It's time I dropped some images from last week's games at the club.
Chain of Command, Cold War
From the highly skilled hands of Adam Smith come a fantastic range of Third Century Imperial Romans/Middle Imperial Romans (link to be added on release)! I've been lucky enough to be in contact with Adam as the range began and has developed and I have to say, not since the Aventine Miniatures, Early Byzantines range have I seen such crisp, detailed and attractive sculpts.
To some extent the new AD Miniatures MIR range is a slight redux of his A&A miniatures Third century Middle Imperial Romans but I would leave Adam to comment upon that as he is much more knowledgeable about the subject than my good self.
I was given permission by Mark Farr (owner and director of Footsore Miniatures & Games) who will be putting the range into production and Adam to show off some of what we can expect from AD Miniatures in the future and was of course more than happy to
It must have been at Claymore, perhaps in the year 2001, maybe 2002 that I first encountered the Gripping Beast display stand in all it's (old school) glory, all beautifully painted vignettes of new and older released miniatures from the hand of Darren Harding. Each vignette inspiring, each element so absorbing; leaving me with a wonder of how such detailed work was possible.
Until about 2001/2002 I hadn't really paid that much attention to my painting. It was a case of paint, plonk and play for me! It was good enough but I have to say, and I really do not mean to blow my own trumpet here, nowhere near the standard I can reach with a little effort today. This is the crux of the article, like the Influential Miniature Painters and Why - Jock Ramage on this blog, these scribblings are about miniature painters that have really had an impact on me and perhaps how they effected my own painting.
The immediate impact at looking at Darren's work was the attention to detail, the extremely tight, crisp brushstrokes. The depth of imagination and historical knowledge. Just take a look at any of the images presented here and you will see such sharp work; the clothing, the shields the armours, the basing of the vignettes. It is hard to believe, even now, the shields are not transfers and are in fact freehand work from many years ago. The banners wonderfully hand painted too boot.
Having the delightful experience of encountering the Griping Beast stand at many shows in the early 2000's, being able to get up close and personal to the vignettes, something new always on display gave me the impetus to give the precision freehand a go, and whilst I might never not have reached the same standard, to get all arty farty about it, as Anselm Kiefer said, "You cannot achieve the impossible. You can only dream of it and try it." I think Darren came very close with his meticulous tight brushwork.
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In my alacrity to push myself around Partizan, to procure some decent photographs a get to chat with friends etc I managed to miss a few games to say the least! Somehow I managed to miss the entire Lard Zone(!!??), Simon miller's always stunning Simon Miller's, Lust for Glory, War of Spanish Succession game, and much to my surprise, the winner of the "Best of Show" the Veterans Voices!
I have decided to add a wee addendum to my Partizan Wargames Show, May 17th, 2026 report and leave you with the words of one of their organisers and a whole host of pictures, all in breath taking detail. What a game!
The words of Jonty.....
One
of our group of veterans was present throughout the operation as part
of Red Team , B Squadron , 22 SAS regiment.
The
idea for the game originated as a tribute. The initial build
was carried out by Purple Lion Creations and then a small team
carried out the internal detailing over twelve months. The 28mm
figures were sourced from far and wide but the SAS figures are from
1st Corps Miniatures.
Midway
through the build it was nearly skipped as no thought had been given
to how to arrange the model for a Wargame. The resulting design for
the stepped stand delivered a solution that works in separating the
floors and also giving the perspective of going upwards from top to
bottom.
The
build continued when our main model maker and lead in this project
was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Not wanting to be beaten the
project continued in spite of twelve months of chemo interrupting
build and painting time.
As
the build neared completion a call from channel 4 saw two of us
taking the model to a tv studio in London . The filming utilised the
model and its figures for the assault phase of a new tv documentary
to be screened early in 2027."
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