Showing posts with label Viking 15mm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Viking 15mm. Show all posts

6 Oct 2022

A Viking Battle Shed

 With a podcast and a load of painting all at the "finishing touches" stage, I thought I'd sneak out a few photos of Forged in Battle's Viking War Shed, which I picked up as the prize at the WAR 1-dayer competition earlier in the year. 

OK, technically it's a WE-F55 Meade Hall but I'm sure they may have also kept the odd lawnmower and set of garden tools in there too.

The model is a 2-part resin structure, with the roof being separate to the base. There is no internal detail so the roof just gets glued on after placing the posts around the sides.

The pillars and gable ends are separate metal pieces which need to be glued into holes in the base - some of which I had to drill out to take the lug on the metal beam. This was very easy to do with a pin vise, as the resin drills out easily enough.  

Some of the beams then needed snipping down a bit at the top as well to fit under the roof, and a couple needed building up with filler to join up with the roof once it was glued in place too. 


I painted it in a black Gesso undercoat, with many layers of different drybrushed browns and (eventually) pale grey and bleached bone.

Here it is with some 15mm 2 Dragons figures for scale.

I think it has come out as a very nice little building - useful for that Village next to the Waterway that the Vikings, Rus and Saxon types all like to have to narrow the table down so their shieldwall can't get outflanked!

 

31 Aug 2022

The Kyivan Rus on the M4 road to Reading

 One of the great beauties about L'Art de la Guerre is the way the shorter game time (about 2.5 hours) means you can fit 3 games into a day. It sounds fairly minor, but a 3-round Swiss Draw tournament is just, well, a lot, lot more "meaty" than a 2-round one would be - but without imposing so many games on you that a poor army design could leave you cursing the protracted pain of facing a series of lengthy drawn out defeats either.

The recent Reading-based 1-dayer ticked all of those boxes with a theme of "the World of the Rus and Vikings" - armies with a connection to either of these peoples, in the form of a historical antipathy or conflict, a mention in the army list notes, or an allied contingent of either of the two. 

I however went full Zelensky on this one, and chose a Rus army with no allies at all, a simple list chosen mainly as it was as close as I could get to using all of the lockdown-rebased Rus spearmen I owned all on table together whilst not totally ignoring the "good" options in the overall design.

That did mean a lot of spearmen - an often-unloved troop type who are nevertheless superb in the right circumstances. And, of course, how could I forget, a chance yet again to deploy the age-old groan-inducing Rus Abbot punchline against three unwary opponents!


All three Bella Emberg-free reports from this event are now online as the Rus take on the Carolingians, the Vikings and the Thematic Byzantine Empire in these fully illustrated and statistic rich reports. 


13 Feb 2021

Rebooted Vikings & Rus

With plenty of time on my hands I've been systematically rebasing some of my older armies, shifting them from DBM-era basing to ADLG double-basing, and in the process reorganising the figures as well to make more coherent ADLG armies and troop types. 

One of my largest DBM armies was a huge almost-all Two Dragons Viking/Rus force, with 80+ DBx HI bases, loads of medium foot and a ridiculous 44 LI with bow, allowing me to field full rear support for all 80-odd double ranked infantry when the army took to the field as Rus.

ADLG armies being considerably smaller than this has allowed me to not only update the basing, but to reshuffle the figures so I now have separate Rus and Viking warriors, and also separate bases of Vikings to appear as Spearmen, Swordsmen and axe-wielding Huscarls instead of the previous "Tonight Matthew, these figures will be appearing as..." hodge-podge of mixed bases I had before. 

I have also tarted up all of the spears - repainting them all in a lighter colour in line with my latest style, and added some basic blacklining on the spear tips and hands to give them a bit more "ping", and added some new banners using glued-together brush bristles to create "crosses", and then hanging (aka gluing) small vertical banners to the crossbars using graphics from a computer game which I found on Pinterest.

Now this project is complete I've taken a load of photos of the refurbished collection using my cheapo China-bought lightbox and my cheapo camera with a 400 ISO setting, and uploaded the full set of photos into the 15mm Gallery on Madaxeman.com where you can find them all in the Viking and Rus galleries

I've also posted some here too;


Generals & Valkyrie


Medium Axemen


Medium Warriors


Beserkers 


Huscarls


Spearmen

Huscarls again


And again...


