Hastati and a little more progress

Box Art

Following on from my last update, at the same time as getting he eight Italian Allies ready to serve in the arena, I also added to their number four Hastati  from the Hat box of the same name.
The hastati box follows the same format of all the other boxes in their ancient series in that there are four sprues of four different figures.

The basic four sculpts

In this particular set there are two each of  sword-armed figures and spear-armed figures, which fits nicely into my idea of substituting spear-armed figures with the sword-armed ones once their spears have been 'lost'.
The four figures are shown in the photograph to the left, pretty much as they appear straight from the box, though I may have tweaked their arm positions a little.
I like these figures, they're identically kitted out, their proportions are superb and although the detail on them is minimalist, they'll be very easy to paint up.
I based these up alongside the eight 'Italian Allies' figures  on my now standard 40mm x 30mm bases, using superglue to stick the plastic figures to their  plastic bases. I've been using old credit cards, phone cards etc. for this even though I only normally get 2usable bases from each.  Next step was covering them all in "Poundworldbargainland"  ready-mixed filler, 'painting' a layer of pva over the filler and finally sprinkling some sand onto the base for texture.

Textured bases

Undercoated

The filler was left to dry overnight before applying the pva and sand as  I don't like to hurry such processes and I was in no rush anyway!
Once thoroughly dry of course they were undercoated in my usual £1 primer, this time grey rather than my normal matt black for no other reason than I had grey.
After undercoating, I did realise that I hadn't added the sword required by the (now) disarmed spear men.
This was quickly fixed with he aid of some scrap sprue, a file and a scalpel.

The sword bearing counterparts .

I'm quite happy with the results of my scratch-built swords although they're maybe a little too long to represent a gladius they'll probably still pass as a spatha or similar.

Over the next week I hope to get one or two pairs of these dozen figures, but that's it for this week.

Small Update

A rare small update to this blog brought abut mainly because of the disaster that befell my paint table (it fell over scattering everything upon it to the four winds), but once sorted it did give me the opportunity to re-visit some of my 54mm figures destined for the arena in one form or another.

The figures this time come from the HaT box set "Italian Allies"
As usual there are four identical sprues in the box, each with four figures.
The first photograph shows two of the  figures still on their sprue with some form of unusual trapezoid shields. They're not the best of stances and the figure on the left has his spear attached to his helmet.
What looks like a 'bun' on the other figure's helmet is in fact a horsehair

plume.

The other two figures on the sprue can be seen on the photograph to the right, both of whom are only slightly closer to what the box-art promises.
The detail on all the figures is a little sparse, but I can't help but emphasise that I consider these to be toys soldiers and are really nothing more then mere counters.

 So far all I've done to these is pair them up with an identical figure from another sprue and started the process of removing its spear, to be replaced with a scratchbuit sword though none of the original figures have any suggestion of being sword armed.
For each of the sword-wielding counterparts, I've moved the sword arms where possible to make a slightly different stance, using the hot-water, bend, dunk into cold water process.

You can probably tell from the photographs that there is still a bit of flash to be sorted on the models (and of course the swords have still to be made and added), but once all sorted, based and painted then I'll have another 8 figures to add to the arena combatants (effectively four as each has a differently armed counterpart).

I've also revisited my Hastati, from the HaT box set of the same name, but I'll be posting about that in the near future.


That's it then, yes it's been a while, but finding enthusiasm for this project has been difficult when I can't drum up any interest for it in my very limited wargamng circle.

Thanks for taking the time to visit.