Taking Germans to Germany - whatever next?!

 A few weeks back a brave band of CLWC gamers hopped in a car and headed across Europe to take part in the ADLG German Team Tourament in Braubach, on the banks of the mighty Rhine.

On our journey we encountered many strange sights....

..including a trip to the museum in Mons in Belgium...

...some heavyweight tank action at Bastogne barracks...

..a bfrief history of medieval torture in Trier ...

...which was also the capital of the Western Roman Empire for a while...

..before finally engaging in 5 games of ADLG using a Medieval German army ...

..with what admittedly was mixed success... 

..under the expert leadership of the Kaiser Gnome ...

..before heading home via a rain-soaked, beer-soaked 800 year old 4 month long drinking festival!

For a full set of military tourism, gastronomic and liquid intake excess, musical weirdness, the Gome Kaiser trading insults with Hannibal, and the occasional spot of reportage of 15mm scale Medieval wargaming head on over to the Battle & Tourism reports now ! 

Roman Cavalry (not quite a choir!)

 Chris Martin may have sung about Roman Cavalry Choirs singing, but in most sets of wargaming rules the Roman Cavalry are, well, a bit "out of tune" with what it takes to be actually all that good, at least in the Republican period.  They aren't equipped with cool lances, they aren't especially decent quality, and they aren't numerous enough to have "quantity as a quality all of it's own" either

However in ADLG, again as in most rules, there are always a couple of mandatory units of Roman Cavalry in most of the Marian/Republican era lists, so I was obliged to get some for my Roman army. 

These are the finished article:

They are all from the "much cheaper than Foundry" Crusader range from North Star.

The horses are a tad on the skinny side if I'm being picky, but that does at least mean they all fit together well on this 60mm wide base.

The riders are cast with saddles which didn't really fit all that snugly on the backs of the horses, so it was not entirely straighforward to mount them up. 

After a bit of consideration I ended up deciding to snip off some parts of of the horses manes, where the mane joins the back of the horse.

 Doing this creates enough of a long, flat patch along the back of the horse to mount the riders properly - if they had been left to sit "beind" the original mane they would have ended up being pitched forward  quite notably as the saddle would have say partly on the horses buttocks, which are are higher than the middle of their backs. 

These are the inevitable LBMS transfers, sized very well for these specific figures. 

I did do a bit of blending in around the edges, although the one on the right of this photo does still seem to have been left with a visible line showing the edge of the transfer, which is a bit ofa PITA in this photo but will not be seen on-table 

I bought one pack of 3 armoured horsemen / officers and one of unarmoured cavalry, giving me the potential to field them as visibly different, perhaps as Elite & Ordinary, or as a Heavy Cavalry unit and a Medium Cavalry unit - the unarmoured chaps also get the less glamorous brown cloaks so I can tell from the back too! 

They don't come with spears, so these are slightly bendy (break proof!) plastic broom bristles.

 

Once I get the legions (and Gladiators) done these guys will be mooching about ineffectually at the back of the army in no time at all ! 

Crusader Minis Triarii

 Finally I'm starting to get to the proper "line of battle" troops of the Roman army I'm collecting and painting - and why not start at the back, with the Triarii?

These are Crusader Miniatures figures from North Star - I picked them as they are very similar in style and stature to the Foundry guys who make up most of the Legions. 

North Star also have arranged for LBMS to make transfers for these guys, which is of course fantastic 

As you may spot, on taking the photos of them I noticed that I'd gotten some basing material on the back of one of the chaps in red - I'll be fixing that before they hit the table ! 

I bought a Unit Deal from North Star, getting me 16 infantry and 4 officers/standards etc for £27. 

Rather cheaper than Foundry prices - although I did also get some officers from Foundry, and I'm not sure if these two in the middle are Foundry or Crusader figures. 

It's a very simple paint scheme, with black undercoat, drybrush gunmetal on the armour, and what is essentially a couple of layers of white slap-chop on the tunics. 

I edged the raised detail on the armour with white as well to give them a bit more definition and interest. 

