Leves for Heraclea

Between doing the boards I've also managed to paint a couple of units of Roman leves for the Heraclea demo game.

I've done one unit each of red (for the Romans) and white (for the Allies). Not entirely happy with the white tunics; I think I tried to be too clever with my technique and got it a bit wrong. Sigh, you live and learn. I'm always looking for ways to improve my painting process; sometimes you have to make the gaffs to learn what DOESN'T work.

I received some of the new horses from Aventine on Saturday to go with the Successor cavalry - very nice! Keith rang me this morning and it looks like the riders should be available later this week...

Anyway, back to the leves.

Board Progress 5 - Groundhog Day!

Have now given the textured areas another highlight and blocked in the base coat on the river a rather pasty green colour. It'll need another coat. Cheap craft paints are all well and good, but what they offer in price, they make up for in lack of coverage!

Having decided to add two more boards to give 6' depth for Heraclea, I'm back to cutting extruded polystyrene sheets and painting the edges. Again, another coat will be required and then I can stick on the vinyl grass mats and add a couple of roads. Hopefully this should go quite quickly, as I pretty much know what I'm doing this time, rather than experimenting as I go along.

Board Progress 4

...or should that be 7 or 8?

I've managed to move things on a bit. All boards now have a grass mat covering, the river has been "levelled" out with some thinned down filler, poured on and "blown" into place; hard work that!

Roads have been cut out of the grass mat and textured, as have the river banks. Textured "goop" made with random amounts of sand, PVA and dark brown emulsion, liberally applied by 1/2" paint brush. I've given this two highlights, dry-brushed on, with probably one more lighter shade to follow.

Still lots to add, including varying shades of static grass in random patches. I also need to come up with a believable effort at a river. Hopefully, the roads will line up!

I'll probably also add two more boards to increase the table size to 6' deep by 8' wide.

Board progress 3

Another update. Two of the boards are now covered with grass mat and I've begun excavation on the river. Banks need to be lowered a bit more and I'm really bored (no pun intended!) with digging. About a third to go on the other board.

Either side of the river will get "matted" as well, but I want to get the main construction done first.

Boards 2

Now cut to size and with a coat of brown paint on the edges.

Next step is to mark out and cut the river; this will run down the long axis of two boards.

Decided to go with a vinyl grass mat as the basis if the ground, and plan to add "stuff" to this. I also plan a bit of a road network to join up the fords the river will have (one each end of the river).

Let the Boards Begin!

Ok, here's a picture of the extruded polystyrene (styrofoam) that will form the basis for the Heraclea demo game at Partizan. Still need trimming up; had to cut them in half outside the builders merchant - they can't do it 'cos of 'elf 'n safety...

The boards need a river running across about a third of the way up and the rest of the surface texturing.

At the moment I'm thinking of PVA and sand with lots of paint, probably three layers working light to dark, with a liberal sprinkling of patchy static grass. Not sure wether to mix up some serious goop or stick and paint.

Any advice in methodology welcome (don't forget the river!)

Leves

Just a quick update. Painting some leves to go with my Republican Romans. It's been a while since I've done any of these and I've just quickly painted up one element to see how they'll look.

These are for a demo game planned for Partizan in May, including the main men from Aventine.