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I planned a quiet weekend and have been pleased to have the chance and energy to slap some paint on some miniatures. Last month I painted almost two dozen 1/72 fantasy figures for my portable wargaming set up, and I wanted to do a few more. However, I set the warg riders aside at one point and ended up finishing a couple of large monsters. The cyclops on the far right is from a recent Dark Alliance set. As can be seen by Sir Forescale, he’d be a tolerable ogre even in 28s, but the old Airfix Robin Hood figure gives the scale comparison in 1/72. I’m hoping to get to some sort of Homeric Bronze Age project one of these days, as the Dark Alliance Cyclopes are also accompanied by sets of Egyptian mummies, Anubis warriors, minotaurs, centaurs, and Amazons, so there’s some scope. Caesar Miniatures has produced an extensive Bronze Age selection in 1/72, although much of it is sadly out of production at the moment. The big thing is a …. Something … from the Caesar Miniatures Adventurers set, also sadly out of production at the moment. Most people I’ve seen online or in magazines have styled it a “troll”, but my elder son, drawing on a childhood memory of an Eric Carle-illustrated book of poems about mythical creatures, dubbed it a “bunyip”, so that’s what we usually call it. I believe this is the last one we have to be painted; we’ve got four between us. Like the cyclops, it’s big enough to intimidate Sir Forescale and it truly monstrous compared to the Airfix Merry Man. My younger son is relocating back to this part of the world next weekend, and is currently staying with his brother briefly while he looks at apartments. They have been playing some De Bellis Antiquitatis with the elder’s Bronze Age collection (e.g. this recent game) while visiting, so I decided to see if I could make some progress on adding another DBA army to the Bronze Age pool. (As an aside, DBA and its fantasy counterpart Hordes of the Things have been more-or-less the family default tabletop wargames for a couple of decades, although the current DBA binge only started a few years ago.) I sorted out an army of ancient Nubians some time ago, from my stash of Caesar boxes. It isn’t some of my best work; they have some poorly defined leopard spots on their kilts, and I am not entirely certain what the belt wraps and shoulder throws are supposed to be, which also have some shallow incised detail. I’m thinking that it’s probably intended as embroidered cloth, so I’ll have to see if I can’t do better with the next batch. Here’s an Egyptian painting of Nubians delivering donuts and a sleeping cat in tribute: (Which reminds me that I should vary the skin tones more in the next batch…)