The faces are white "second undercoat" on the black spray base, then Contrast Darkoath Flesh, and finally highlights with Vallejo Dark Flesh to create the faces and hands/arms etc. 

The second unit ended up with red tunics and these really nice yellow boar design shields. 

Cutting the transfers out wasn't as painful as I feared - maybe I am channelling memories of trying to do this with 15mm transfers, whereas the 28mm ones are much bigger and so easier to slice the shield boss holes out of them. 

Here they are from the side view.

There are 4 different heads on these figures, but only one real pose, so attaching the shields at different heights and angles really is vital to get some motion into the units. 

Dropping one front rank shield onto the ground is especially important I think as thats a very visibly different pose. 

And there they are, ready never to be called upon to fight if things go right with the rest of the Legions !

Making 28mm Victrix elephants multi-national

 As heralded last week, I used some magnets to allow the two Victrix elephants in their kit to be used with interchangeable crew and accoutrements (OK, shields clipped to the sides of the howdahs), giving me Successor, Numidian and Roman elephants, just not all at the same time..

This is the full set of clip-on shields and glued-together crew for the two elephants.

You can (just about) see how rare earth magnets have been glued in place between the feet of the guys, so they can connect to a small patch of steel paper that I have glued down inside the base of each howdah to hold the crew in place firmly enough for gaming use.

Here's the "Red & Green" elephant with Successor shields and crew attached - you can see this as a Numidian elephant in an earlier blog post.

I spent quite some time carefully doing the crew as they are the most visual and visible part of the model. 

The elephant is quite a nice model and looks realistically proportioned and animated.

I copied the "bit in the middle" of the pike from the style I did for my Victrix pikemen - but for this figure that bit was included in the casting (moulding?) whereas for the pikemen I had to add it with rolled up paper!

The shield is attached with 2 magnets, as is the spear case at the back. I glued the magnets on the outside of the howdah for the shields, and then realised that they were strong enough to magnetize to another magnet through the walls of the howdah, so the spear case only has 1 maget outside and one on the inside wall of the howdah.

The "blue" elephant with blue crew. 

The shield pattern was a transfer which I blended in with mixed paint to reach the rim of the shield. 

Alwys worth adding eyes to elephants IMO - make sure to add dark black eyebrows too though or it just looks weird. 

I snuck in a couple of 15mm shield transfers as a small bit of decoration on the blanket. 

Here are both elephants togther in Successor kit.

 

And the Blue elephant with a very non-historical "Roman" shield and Roman crew.

I had these LBMS transfers going spare from a much older project, and while I know they are nowhere near the right period for a Republican Roman elephant they do have the advantage of being very "Roman", and also using up some shields and transfers I would otherwise have no need for!

They are now ready to take the field ...once I paint up the 100 or so Foundry legionaries !

28mm Numidian elephant

Victrix sell a rather clever multi-use elephant kit, with 2 elephants and crew for Roman, Greek or Numidian armies all included. 

For my Numidian allied contingent (for the ADLG lists) I have pulled together a set of Numidian crew and some magnetize-on shields, all of which can be added to an elephant to make it "Numidian", with the magnets meaning its not committed to that role full time.

The kit comes with 6 "halves" allowing you to set the 2 elephants up with different alignments and arrangements of legs.

As these are to be used for multiple armies with different crew I went for a very simple plain cloth on the back of the elephant, and block colours on the howdah. 

LBMS do sell wraparound transfers for both, but that would have meant buying lots more identical elephants !

Rather irritatingly I had used up all of the dozen "animal skin" shield transfers in the LBMS/Victrix pack on the actual soldiery, so had to cobble together this rather not-quite-as-convincing hand painted set of skins for the two shields magnetized to the sides of the howdah.

Again the crew's javelins were replaced with plastic broom bristles, as these would certainly snap if you left the original Victrix ones in place and tried to actually use the elephant in gameplay. 

The mahout's hook is also rather brittle and has already been broken off, shortened and glued during painting - long before getting into combat