Review: New 2mm - Siege Equipment from Irregular

 

Absolutely and unapologetically excited about the latest release of 2mm siege equipment and sundries sculpted by the redoubtable Geoff Addison for Irregular Miniatures - so I took a quick run through of the majority of the items as soon as they landed at SteelonSand towers !

Trojan Horses, Siege Towers, Penthouses, Battering Rams, Trebuchets, Ballistae, Onagers, Bolt Throwers and on and on flow the latest additions - all incisively and charmingly rendered in the tiniest of scales - what’s not to like ?

In addition, we have some long-needed baggage animals, alongside pavises, mantlets, additional figures as siege engineers - even mine entrances if the mood takes you - scroll down for the ABG26 through 38 listings:

http://www.irregularminiatures.co.uk/2mmRanges/2mmAncients.htm

Now as with the previous creations for these recent releases, Mr Addison’s sculpting is more on the ‘organic’ side of things rather than being architecturally exact, but as before, he does a great job of adding character to the pieces, and where it is present, the detail is very good given their size - visible men pushing the fallen tree battering ram - lovely planking on the siege towers, shields and hides on the penthouses….. let’s take a look at some of the items in more detail, the only caveat being it ain’t easy to photograph stuff this small, and that everything is fresh from their ziploc baggies - no removal yet of venting remnants, flash, etc…..

 

The giant Assyrian-style siege tower, no doubt clad in rows of burnished copper shields, is an absolute monster - in a good way - only marred by a honking great mould line right down the front - but I think this will file down easily enough if one is careful….. the various rams and penthouses have plenty of incised detail with wheels and structure plainly moulded, and the Trojan Horse is an absolute joy - I will be happy to accept any Greeks bearing such a gift….!

 (See below with a couple of Antonine Miniatures’ troop blocks):

I think with these new additions, Irregular have filled out the kit list for any self-respecting besieger, running the gamut through from the Biblical to Ancient and on to the Medieval - the variety of bolt throwers, ballistae and trebuchets are a welcome re-inforcement for the venerable ABG25 ‘siege engine’ sculpt:

Talking of re-inforcements, we also now benefit from the new set of baggage animals, which contains pack mules and horses as well as camels - so useful in most historical periods:

Given the background squares on my cutting mat in all the photos are 1cm - these are some tiny treasures !

Talking of scale, I couldn’t resist seeing how the various items of equipment might scale against actual castle walls, so pulled out my Strength and Honour Roman town:

First up, some onagers, bolt throwers, the mantlets, engineers and a line of pavises - with the siege towers moving in - all nicely to scale, I think:

Then a look at the rams, penthouses and towers moving in for the kill:

And next, the lovely escalating steps, with one even having a lowered bridge to crash onto the battlements:

These definitely fill the mind with possibilities for all sorts of siege actions, and would grace any tabletop - I’m keen to see how they all paint up, so watch this space for more…..

I just need to find 2mm sized miniature Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas…….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4njT3pK9OC4

Latest 2mm Antonine Ancients - Review

 

Thought I’d take a look at some of the latest releases in the 2mm Antonine Miniatures Ancients range - I’m a little late to the party in that they have been available since before last Christmas, but I’ve only recently taken the plunge and bought some.

Antonine have added to the range available at Warbases in the UK, including six packs of Roman buildings with a useful variety of types, and a whole Republican Roman Legion unit alongside a pack of Phalanx Pike Blocks:

https://warbases.co.uk/product-category/games-specific/strength-and-honour/?orderby=date

The buildings look really nice, 3D designed and printed, if it were not for already having a whole plethora of similar types as seen elsewhere on the Blog, I would definitely have taken the plunge, but couldn’t really justify the expense - so I limited myself to purchasing just the new troop types.

The Phalanxes in particular caught my eye, and I wanted to see how the Republican Romans would stack up against the bases I had already created as early Legions using the individual blocks from Irregular Miniatures.

Above you can see how the phalanxes compare with a few other miniature types, in the centre a cavalry block, a skirmisher one and a single elephant from Antonine, and to the centre right a Pike block from Irregular and a strip of Hoplites from the same manufacturer.

To use the vernacular, these new blocks are some big beautiful beasties ! - definitely more in proportion to some of the existing Legionary bases from Antonine, and very much in the Macedonian Phalanx category of things - they make the ABG16 40 man pike block from Irregular look pretty diminutive !

The view from above presents a veritable forest of pikes, with the attendant figures to the side faces, and some extra ranks at the rear - in line with all of Antonine’s output, the pikemen themselves are plain shapes rather than having any particular detail, but this does not take away from the overall impact.

