Hoplites

A while back I purchased some figures from Rapier Miniatures to round out the hoplites for the battle of Nemea.   Unfortunately some of the figures had miscast shields.  I emailed Rapier about this and received a response that they would "get on it right away".  Since I had always had good service from them I thought nothing further of it and went on to other projects.  This past weekend I returned to the hoplites and realized that I had heard nothing further from Rapier. 

Since I had acquired a number of larger scale shield designs I experimented with reducing them to fit the 6mm figures.  The program I used is Paintshop Pro 7.  This program allows you to increase the number of pixels per inch when you reduce an image keeping the detail.  Microsoft Paint will not allow you to do this and has a maximum of 96 pixels per inch.   After some experimenting I found that if I reduced them by a factor of six and increased the number of pixels per inch by the same factor that the size was just about right for the figures.  I printed them on heavy white cardstock.  I trimmed the remains of the shields from the figures and used white glue to attach the shields after cutting them out.  Cutting circles less than 4mm in diameter is a bit difficult.  I may check with some of the craft stores and see if it is possible to obtain a hole punch that is the correct size as I have about five dozen more to cut and glue.  The following images show the first dozen figures that I have attached the shields to.   A couple of them will need to be rotated and a couple will need to be replaced.   The photos were taken with the macro setting for the camera lens.  I still have some painting to do for the figures.

Update

Found a set of a dozen punches that include 3mm and 4mm diameter punches on Ebay for less than $14US with free shipping http://www.ebay.com/itm/380429235433 Rapier has also informed me that they have replaced the faulty mold.  Time to take a look at what additional items I need.