Plans, progress, and painting

 Hi all,

Still getting darker pictures.  I must live on the coast, or something.

I've been plugging away at the ECW stuff, mostly the Royalist opposition for the Covenanters in Pikemans' Lament, and have been making reasonable progress.  Pike is 2/3 finished, along with a sleeve of Shotte, and I've got pics to prove it.

I've also found my attention wandering a bit to other projects, new and old, which has got me thinking.  Add in that I've now got time to listen to podcasts (as I'm getting in solid blocks of painting time, rather than snatching 15-20 minutes here and there), and a general sort of hobby rumination has been going on in the background.

I quite like the Warlord pike and command figs, but the muskets are so-so.

Two podcasts I've been listening to quite a bit have been the God's Own Scale podcast, and the Yarkshire Gamer's Reet Big Wargames Podcast, which share a passion for the hobby, and more or less diametrically opposed visions of what that hobby can and should be ;)  What I find interesting is I rather enjoy, and to some degree sympathize, with both.  That, in turn, got me thinking about my own sense of the hobby, what I want out of it, and what I'm willing to put in.

I've been mildly surprised by the level of focus I've been able to maintain on the ECW project.  It's what I've worked on, pretty much exclusively, since before Christmas, which is almost unheard of for me.  Compared to how quickly I stalled out on the Carthaginians, it's shocking, and I've been trying to figure out what accounts for this relative success.

Bit of a departure on these guys - tried a white basecoat and lots of washes.

I think a major factor has been the "intermediate" scale of Pikeman's Lament; not so much the game itself, but rather the force "scale" (maybe 4 dozen figures a side), and the flexible approach to basing.  PL means I can hit a "game-able" number of figures, while still maintaining basing designed for larger games.  I can build a range of units, and use them, but still fantasize about the "big game" somewhere in the future, without having to build exclusively for that theoretical future goal.

Turned out okay, but I can see a few places that might need a little more shading.

What I'd somehow managed to overlook, up until a couple days ago, was the applicability of PL's sister game, Lion Rampant (and the open architecture of the "fantasy" variant, Dragon Rampant) in that role.  Although designed for medieval games, the core mechanics are readily adaptable to earlier periods.  This realization seems to have triggered a burst of energy; in addition to painting up some Carthaginians for the first time in ages, I've finally caved and ordered a box of the Victrix vikings as well.

Lybian skirmishers.  Focal depth a little off here, apologies.

L/DR is perfect for the kind of ancients / dark ages "petite guerre" I'm interested in.  On the Carthaginian side, it means I can also build their hodge-podge army while doing historically relevant gaming at the same time (Carthos vs. Numidians, Cartho-Numidian vs. Spanish, CNS vs. Gauls, etc.).  On the viking front, I can start even smaller with Ravenfeast, and have some locals interested in games as well.  Once they're hooked, I can introduce Lion (or Dragon) rampant, and Bob's your uncle.

Honestly, I'm just happy to get these guys done, they've been dragging for ages.

This puts me in the happy position of having multiple projects on the go, all of which I'm interested in pursuing - 28mm Carthos, Vikings, and ECW, 6mm Nap Russians, and 6mm SYW (which I've not forgotten about, never fear).  Happy days.

I've spent a chunk of the weekend putting together a couple of tester dark ages houses.  Once they're done up, I'll post some pics.  Until then.