Some last miniatures before the challenge begins...

... well, to be precise, the frenzy that is 'The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge', has already begun.

By this time I wanted to be ready to go and to have cleared my painting table from any back log. But as every year I'm late and as I'm still in no real painting mood. I only finished the last miniatures while the challenge actually was already on for several hours.


I haven't painted anything for my Late Roman Army for several months now. But as having had a highly enjoyable game of Basic Impetus with my dear friend Chris (you find a quick report about this game *here* on his most excellent blog) the interest was rekindled. That said, it still took me the best part of a month to paint these 12 buggers...

... so here they finally are. 12 Late Roman Limitanei to represent Medium Foot in Impetus. This time actually based for Impetus and not using sabot bases. To be honest I actually hate doing multi bases as I tend to do my basing first, applying the base tone for the base by airbrush and then get done with it in order not to soil my newly painted figures. Well, after some hefty cursing and throwing paint bottles, the base is finaly done.

I'm quite pleased with how these guys came out but somehow 12 miniatures don't really give me the feel of a big unit...

...and so instead of adding a third rank, what would take me an again, I decided to go smaller for future mass battle games. As I'm a sucker for anything Roman and had an eye on the lovely 'War and Empire' range by Westwind/ Forged in Battle, I ordered me a starter set of Caesarian Romans. And man they're nice!

For the first test I decided not to go for the tightly packed ranks of the iconic legionaries but for a unit of Balearic slingers.

These guys almost painted themselves and I'm eagerly looking forward to try my brush on some more during the coming three months of the challenge.

Andy has managed to put some amazing detail into these tiny buggers. They needed almost no preparation except for the removal of some minor mould lines.

As FiB are currently running another Kickstarter to expand the range into the era of the principate I'm hard tested not to invest some more of my cash into their business.

And here's a pic of how the new ranges will look like once painted by an ace brush-jockey like Rubén Torregrosa better known amongst us mere mortals by the name of HeresyBrush (Remember to klick on the pics to enlarge).

So that's it for now and the next update hopefully will see some miniatures actually counting towards my goal for the painting challenge.

Now off to see some certain Sci-Fi movie...