Review: Agema Miniatures Velites

I purchased this plastic boxed set some time ago from Northstar, during one of their sales no doubt.

Having painted up a pair of miniatures I thought I would share my thoughts on these figures. YouTube video below:

Here are some pictures of the painted miniatures for the record. Apologies for not light-boxing it.

Black Tree Designs Early Imperial Romans

Black Tree Designs recently ran a sale on their infantry which saw the prices plummet. Not wanting to be left out, I ordered a fair few packs of Early Imperial Romans for a Western frontier project I am planning. I was a bit reticent as opinions seem rather mixed regarding BTD, but at £2.75 for a pack of five infantry I could afford to take a risk. I ordered Legionaries in cloaks in the less animated poses, as well as Auxiliaries with cloaks, about 30 of each. I also bought some casualties as they are a nice way of adding variety, and will make nifty casualty counters for Hail Caesar.

My order was placed in late May and arrived a few days ago, so the turn around time was about a month. For me this wasn't a major issue as I was in no rush, but be warned, this company has a reputation for being quite slow to deliver. Other than that I am quite pleased with the figures, the sculpts are clean and detailed. In terms of scale, these chaps are a bit on the big side, and tower over a Perry Foundry Roman, fitting better with the Saleh Foundry sculpts as you can see below:

From left to right: Foundry (Perry), Black Tree Design, Foundry (Saleh)

One thing I do really appreciate is that the auxiliaries come with pila, which allows us to choose to equip them as either pilum armed or spear armed, provided of course you provide your own spears. As a Classicist who has read Agricola in the Latin and studied these things, I am very much of the opinion that the difference between Legionaries and Auxiliaries is often over stressed, being in my mind largely a difference in status, but that is a differed discussion for another day. In short, I think that ranked auxilia should be armed like their legionary counterparts.

I haven't painted any of Black Tree Design figures yet, but I imagine look like they will come out nice. One thing I was hoping to do was to avoid using Black Tree's command figures, which look thoroughly uninspiring. Gripping Beast and Warlord Games tend to match the Perry Romans, but the tall Saleh and BTD chaps will need more robust command figures. Based on this picture, I would say that Aventine looks like a good place to look.

It's been a while...

I can't remember the last time I was involved with wargaming. I think it may have been 2007 when I borrowed my friend Steve's Vikings for a WAB tournament at Ascot, but I might be misremembering. In any event, it has been a very long time since I put paint to lead, planned a project, or played a game. The wargaming world has changed a lot in some ways in the intervening five years, and in other ways not at all (I was particularly surprised to see how static Games Workshop have been, not that I buy their stuff). When I dipped out of the rat race Warhammer Ancient Battles was riding high, now it looks rudderless and likely to be supplanted by "War & Conquest" or "Clash of Empires." As a largely ancients player this is all new to me, but the change looks good. DBM also seems to have been replaced by Field of Glory which looks beautifully produced and a good change from the grotty white booklets from years gone by. I ordered the rulebooks for FoG Ancients, Renaissance and Napoleonics from Amazon yesterday and will look to be using these with my 15mm ancients. The Renaissance and Napoleonic rules were largely impulse buys. I have an 15mm Austrian 1809 force for Principles of War, and I doubt I will be rebasing, but it is good to know what is out there. Furthermore, I have always wanted to do some Thirty Years War stuff and there seems to be a vibrant FoG Renaissance community which makes it worth collecting.

Perhaps next month I will get around to looking at some ancients rules well suited to single figure based 28mm, perhaps Hail Caesar, War & Conquest and Clash of Empires. Sadly, the Bicester Wargaming Club folded when I went to university in 2006/7 and largely relocated to Brackley, so I don't have a club on hand, but my old wargaming buddies are around, so playing at home is an option. Friend Taff and I used to play DBA, and he assures me he still has his little armies, so at least a few games of DBA, with a view to trying out Hail Caesar and Field of Glory is very much a possibility. 

As for figures, I had a rummage through my stuff, and found most of it damaged, shields broken off, paint chipped, etc. from years of mishandling and bad storage by a clueless family. Still, it can be repaired, so over the next few weeks I will be slowly fixing up my 1st Century A.D. Romans and Vikings. I also found this box amongst my stuff:

I had a look on the Flames of War website and it doesn't look as though these are in production anymore. I bought them at a show many years ago, I think, along with a blister of Finns to do some some Winter War and Continuation War stuff. On the whole I am not keen on wargaming World War II, especially anything to do with Western Europe, but my love of Finnish history, and the country (having been there a fair few times) inspired me to model the brave resistance to the communist hordes. I started painting the Russians as I found a nifty guide online, since at the time the Finns were super new, so there wasn't much about them on the Flames of War website. I have all the riflemen painted up, and started the SMG chaps yesterday, here are shots to give you an idea of what they look like, the centre figure is a finished rifleman, the figures to either side SMG men who are in progress:

The Russians without too much light.

And with a little flash.

Well, that's all for now. I am off to watch The Avengers at the cinema today and will hopefully finish the nine SMG chaps on my desk tonight. I might post a step-by-step of how I paint them when I get onto painting the heavy machine guns next.