Rus


Rus


Rus, featuring The (legendary) Rus Abbot in the centre of the line




15 Jan 2021

Random 15mm January Work in Progress

 With the Lockdown Podcasts due to start again next week and the UK in what feels like it will be a hard-lockdown lasting at least into March, I've been chewing away at some bits and pieces before embarking onto an actual major project.

Here's a few photos of the WiP figures (all pre-matt varnishing, as it's too cold to do) - there are loads more photos on the Madaxeman Website


These are a mix of Essex and Magister Militum/Chariot hoplites, with a lone New Museum commander in the front rank.

The white leather armour itself was white undercoat, then a wash of ArmyPainter Dark tone to pick out the details, then it was painted white leaving the recesses clear of paint so the shading was left only in the recesses.

These are mostly the "boring" Essex Arab spearmen, again stripped in Biostrip, undercoated in white and then with GW contrast paints applied to mirror the 28mm figures I did a few months ago.


These are Donnington New Era arabs, based up as Saririyah Pikemen from the Fatimid Egyptian army list and painted in Contrast paints


The Donnington New Era arabs fit well next to Essex infantry size-wise


I've also been thinking about upgrading my Roman Carroballistas for a while, and Tamsins painting of these Donnington figures flagged up in the podcast spurred me on to finally get around to it


The ballista and cart on the left is from Donnington, on the right its from Essex - but all the crew are Donnington, sold as singles.


This is a rebasing project, separating my rather vast (mostly) Two Dragons Rus/Viking DBM army into separate ADLG Rus and Viking forces (and possibly creating a Viking army I can sell on eBay too)

I'm also taking the rebasing moment as an excuse to repaint the spears as well. Spears do tend to get chipped and bent, so repainting them all makes a big difference to how new the army looks.

Getting distracted by a variety of projects is sometimes a good thing, as it does mean you can get a sense of achievement from making a noticable difference to some figures - and at the moment we all need some achievements to mark down!

Equally, taking advantage of the extra time we've all been gifted at the moment does allow some experimentation, and the hoplites certainly fall into that category as I tried a very different painting style, taking almost a week to do these handful of figures

Either way, a break from launching into the next major project is great, and when it throws up some interesting figures, paint styles and creates some reason to use new(ly rebased) armies in future that otherwise might have languished in a drawer thats great too.

There are loads more photos of these on the Madaxeman Website

6 May 2020

Lockdown Podcast VII now out

The 7th Lockdown Podcast (and 3oth all-time Madaxeman Podcast) has now been published on Podbean and iTunes, and is already picking up a steady stream of listeners and regular subscribers on both platforms. It's ideal bank holiday listening for your weekend painting or legally permitted outdoor exercise session. 


This week the team discuss their latest painting haul, chat at some length about airbrushing, take an in-depth look at the Lydian army in ADLG and endure another week of Andy's Quiz Music wrapped around the far more acceptable Andy's Quiz.

Watch out later this week for a special one-off edition covering Paintbrushes !

 

  

17 Apr 2020

Lockdown Podcast IV

The Lockdown Specials - Part 4

Another week, another load of old rubbish as the regulars chat on about their glacial rate of painting, wheel out another obscure quiz and this time attempt also to demostrate just how hard unscripted radio comedy can be in a tribute to non-wargaming legend and all round Goodie Tim Brooke-Taylor.



If you want to listen it's on Podbean and will soon appear on iTunes as well - just search for "madaxeman.com" from within iTunes to find it. 

And, finally, here's the gratuitous and disconcerting photo referred to in the 'pod


1 Jul 2016

Gordon Bennett, it's El Sid! 5 more ADLG Reports

ADLG has reinvigorated a whole host of previously little-seen armies and figures, and next up on the rehabilitation trail are some Two Dragons Normans (and dubiously Viking-esque Almughavar morphs) who take part as a Feudal Spanish army in 5 games of 300 point large-army L'Art de la Guerre 15mm action at the 2016 BHGS Challenge.