All of the blocks I received were cleanly cast, with no flash present or mould lines in the areas that matter - I think in similar terms to the minis I painted before from Antonine, they should go well with a simple dots and lines paint job - although that’s still going to mean a lot of dotting in the individual pike heads !

Three of the blocks sit comfortably on the basic Strength and Honour 120x60mm bases, with two of the same matching up on my ‘get more bang for your buck’ 90x60mm basing standard:

Above you can see a work-in-progress base of some Epirote phalanxes made up of the blocks from Irregular alongside their somewhat larger Alexandrian cousins !

I think it comes down to a personal choice as to which you might find fits the image better - and in armies of differing eras, the larger Antonine might be the better choice - certainly simpler to paint and to base up, being a gargantuan single unit…..

Turning now to Antonine’s Republican Romans, I think that the new pack is an excellent representation of the same, and also superlative value - you get all the necessary blocks for Velites, Hastati etc, with of course the option to use the different types on separate skirmisher bases. Again, if I wasn’t so invested in those that I already produced using Irregular, I would definitely have gone large in using them to make as many Legions as possible, with tactical formations easily depicted with their individual, smaller blocks.

Some of the castings I received had a small amount of flash in place at the edges, but nothing major, and will be easily removed with a sharp blade or metal file.

The whole pack populates a 120x60mm base size, and anything smaller would give you plenty spare to play with - I find the small Legionary ‘century’ or maniple blocks better proportioned than some of Antonine’s earlier Roman cohort blocks, which I felt were a bit on the large size - giving, if you counted individual ‘figures’ too deep a picture of Roman ranks - these blocks could easily be combined side by side to give a flexibility in what you can depict.

Up against one of my existing Irregular bases - you can see how they might compare all together on a 90x60mm:

I think overall, these are a great addition to the existing range, and give you a whole host of options now, combining with parts from existing packs - as well as some suitably ‘heavy metal’ phalanxes should the mood take you !

New 2mm Buildings from Irregular - Painted examples

 

Thought I’d show some progress on the new 2mm Ancient buildings from Irregular Miniatures - mainly to prove that I’m still working on things when time allows….. don’t know where November went…. And now it’s already the New Year ! …. Sigh…… Anyway, Compliments of the Season to All, and let’s crack on with some photos….

I’d had an itch to mount a pair of Irregular’s temples onto a piece of area terrain - an Acropolis on a mountain sort of thing, that at a pinch could also be used as an island for naval games / galley warfare, so with an off-cut of blue foam and a a few adhesive bushes/Brigade Models trees, I whipped up the following:

Hopefully it gives off a suitably Homeric vibe, something for Titans to have a Clash over….. or at least something a bit different for Strength and Honour armies to attack….

Moving on, a variety of the Irregular buildings with a more Roman flavour - as yet unbased - I’m still thinking about whether to mix these with the ones I produced earlier from Brigade Models, or to have them on their own - I’ve thrown in a large funerary monument from the latter company at the same time:

All of them painted up nicely with a straightforward colour scheme - on close inspection, the more ‘organic’ sculpting from Irregular meant there was the odd bulge or skewed angle in the casting here and there, and some mould  lines, but nothing to really get in the way or see the overall appearance suffer too much - I’m still very satisfied by how much they look the part.

Finally, I had a go at a more Carthaginian piece by working on Brigade Model’s Quasr Bshir fort:

It’s mounted on a 60x60mm base that still needs some finishing off - I envisage it as a sort of caravanserai built around a water cistern - hence the vegetation in the centre - I also had a go at some ‘Mother Goddess’ iconography to give it a more Carthaginian look.

Anyway, plenty of plans for the coming year, in a variety of scales, so onwards and upwards into 2023 !

2mm Strength and Honour: Urbs Romana

 

Having initially sworn off putting too much effort into the ancillary pieces for the 2mm Ancients project, I ended up going down the rabbit hole of producing a Roman fortification that could represent a ‘camp’ in Strength and Honour - to be fair to myself (!) I didn’t go the whole hog in making giant scratch-built marching forts or sections of Hadrians Wall, but rather went for a generic looking set of walls and towers, leaving an internal space that would accommodate a quartet of the 60mm by 60mm urban tiles that I made earlier.

I thought that by enabling swapping out the tiles, the walls could do double duty in posing as the fortifications of Carthage, Locus Castorum, or even the walls of Troy, depending on what I put inside.

