Yesterday, a fairly new company, Aventine Miniatures, announced on TMP the release of a new model of a Sasanian king mounted on an elephant. It looks like a wonderful model, so I ordered one! I can't wait for it to arrive. It doesn't fit in my previously planned army list, but it's too nice to ignore, so my plan will have to change! There's something rather nice about having a large and spectacular model as the centrepiece of an army. Once the model arrives, I shall review it here (and post pictures when I've painted it), but in the meantime, you can look at images of the unpainted model here on Aventine's website. I was intending to paint a unit of auxilia, and then the Sasanian noble cavalry, but I fancy the elephant may just shoulder its way into the queue ahead of the cavalry - we'll see!
Aventine's sculptor (Adam?) used to work for A&A Miniatures - he was responsible for sculpting the Romans I am using in my current army. So there's a good chance of the models from this new company being compatible with A&A's figures. More choice of 3rd Century Romans and Sassanids (when they get around to doing them, which it seems won't be for a while) can't be a bad thing. They have promised more elephants too - if they turn out to be as nice as the first, I am going to end up with far too many jumbos!
Aventine are also making a range of Republican Romans and their enemies. Very nice they look too! I can see me reproducing my earlier (15 mm) Republican Roman army with these figures - unless, of course, one of the plastics manufacturers makes some equally nice plastics for half the price!
My elbow seems to be healing nicely - it no longer hurts, and the skin seems to be a lot more 'healed-looking' than it was, so I have begun work on a unit of auxilia, plus a standard bearer for the army. He's a 'light' conversion - I've taken one of A&A's standard bearers, removed his standard, and replaced it with a Warlord Games eagle from my spares box, to make an aquilifer. I am trying, as far as possible, to paint without resting my elbow on the edge of my workbench, so that, hopefully, I don't get a recurrence of the problem.