. All together, you've almost identified everything, except for a few guys in the background.

Here you are the answer. I am going to give the detail of the sets used, and the manufacturers of course. As you will see, I summoned almost every tribe of the ancient world :)

Let's begin with the easy part, those who you all recognized.


1. The sets you all recognized

   1.1. Caesar set H040 - Ancient Germans

   1.2. Hät sets 8068 - Ancient Germans and 8074 - Imperial Roman Auxiliaries (third guy from the right, with the off white oval shield, a spear replacing the club)

   1.3. Hät set 8069 - Dacians

   1.4. Hät minisets 6005 - Picts, and 6008 - Visigoths (the lonely man on the left)

   1.5. Hät miniset 6007 - Franks

   1.6. Strelets set M035 - Ancient Germans

   1.7. Strelets set M004 - Vikings (I have painted other vikings, but they were too well equipped to look like ancient Germans)

   1.8. Esci set 225 - Barbarian Warriors (yes, it is possible to use descent poses from this improbable set - I remember a time when it was the only available set representing ancient Germans, I then used every pose. The kneeling archer is a conversion from this set)

So far, all these manufacturers had been identified by most of you. The following have been named by Paul (from Paul's Bods) only.


2. The sets identified by Paul

   2.1. Miniart set 72013 - Germanic Warriors

   2.2. Orion set 72028 - Slavic Warriors (ok, this one is not in the right warband, let's say he is a neighbour visiting his friends)

   2.3. Coates & Shine set 8133 - Gothic Army (ok, it is almost a Hät reference)
 

The last ones had not been identified - they were completely lost in the background !


3. The figures lost in the background

   3.1.  Revell sets 02553 Celts (Gauls) and 02551 - Anglo-Saxons (The "Gaul" is on the left - nothing to do with a Celt, but it can be a descent Frank)

3.2. Emhar set 7206 Saxon Warriors

And last, a family picture - the mix is the best way to represent that sort of warband.

This picture is not blurry, will you find them all ? :)

My Germanic warband is growing - faster, but not that fast

I'm proud of myself today. For the first time in my life, I have been able to paint 8 figures at the same time, and they were painted in two days - I even painted another one, but I keep it for the next post :)

All right, all right, I can hear most of you, army painters, laughing... and you're right to do so :D but the above is true, since I usually paint one or two guys simultaneously. So yes, I am a very slow painter, but I try to improve.

Enough with myself, what do we get this time ? Well, as most of you guys, I love to see big painted armies on the battlefield, and I realized that I already had a few Germanic warriors (maybe you remember my Germanic Hornblower, or more likely this berseker - even if I suspect that guy is probably not accurate), so I decided to paint some more, 8 guys, so that I can have 2 more DBA Wb elements, and take pictures.

I really tried to paint faster than usual, but I realized that I couldn't: the same skill, and the same result, more or less. So how could I paint more minis than usual, where was the difference ? I simply used the same color palette on several minis, so I spent less time looking for a color scheme, even I still want every figure to be unique. This time, I mainly used red, green, 3 different browns, flesh, metal and gold, off-white, sand... I think the result is in my tabletop standard, but the method is efficient.

What do you think of them ?

Oh, and one last thing: I cheated a little for the pictures, because the last ranks are filled with minis that we can consider as proxies: Picts, Franks, Saxons... I deliberately mix figures from as many sets and manufacturers as possible, so that I get a motley warband. I will conclude this post (and week) with this little game: can you find the number of manufacturers involved in this scene ?

Thanks for reading, have a good sunday evening :)

Tattooed Germanic warrior

In one of his posts (It'll never happen!!! - I encourage you to read it, a lot of interesting ideas there), our friend Sprinks of Wronghammer opened a discussion about the projects that we would like to do, even the craziest ones :) I will write about my own huge project one of these days, but before, I have to progress in smaller projects to decrease the size of the Big Plastic Pyramid, and the slightly smaller Lead Mountain too.

One of these projects is to paint an Early Germans army, for DBA and AdG.

For the moment, I've painted a few warriors (some of them fighting early imperial Romans last year), including a horn blower (already displayed in 2017), the last of them being a naked tattooed warrior.

The warband so far:

They are a mix of Caesar, Hät and Esci figures. To add some more variety, I also have some Strelets Germans on my workbench.

The front man is a naked warrior, and I must say that, at first, I didn't intend to enlist him in the band. Maybe you wander why ? No, it is not because I have a problem with nudity - I would rather have a problem with weapons but I happen to paint dozens of them, strange isn't it ? ;-)

No, in this case, I have a problem with accuracy. Naked warriors are not unknown in occidental culture, but rather rare nevertheless. If we frequently see naked fighters in Greek and Roman art, it certainly has to do with artistic license, and not always with facts. There are little written accounts about naked warriors. One of the best known testimony is the story of the battle of Telamon (225 BC) by Polybius. The Republican Roman army led by the consuls Gaius Atilius Regulus  and Lucius Aemilius Papus defeated a coalition of Cisalpine Celtic tribes including the  Insubres, Boii and Taurisci. In this battle, the Gaesatae, or Transalpine mercenaries, were said to have fought naked except for their weapons.

In my research, I couldn't find any primary evidence of naked Germanic warriors, although many manufacturers represent some. In the end, I decided to paint my small guy, and to represent him as a berserk, in analogy with later accounts on vikings. And I wished to tattoo him, to give him a magic protection against his enemies' weapons.

This is the result: the tattoos are entirely speculative, an attempt at copying some sort of rune art.

And our guy with his raiding band.

What do you think of him ? Would you have any clue related to naked Germanic warriors ? I need your help on this point. Thank you in advance !