I’ve been playing quite a lot of To The Strongest over Zoom lately, using my new-ish Marian Romans against the Celts. One thing my opponent likes fielding that I had never done are the Druids available as an army standard equivalent.

We’ve been using memory or a marker of some kind to represent said religious types, but I think it’s always better to get the proper figures onto the table so have been looking out from some suitable minis.

Something else led me to the Stonewall Figures website and their range of Ancients figures by Capitan. These include Gauls, and a quick browse revealed some rather nice Druids which I purchased immediately. Only a couple of days later these popped through the letterbox and were immediately accelerated to the front of the painting queue:

The rather fanciful obelisk is home made: some modelling clay stolen from Daughter #2 and roughly shaped into a monolithic shape. I then added some very rough horizontal-type ogham-style writing with a sharp edge. The obelisk was painted in GW Contrast Basilicum Grey with some green mossy details added. It still didn’t look quite right, so I very crudely filled the ogham writing with some acrylic dark gold paint, wiping off any excess.

I quite like the result, although it is a very large obelisk…which means that at least I shouldn’t forget to apply the re-play attack card bonus on the tabletop!

Anyway, the figures are lovely and highly recommended. The whole Capitan range is worth a look: they are quite large 15mm figures, but very nicely sculpted.

A Chinese Anyone?

Whilst waiting for the clay to set, my eye happened to fall onto a pack of MDF buildings sent to me as samples by Frank, the chap who runs MiniWarfare out of China. These were forming a small hillock on the edge of the lead mountain, so I thought I’d excavate and build them.

Regular readers will know that MiniWarfare produce some spectacularly good far eastern buildings for Burma/Malaya/Vietnam etc:

The burlap in the windows and door is mine.

The samples that Frank sent me were of Chinese buildings: two identical houses and a restaurant.

It’s the photography that’s crooked, not the models!

As with the Vietnamese huts, these kits are hyper-easy to build - much easier than 4Ground or Sarissa - and are therefore highly recommended for that reason alone.

Unlike normal, I decided to paint them using GW Contrast paints. The roofs on the houses are actually much darker than they appear in the pic above (obelisk coloured to be exact!) and please forgive the slightly brash colouring on the restaurant!

And now for the bad news: the MiniWar website is currently under construction, so you can’t buy anything at the moment. I do hope Frank hasn’t gone out of business due to COVID, so please join me in checking back every now and then.

I really must get my far eastern huts back on the tabletop soon: time for some Liongate or Bloody Burma!