Marvel at how these brave Norman-esque warriors emerge blinking into the light after so many years with flocked (rather than more modern grass tufted) bases.


Thrill as they double-base themselves to form ADLG units.


Gasp in horror as they still appear to have learnt nothing about tactics and planning despite their years of free time in which to study the classic military manuals.


And chortle with smutty delight as El Sid James provides the General's Commentary in all 5 match reports

25 Jul 2015

L'Art de la Guerre - 5 games, and some serious thoughts about the UK Ancients scene

Back in June I took part in the 2nd L'Art de la Guerre "proper" competition at the BHGS Challenge in Oxford, using a Feudal German army in a Feudal themed period event. I've ended up writing in this preamble something of an essay on ADLG and the UK competition scene, but the reports are still here if you want to skip it !

The German army was pretty simple, reducing my opportunities to mess things up by trying to execute any sort of over complicated plan, and the end result was fairly successful as well - as you can see in these 5 match reports, complete with rules hints and the usual captions and expert analysis from Hannibal.


The Essay starts here... 

This was my first serious session of ADLG, battle-testing the rules in a proper competition setting and I'm delighted to report that - probably unsurprisingly given their long pedigree in France - they emerged pretty much fully unscathed, with the QR sheet barely needed by the end of the weekend.

The other good news was that by the middle of the event I was starting to "play the game" (and enjoy it) rather than "playing the rules" - a quick leaning curve towards enjoying shoving ancients figures around once again.



The reason is probably because at the end of the day ADLG is mechanically extremely similar to DBx games, with pip dice and opposed combat rolls as the core mechanics, and so those familiar tactical problems about finding you have an over complex plan and too few pips to execute it, or that you have suffered a 6-1 combat result that has knocked a hole in you line and you need to shore it up quickly (or that the opposite has happened, and you need to work out how to exploit it!).

With the low base combat factors in ADLG it did initially feel that the role (or roll) of the dice was playing a bigger part in the outcome of the game that I was used to, but a bit of number crunching to reality-check this, and more importantly getting comfortable enough with the rules and mechanics so that I could start to concentrate on the proper tactical decisions and doing things to try and beat my opponent in the actual games rather than being 100% focused on the rules themselves was a hurdle that once I had crossed it, I was totally comfortable with. Playing at 300 points also helped a lot too as a couple of poorly timed 1-6 results make much less of a dent in a 34 unit army than a 22 unit one!



Ultimately ADLG is a well put together fun game, which has the huge advantages of being also fully battle-tested, competition-ready ruleset that is now being extremely widely played in France, Spain, and the US, making the possibility of proper international competitions once again something which I can look forward to attending.

It's also still a "new" set in the UK, so everyone playing is still on the bottom of the same learning curve and can test out new armies and tactics to try and find ways to use those long-ignored figures and units (looks longingly at large Avar army that got painted just as I lost the will to live with FoGAM..), and it also has a viable "short-form" game at 200 points as well as the FoGAM/DBx equivalent "long form" game at 300, so ADLG all in all should really be bang on trend for what people seem to be looking for in a game today.

Will it end up being so - I hope so, but that still needs some more takeup. My experience of the the UK Ancients scene has been to be part of it at an incredibly fortunate, or even spoilt maybe, period of time over the past 20 or so years, and to have benefited from being part of a community that embraced what was at the time a radical and wildly innovative, yet very simple (mechanically) modern ruleset in the shape of DBM, which came bursting onto the scene after several decades of rather tired, iterative updates 1st-through-7th sets (and derivatives thereof).

DBM however, because of it's success, became "played-out" for a lot (but not all) of the community, with most all jumping on the bandwagon of FoGAM - more I suspect on the basis that it allowed the community to stay together, socialising, drinking and pushing toy soldiers around together, but with a different set of intellectual challenges to underpin it after the challenges and puzzles inherent in DBM had all been all but overcome.

But, in the shift away from DBM, neither FoGAM (nor DBMM) ever seemed to quite capture the mass imagination of the community in the same way as the WRG to DBM transition did, and neither has proved to be the sweep-all-in-its-path behemoth that DBM was, nor have they developed the longevity, nor the enduring multi-national international appeal that DBM did in it's heyday either.  