I really liked the look of the parts from the Brigade Models’ Modular Castles range that were used by Mike Headden in his own 2mm project, detailed in the forum thread here (scroll down):

https://www.thewargameswebsite.com/forums/topic/ithoriels-strength-honour-diy/

So, digging around in the Lead Pile, I dug out some likely contenders, and, good news, also re-discovered my long-lost Roman Triumphal Arch, also from Brigade.

I had a scrap piece of laminated wood to use as a base, which measured around 160mm by 140mm, so pencilled out the ground plan of the walls and towers etc, leaving the central area big enough for the urban tiles - just about managed to squeeze them on, allowing for a bit of a moat and some ground out front.

The Brigade Models castle pieces are in resin, and come out of the pack pretty clean, so a quick blast of stone coloured paint and some red earth tone detailing over a mid brown undercoat meant the job was straightforward, although not necessarily quick - lining in around all the windows to try and stay neat had me going cross-eyed !

I did struggle somewhat in lining up the various wall sections, in that although individually well cast and straight, they are relatively short, so have a tendency to wander when modelling in a long line, and there is a bit of a gap between parts that seems obvious in these close-up photos. I think more skilled modellers or others less cack-handed could easily rectify this, or even smooth and fill any spaces, but to be honest at this scale, and tabletop viewing distances, they do the job for me !

The moat around the castle was formed merely by gluing on a strip of darker basing sand to the outer part, and splashing on some dark wash - I wasn’t going to go to the trouble of actually ‘digging’ it out ! - again, viewed from a distance, doesn’t look too bad.

The Triumphal Arch is free-floating, given that it straddles across two tiles, and enables me to use it in other settings - the terracotta coloured ‘roof’ is a bit odd, perhaps, but somehow it just looked naked when done wholly in marble white - there are a couple of bronzed panels on one side, too - no doubt detailing the Emperor’s victories - although you’d need a microscope to read them off at this scale !

I also went ahead and stole some additional buildings from Brigade Models Spanish and Arab village sets, just to add some variety to the other architecture, and make the tiles look a bit more ‘populated’

Brigade, of course, do their own Roman castle/mile fort wall set, but I followed Mike Headden’s lead in using the modular parts as they are more visually impressive, and hopefully not too anachronistic - the rounded bastion like towers on the gate sections look pretty Roman to my eye….

I’m yet to do much more with this project, as my butterfly mind has been drawing me in a completely different direction lately, and hence the time lag since my last post - I’ll no doubt keep coming back to it when the mood strikes, so stay tuned…

Next time, though - something completely different !

2mm Strength and Honour: Town and Country

 

A small update on the 2mm Strength and Honour project, where I’ve been working on some crop fields for the terrain, something to sit alongside the farm complex.

I sourced some cheap 3mm MDF ‘coasters’ around 100mm by 100mm from EBay to use as terrain bases - there are quite a lot of sellers on there outside of the normal wargaming ones, that offer such blanks for craft making, which are often pretty cheap when bought in bulk - these ones are nicely done with rounded corners.

A blast of acrylic sanding spray on both sides to seal the surfaces, and a bodge of ModPodge and basing sand got me to here:

They are a bit ‘overscale’, but I put in some lines to act as ploughing/crop marks, and a few clumps of basing material to add a bit of definition as hillocks, etc.

I decided that rather than flat wheat or arable fields, however, I would follow up with using more of the pre-made sticky tufts from Serious-Play, and go for more of a olive trees/groves grape vines in rows sort of feel - that says ‘Ancients’ to me more than cornfields - I’m sure the Romans had olives for breakfast rather than Shredded Wheat !

If I’m lucky, these could also see double duty with 6mm miniatures as well, so a good result all round.

Next up, I finished painting up the remnants of the Brigade Models Roman buildings pack with the two largest examples, again based on a 60x60mm ‘tile’, forming maybe a Mansio - a sort of Ancient roadside B&B:

This can sit alongside the other town tiles, to which I also did a little bit of additional work - unfortunately the Roman walls and Triumphal Arch are still lost in the garage Lead Pile, so just a few 2mm figures cut from their bases as statuary, and some textured paper cut into sections to give a little, added, well….texture….. I didn’t yet want to go the whole hog and begin detailing the bases as such, but rather just suggest some different shapes/areas to catch the eye.

I’ve also added a few of Irregular Miniatures’ 2mm wagons as set dressing:

So, things rumble on - I’m still dithering about whether to do forests and hills fresh for this project, as I’ve got heaps of likely candidates squirrelled away somewhere already, but I’ll have to see - I’m telling myself that ‘mission creep’ on this is justified as I haven’t worked on anything else in a while…..