Mortal Gods – Veteran

Ha! I finally managed to finish painting up the Veteran of the Corinthians. I admit, so close to the end of the month I hardly believed it, but two undisturbed evenings later I brought my usual color scheme to the mini quite quickly.

Eixypnos watched as the two young hoplites circled each other. He sincerely hoped that they would never find themselves in a situation where they were on their own, but it wasn't always possible to fight within the closed formation of a phalanx.

"Troikos, you better hold your shield higher or tuck your skull in a little when Kleon strikes with his spear. You only have one head and you want to keep it, don't you?" he said when one of his students had rather carelessly blocked the other's attack.

"But...he can't reach it from this position anyway, can he?" countered Troikos.

Eixypnos raised his hand and commanded the two to stop. He waved Kleon toward him and Troikos could hear his teacher murmuring something to his adversary. Finally Kleon returned, while Eixypnos called out "Again!".

They faced each other again. Troikos, who did not want to wait for Kleon's attack, rushed forward. Shield to shield, they clashed against each other and Troikos, who was considerably larger than Kleon, pushed him off. At the same time, he raised his guard slightly to thrust with his practice spear. Kleon, however, deflected the thrust with the lower end of his spear and executed a spin along the outstretched Dory of his opponent. With the same momentum, his spear whizzed over Troikos' head, who had just barely managed to dodge away underneath it. He felt the rounded tip miss him above the helmet's carlotte and hastily pulled his spear back towards him.

He had no intention of giving Kleon such a chance again, pressed his shield against him and at the same moment performed an elegant lunge, which at first seemed like a ramming maneuver, but in reality was another hidden spear thrust. But Kleon had anticipated it. At the spot where Troikos had expected Kleon, the spear hit nothing but air and Kleon, who was now at the same height as Troikos, jumped off the ground and slashed at Troikos' head.

Stars appeared before the eyes of the taller of the two hoplites as the tip of the spear hit his helmet, just above his left temple. If he had tucked his head, or held his shield just a little higher as he lunged, his smaller challenger would not have sent him to the ground.

Eixypnos laughed.

"I told you so! Enough for today. You've both made progress. Let's treat the bump on your head with some cold water and the bump on your pride with some wine."

Initially I had the idea to paint him in reddish brown colors, some orange and black, so that he should look like one of the figures on a greek vase. From the idea, however, only the coat of arms on the shield remained, which, in addition to the Pegasus, was not atypical for Corinth, since a lot of pottery and vases were produced and exported there.

I like the wait-and-see, calm pose of the character. You never lose a certain basic nervousness before a confrontation, but over time you develop a callousness, a stoicism that allows you to meet every challenge with composure at the same time. Sounds contradictory, but that's how it is. The model's posture and facial expression capture this well.

Now all that's left is the Promachos, which is supposed to represent a captain of the Corinthians, and I've already started on that one. Soon I will be ready for battles with a fully painted army to this standard.

Greetings from the Chaosbunker

Dino