Bleaseworld

This fantastic book is broken down into thirteen sections, from Conan's formative years in Cimmeria and his participation in the Battle of Venarium, through to his eventual relinquishing of the crown of Aquilonia and journey into the isles of the west.

Given his pedigree as editor and author of many of Marvel's Conan comics, Roy Thomas' presents as well-written history of Conan which serves both as a useful refresher for fans and an ideal introduction to anyone who has yet to discover Robert E. Howard's work.

Since painting the first Cimmerians I have been trying to apply a bit of logic to the project and have decided that rather than get all ambitious and try and recreate the entire Hyborian Age in 10mm, I am going to initially restrict myself to the time of the Battle of Venarium and concentrate on raising Cimmerian and Aquilonian forces, then see where it goes from there. Re-reading Beyond the Black River I've gleaned a little more info on the Aquilonian army, although Howard typically is sketchy on detail and is wont to misname weaponry. For example the force at Fort Tuscelan has 300 pikemen, but I can't imagine a weapon more useless in the forested Pictish wilderness and would guess that these troops are equipped with long spears.

The look of the Aquilonians is a bit of a problem. Whilst they are the "Roman Empire" of the Hyborian Age they are clearly inspired by early medieval French. I liked the idea of using Carolingians but am not keen on the Magister Militum ones so might use Kallistra's Romano-British some of which can do double duty as Dale troops in any Lord of the Rings games, supplemented with the odd pack of suitable early medievals such as their Scottish Pike (which may well of been what Howard inspired by).

This first Cimmerian unit has been sat on a shelf, based and undercoated, for a good couple of years now and for some reason today I decided to just advance them a little bit before returning to the projects in hand which were drying...

For 10mm I give miniatures a black undercoat before a heavy drybrush of a base colour (in this case brown) before picking out detail. This means if I miss something it has some paint on it and will still stand out from the undercoat. In between checking the cricket scores I kept coming back to this unit to add a little bit more until I finished them!

For good measure I finished off this unit of Battle of the Five Armies GW plastic Goblins which had been sitting around painted and merely waiting for a drybrush on the base and some flock. Took all of two minutes and now they're done!

There are other projects that need finishing more urgently so I am relegating 10mm to an "as and when" project, painting up a unit at a time, in between other projects for a bit of light relief. so eventually there will be a useable number done and ready for a bit of Howard or Tolkien Warmaster action on the games table...