Looking back, I'm not sure this is the "fault" of either ruleset - it may just be a historical accident that we all happened to be shoving pikemen and legionaries around when the first "modern" ruleset - that focused on command and control, not kit, that graded troops by their effect rather than their weapons, and which understood that simplicity of design was absolutely something worth sacrificing whole mountains of details in the pursuit of when it came to game design and philosophy.

My sense is that the UK scene is still, maybe subconsciously, waiting for another WRG-DBM transition Eureka! moment, when a radical new ruleset that tears up the past with a raft of game-changing innovations will once again be able to have a bloody good go at uniting the world wide community of Ancients gamers ... and until that time comes, every ruleset that doesn't fill those enormous boots will be judged, and rejected in favour of marking time with the familiarity of the status quo.

The underlying problem however, I suspect, is that we have already had the our Eureka! moment we will ever see - unlike the late 90's there are now just too many games in too many other periods where almost all possible innovations have already been released into he wild - and so that elusive new "innovative" system for Ancients that everyone is subconsciously waiting for has already become familiar.

Is ADLG that mythical system?

Emphatically not - it has huge nods to DBx, huge nods to FoG in its mechanics and design, and to be fair it makes no real claim to be innovative either. It has it's quirks, most notably that it is arguably a little more dice-dependent than FoGAM or DBx - but this is no accident, it's something that has been deliberately designed-in, and as long as you embrace it, it simply serves to add flavour, memorable moments and narrative colour to the ebb and flow of the game ... and most importantly of all, it helps prevent what is after all just a highly abstracted game played with toy soldiers being taken too seriously

Irrespective of what ADLG might lack in Eureka! innovations, it most certainly is an already-bomb-proof system that allows almost all types and flavours of armies to be played competitively. It uses slightly fewer figures than FoGAM or DBX, doesn't (really) need re-basing and most importantly it is already widely played in Europe, and is picking up steam in the US amongst the same crowd who used to be such keen participants in international DBM events.



If the UK Ancients crowd all could somehow get together, forget the trench-warfare of FoGAM vs DBMM, and take a collective decision that it would be better for all concerned to move en-mass to ADLG, in much the same was as seemed to happen with WRG-FoGAM, and then (almost) with DBM-FoGAM (and DBM-DBMM) then that international community that used to be such a cool thing to be a part of would suddenly be back, and the whole UK scene would be rolling dice, drinking beer and learning a brand new ruleset together once again.

The only two differences would be that this time, ADLG already has had almost all of the kinks beaten out of it by the French circuit so won't need near-term revisions, and that - for the first time - ADLG s a set that "hasn't been been invented here".

Only time will tell if these prove to be insurmountable obstacles....

OK, enough of the (unplanned) essay, and on with the reports! 

23 Nov 2012

Donnington Flags


I saw regular show exhibitor Damien from Donnington Miniatures at Warfare last weekend, and he sent me over a bit of info about the flag ranges he's created to go with the rather nice ‘New Era’ Medieval figures he's now producing.


The exciting bit is that apparently some TYW flags are in the works and so if they are up to the same standard as the current flag sheets for Vikings, Saxons, Normans, 100 Years War, Gascons, 14th/15th Century Scots, French Ordonnance, Swiss, Burgundians and WOTR it'll be a good extra addition to the list of flag suppliers on my 15mm Renaissance Manufacturers page. 



There is even an instructional video available on the website to show you how to use them.



The flag sheets are available in 15mm scale and in other scales on request to A&M. The number of flags varies, with lots on each sheet - £5 per sheet for 15mm scale and £10 per sheet for 25/28mm scale. For more info contact Ancient & Modern Army Supplies:
Website:                      www.ancient-modern.co.uk


12 Feb 2009

Baueda's range now added to the Photo Directory

All of Baueda's "new" (ex 50-Paces) Viking range, and their Emeshi, Flaming Pigs and Ottoman Incendiary Javelinmen now appear in the photo directory on this site.


BeserkersEmeshi Bowmen

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