Dave's Wargaming Blog: The 8Bw Project

So I have been playing DBA since 1.0, and have a ton of Persians I painted in the 1980s and used with WRG 6 and 7, and then morphed into DBM and then Warrior. I also have lots of other 15mm ancients, including Assyrians and Babylonians. When DBA 2 came out these mysterious 8Bw creatures appeared… (Other lists with this mysterious creature is III/7 – Pre-Samurai Japanese but I don’t have any of these painted nor am I particularly interested in this period).

Not wishing to rebase 8 perfectly good 15x40mm bow/spear into a 40x40mm base, I chose to ignore it all and just fake it with two 15x40mm bases sort of hanging out together.

When I won the 2017 Enfilade DBA Open and qualified for the US NICT, and decided to field my Early Achs at Historicon I decided to actually do it right and base up some 8Bw.

I dug out some unpainted lead from the garage and created four 8Bw for list I/60 Early Achaemenid Persian and another four for my I/44b Neo-Babylonians. The latter morphed into six as I had more lead.

For the actual 8Bw, the DBA rules call for the front rank to be some sort of spear with large shield or pavise, so I found some of these in my unpainted lead stash.

I spray painted the Persians a light green (because I already had some Persian bow in that color and was looking to put them all in the same unit for Warrior/FOG)...

Then I glue each figure onto a popsicle stick (3 or 4 per stick).

and the Babs in red (just because).

I painted up the details on the figures and decided to keep the shields relatively plain (blue with bronze rims for the Babs, yellow with red stripes for the Achs). I only had 12 Persian spearmen with pavises but had an old partially painted Minifigs command group with the large figure-8 shield (called a gerron) so decided to use these in the front line.

Then I made the bases using old beer coasters. Note the square I use to make sure the lines are straight.

Cut to the appropriate size using a Fiskers paper cutter.

I got cold feet and still wanted to keep them based for use in other rule sets, so decided to put them all on 15x40mm bases. In order to be DBA street legal I’d have to put them on a 40x40mm base. So I found some old steel 40x40mm bases put out by Wargame Accessories that I had picked up somewhere and did some math [(40-(2x15))/2 = 5]. I cut up 32 strips of coasters into 4mm x 40mm slices (I subtracted 1 mm per strip just to be on the safe side), spray painted them my standard brown (well, actually I painted them before I cut them up), and super-glued them to each side of the steel bases.
Then I put magnets on the bottom. I use Alene's Tacky adhesive magnets (get them at Michael's). I put the cut bases on the magnet sheet then cut along the lines of the bases with an xActo knife.
I put a line of wood glue on the top of each strip and into the sand tray.

This is the final product of 15 x 40mm bases for the troops.

I use wood glue with some brown acrylic paint added to affix the troopies to the base.

Make sure the base is covered well - I spread it around with a toothpick.

Then just put the figures on the base. Slide them around a bit to make sure there is a tight bond.

Use the toothpick to dab glue on the entire figure's base (being careful not to get any where you don't want the sand to stick).

Here is what a full base looks like, ready to slide into the tray of sand.

And here are three elements in the sand. I generally let them stand in the sand overnight so the glue is mostly dry. I can fit two stands per tray compartment - the tray is what cookies come in - I think these were Chips Ahoy. The best ones have close to vertical (not rounded) sides.

Here are the Persians ready to go - on the 40 x 40 movement stand. The front element on the left are the old Minifigs command figures; the rest are Essex.

The Neo-Babylonians. The two extra groups are on each side of the ones on the 40 x 40 movement stands.