The Glorious Army of Mithridates VI

All summer I have been slowly, very slowly, painting my 15mm Pontic Army of Mithridites VI, scourge of Rome. Mithridates VI was spectacularly rich (his army dripped wit gold and jewels, ruled the Kingdom of Pontus in NE Turkey in 1st century BC and hated Rome, really hated Rome. With his exotic army of Successor style troops, Armenians, Sarmatians and Galatians he conquered Turkey, Greece and controlled the Black Sea.
He was terrified of being assassinated and took a dose of poison every day to build up his immunity. He was fortunate that Rome was in the middle of a civil war and unfortunate that when Rome got its act together he faced Pompey, Sulla and Marius, 3 of its greatest generals, who stomped all over him. Eventually he was betrayed by his son and killed himself. His legacy does live on in the flag of Turkey, symbol of Pontus was a crescent moon and a star.
The army is mainly forged in battle, fab figures, with some Xyston figs thrown in, also great but a little large and badly photographed.

It's a big army of 3 divisions 

Cavalry division of horse archers and heavy cavalry

The shock division of scythed chariots, Galatians, basternae and light infantry

Heavy infantry division of pikemen and thureophoroi with skirmishers

The generals

And now the units

Skythian horse archers - I have enough Steppe types for an army of their own

Companion cavalry

Sarmatian Cataphract cavalry

Scythed chariots 50:50 chance of being deadly or useless

Galatian Warband - deadly

Bastarnae - deadly and mental

Black Sea Light Infantry - space occupiers

Armenian Javelin men - more space occupiers

Light Archers

Slingers

Pike blocks - crammed these in with 8 figs per base

Thureophoroi - fairly good infantry

Overall it's big - 500pts in Hail Casear. it is my 2nd 15mm army but will lose against my 15mm WW2 paratroopers. Should get a battle in next month.

Talos

For those of a certain age Jason and the Argonauts opened up a wonderful age of adventure full of monsters and gods. The greatest of the challenges the Argonauts faced was the bronze guardian Talos, OK so it was the Children of the Hydra's Teeth but I haven't painted them.
This 95mm high model is from Steve Barber and was a joy to paint. Bronze green undercoat and then dry brush with dark bronze and light bronze until it looked fab. I then added some verdigris using bright camo green.

It was a beautiful model to paint and will fit nicely with my Greek mythology troops. Dragon Rampant is calling

Border Reiver 2018 and bored house guests

I've had friends up this weekend, did the Great Exhibition of the North tour and some antique shopping, more of that later. Managed to con them into a quick visit to Border Reiver. Not really their thing. The show looked pretty good with some nice games but it was a very quick visit. Bought what I wanted and some cheap stuff.
1st though the post man has been

Forged in battle pikemen for Pontus

Osprey roman book, enemies for Pontus

Forged in battle hellenistic officers for Pontus

Massive Talos, man of bronze from Steve Barber, for the sake of it

African Queen Steamer from Sarissa

More pikemen and some Cretan Archers from Xyston 

Picts from bring and buy. Bargain

Resin 28mm half track, £10

Romans from Col Bill. 

They have a scale issue being actually 15mm compared to my other"15mm" figs that are 18mm. May use double thick bases and see

Finally antique shopping

I bought this printers tray, nice wood with brass connectors.

Did this with it

Nice display for some of my figs

What Ever Happened to Fay Wray?

That delicate satin draped frame.

I bought very little at the Other Partizan but I needed something to mount on the top of my pyramid, Luckily Cortani and Pulp miniatures came to the rescue

Cortani have an Aztec altar piece that fits nicely on the top of the pyramid. Pulp Miniatures have a pack of 1930's female captives including a brilliant King Kong piece of Fay Wray strung up between 2 posts awaiting the big ape.

The Cortani piece comes with its own altar top of a small monolith with a crocodile head piece

Overall I'm very pleased with the bits and now for a bit of pulp action

The Other Partizan 2018

Yesterday me, Dave, James and Scotty wandered down to Newark for the Other Partizan today. We were putting on another massive Sudan battle using a tiny fraction of Dave's huge, and wonderful Sudan collection.
Saturday was curry and about 5 pints to many.
Sunday up bright and early and very hungover. I'm getting too old for this drinking lark, and very out of practice. We met up with Ray and Postie, who had come up from Gravesend, pleasure to meet them, hope he's remembered to pay his Dartford toll
On with the battle

The layout. Egyptian army at the bottom, Me, Imperials in the village at the top, James with Mahdists in the middle, Dave vs me and Scotty vs James. The Brits were low on supplies, I had them in the huge baggage train. I was low on water and needed to get to the oasis in the middle before saving James

The Egyptians, couple of unit of Camel Corps, unit of lancers, 5 units of infantry, 4 cannon and some scouts. These are terrible troops and 1/2 are fresh off the painting table so I've got no chance

James has 3 units of infantry and some bits. James is a proud Scotsman and he has the Cameron Highlanders. problem is that James always manages to get every Scottish unit he commands slaughtered to a man. So things aren't looking good

Fuzzies facing James, i have a similar number facing me

I form a line as quick as I can as Dave launches an all out attack

On both flanks of my army

Dave even has a Gatling gun. My scouts rush out and take it out but are caught by the Fuzzies behind and are routed

Dave smashes into my line and one of my Egyptian infantry units simply disappears. Excellent

At the other end Scotty is launching wave after wave against James and although he is standing firm he is taking casualties

The Mahdists attack me again but I've got my cannons in place and although I keep falling back as a result of melee the cannons reek bloody hell and keep the Mahdists away. I forgot to take photos for the next bit, the exciting bit. I manage to get a regiment of camel corps to outflank the Mahdists and roll them up in 2 turns

My path is cleared and I can run to rescue James, but we went home before this happened.

So obviously I went shopping. Strangely enough i barely bought anything

Book on Meriwether Lewis, a mouldy book for £1

Altar piece for my pyramid

Couple of packs of Empress modern SAS

The freebie, a sitting WW1 Tommy

Pulp female captives, including a King Kong style Faye Wray, great for the pyramid

Finally the author Harry Sidebottom was at the show, he's often there. I was reading his latest, it's great and I really like his lead character - Ballista. These are a different series and I picked them up, he signed them and gave me a free Ballista figure by Aventine. Nice guy

Really good weekend out. Will post some of the other games later