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Post by jim1973 on May 6, 2023 9:47:04 GMT
I was inspired by the new Strength and Honor rules from Too Fat Lardies and from Geoff Curran's work on Wargame Vault link. So I started a(nother) project to see if I could make my own 2mm miniatures for DBA. I make a lot of XPS foam terrain for 28mm and have quite a few loose ends. I also had a lot of 60mm wide DBA bases from 1/72 project that never got going. So I decided to try a proof of concept and ended up with a Roman cohort and a Greek phalanx. Each Roman block has 80 "troops" (10x8) and each phalanx element has 240 "troops" (30x8). I've kept the pictures small to give a table top view.     Not sure how far I'll take this project as it would require a new battlefield(s) and terrain. But at this scale elements can substitute in many different armies so once a core group is done then the number of potential armies will grow exponentially. They didn't take very long at all to make... except for the spears! Happy to go into more detail if there is interest. Cheers Jim |
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Post by stevie on May 6, 2023 10:04:35 GMT
I’m very interested in the details Jim.  Would toothbrush bristles work for spears? And if too thick, how about shoe-brush bristles? |
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Post by jim1973 on May 6, 2023 10:24:12 GMT
Ok stevie. I'll start with the easy stuff. My bases are 3mm thick from Back-2-Basix in Australia. That gives a good guide to the thickness to cut the foam. Then I use my Proxxon foam cutter to get the blocks as accurately as I can. I decided to go for the 60mm basing option in DBA as that gave me 8 deep elements which suited my historical senses. Once cut, glue them onto the bases. I tried to carve them before gluing and the foam is quite fragile at that thickness. Tacky PVA worked a treat. Then with a sharp craft knife score 2.5mm grid on your elements and widen the grooves with a pencil (mechanical pencil works best). I undercoated with a mix I use for terrain, which is a mix of ModPodge and black paint to harden the foam and protect it. At this point, use a black wash to get deep into the grooves. Again mine is homemade with water, black and brown ink and dishwasher rinse aid. When dry, simply paint. The Romans got red/white/blue shields, bronze helmets and silver on the sides and backs. Then I just added some red for shoulders and tunic. When I say paint, these are just dots and lines. You end up with this (front/flank/rear):    Not much to look at up close but give the effect on the tabletop Jim |
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Post by jim1973 on May 6, 2023 10:36:40 GMT
The phalanx was similar. Bronze head and shield, white flank and back. Then bronze greaves and white shoulders followed by a coloured dot on the shield to represent a design. Of course, I wanted the spears to stand out. The plan was to stick them into each corner of the grid but not to worry about the edges as it's the effect that counts. I tried plastic bristles but they weren't stiff enough to push through the foam. I then went for bristles from a cheap wire brush. These worked well with a dab of glue to hold them in place. But it took a long time to get them off and cut them to size. So I switched to 8amp fuse wire and that was much faster. I would proceed similarly in the future but maybe with different wire. Painting was just a heavy drybrush/overbrush with brown and a drybrush of silver on the tips. Again, here is the close up of front/flank/rear:    Cheers Jim |
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Post by Brian Ború on May 6, 2023 13:49:46 GMT
Great stuff!
Looking forward to seeing some mounted troops.
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Post by Brian Ború on May 19, 2023 14:51:21 GMT
Here is something interesting I found in the field of Napoleonics. Examples of printed cardboard blocks. |
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Post by jim1973 on May 20, 2023 11:39:03 GMT
Indeed, I did think that this idea would work better for uniformed armies like Napoleonics.
Jim
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