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 !

New 2mm Buildings from Irregular Miniatures: Review/Comparison

 

I thought I’d do a short review of some of the recently released 2mm buildings from Irregular Miniatures, and see how they compare to another manufacturer, particularly with regard to those in my Strength and Honour project.

Now Irregular have had scenics and terrain to go alongside their 2mm figures for many, many years, but they were mostly very much in the ‘area’ category, with multiple buildings to a base rather than necessarily being scaled to go individually with the figures at around 1/900th, and it is only more recently that they have been working on stand-alone architecture.

I’ve discussed using the output of various manufacturers with 2mm troops before, 

http://steelonsand.blogspot.com/2009/03/2mm-buildings-comparison-irregular-and.html

http://steelonsand.blogspot.com/2013/05/brigade-models-new-buildings-range.html

but wanted to catch up on what I think are some very good new entries from Ian and the gang, sculpted by the brilliant Geoff Addison:

https://en-gb.facebook.com/irregularminiatures/

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

Now Geoff and Irregular have of late been absolutely knocking it out of the park in terms of adding new sculpts to the range, particularly some excellent scenic and terrain items, as well as these new offerings, so I was keen to take a look at some examples in the flesh, and offer a few thoughts.

Owning as I do already, an absolute plethora of small buildings, I just went for some representative examples from across the Classical/Arab and Medieval stock, rather than buying the whole real estate !

First up, let’s look at two Medieval Keeps and the Roman Military Watchtower:

In line with all of Mr Addison’s work, these all possess bags of character, and whilst demonstrating their ‘hand-sculpted’ pedigree, are clean and nicely proportioned - not ‘scale’ architectural models as such, but truly evocative and charming pierces that would bring interest to any table….

The wooden keep with moat is particularly fun, and usefully, the tower is a separate piece, so the moated mound could be used in a variety of ways:

Next up, the Classical Temples, Bath House and Military Command Building:

Lots of detail on all of these, and again, absolutely oozing character whilst giving a good representation of the originals - the Apse on the Bath House is spot-on !

The only funny thing, that I realised after taking these photos, is that the authentically characteristic arched doorways on the Command Building do look rather like the iconic sign of a somewhat anachronistic fast food chain - I promise to paint my arches a golden yellow !

As can be seen in the photo at the head of the post, and in the following, these more formal buildings are accompanied by a variety of smaller but just as useful utilitarian ones, including granaries, stables, barracks, and a great court-yarded Villa:

Once more, lots of potential there - all would be useful in a number of ways - similarly, the Shrine and Arab Tombs are really neat items - any self-respecting small scale world needs its own Via Appia lined with just such monuments and memorials !

So, how do these latest releases compare to those available from the other major manufacturer, namely Brigade Models in the UK ? - now I’ve gone via Scratch-built, Monopoly Houses, Rod Langton 1/1200th, Mighty Empires plastics to even 3mm from Peter Pig over the years, but the go-to has to be Brigade’s ranges in terms of the broadest variety of interesting individual buildings, and so I’ve put the two together in the following shots:

I think that you’ll immediately note that Irregular’s are larger, more on the chunky side of things, but not necessarily out of scale with Brigades’ - 

The level of detail is obviously different, but not overwhelmingly so, and the apparent ‘bulkiness’ is easily put down to differing types of design or construction:

Of course, Irregular’s are on their own integral bases, but these are relatively thin and innocuous, certainly not overly large or intrusive.

I think the most striking difference apart from this, is the perhaps ‘organic’ look they have, in comparison with the almost ‘clinical’ lines of those from Brigade - the latter are definitely more architecturally exact, whilst the former are a bit more expressionistic - I think based in multiples, Brigades buildings definitely look the part, but perhaps a single structure would be well represented by these new characterful ones from Irregular….

I’m definitely looking forward to painting them up, and will not hesitate to use them alongside their competitors, and in any event, am pleased to welcome their commercial release as additions to the Lead Pile, and very much feel as with so many things that are Hobby-related: “The More the Merrier !”……

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 !