Moving Day!  It feels like a moving month.  My family and I packed up our lives in Utah.  We made the long trek across the country to Knoxville, Tennessee.  This is especially difficult if you have two small children with you.  It was even more challenging due to my traumatic brain injury.  I am lucky that I can function.  Some people with a TbI are vegetables.  

I have a new hobby area in the place we live.  It has taken some time to get everything in order.  The kids have started to have a routine.  

Here is my new setup.  It is humble.  I really need another desk lamp.  I apologize for the poor quality picture.

I have been going back on forth on upgrading my 6mm DbMM models from 40mm frontages to 60mm frontage bases.  I finally decided to try it.  I am glad I did.  The differences are astounding.  As you can see from the picture below there is a 40mm blade base and a 60mm blade base.  The larger size gives a more diorama quality to the stand.  It looks better with the cavalry stands and psiloi.  Blade stands are supposed to be close order infantry.  Bd (F) stands are more spread out.  

I was reluctant to move to this frontage because of the cost of making an army goes up.  It does do that but the results are worth it.  Instead of getting 6 stands per bag of Baccus 6mm infantry I get 4 stands.  Some stands are not affected such as bows, auxilia, and psiloi.  

Whenever I see a gaming blog entry near the first of the year everyone shows off their new stuff.  I always get jealous because I very rarely get any wargame stuff...even though I give my wife a list of possible presents.  

This time I did get some swag.  These bags are my Vikings and Early Samurai models.  I have wondered how westerners would fare against samurai.  This is definitely in the realm of fantasy.  My premise is that a viking raider expedition manages to make it to Japan sometime between 860-950 AD.  The vikings did settle in Kiev sometime in the late 9th century.  I imagine that they kept sailing and setting up settlements.  Maybe a Arabic Sultan hired Viking mercenaries to sail east and plunder the mysterious Japans.  

My two armies consist of 125 AP.  They will be based on 60mm frontages.  I like the earlier period of Samurai more than the later Muromachi or Sengoku period (15th-16th century).  They lack the ashigaru and the Samurai class are only very high ranking nobles.  The Samurai fight mounted with bows and are followed closely by retainers with naginata and spears.  This translates into a very BIG stand for DbMM.  It is a double based Irr Cv (O) stand and a Irr Aux (I) stand.  Auxilia are only 12 models per base.  Cavalry stands look good with 11 to 12 models.  I want to model horsemen with several warriors on foot standing around them.  Since they are Irregular the groups will be in random clumps.  It is going to be a fun project.


 

My current project is a 20mm Late Imperial Roman army for DbA.  I have a little bit done.  The bases have a 12cm frontage.  The idea came from looking at Impetus based units.  They look amazing.  See for yourself if they look good.  I still need to base them though.  Money is tight and I must wait to get some materials.

 Numidian light horse

 Late Roman Clibinari... I have one more guy to paint and glue to the base.  These guys are really metal.

 A stand of Late Roman bowmen skirmishing.