The Sassanids are Coming!

For what might well be the first time in almost a decade I've just ordered myself a whole "new" 15mm Ancients army - Sassanid Persian - for ADLG.

To be honest I thought for a short while about just getting some Levy Spearmen, as I have plenty of "Arab" cavalry who could do service as Clibanarii at a pinch, as well as generic Light Horse and Light Infantry, and even some elephants who could be re-crewed easily enough... but a combination of really, really wanting some figures in those a-historical lightbulb hats, and the fact you can cook up an ADLG army in far fewer figures than it takes for FoG made me decide that now was the time to add one of the few truly distinctive armies to the collection. Having said that, I'll be recycling my Greek/Makedonian Cataphracts, or possible the Tibetans ones and also some of the other LF with javelins from other armies. Why go too crazy...?

The shopping list I was working to was based on being able to copy the lists currently in the ADLG Wiki (plus a bit more), which came out as about 8 bases of Clibanarii, 3 Elephants, 4 bases of Levy (going with 7 figures to a base so they can be 2 ranks of spears or 1 of Mob),  a couple of bases each of LH with Bows and Javelins and 3 Generals. So, a whole new army in about 20 bases!

After a bit of searching I have decided to go with 3 main manufacturers:

• Legio Heroica for most of the Clibanarii, Generals, and some LH and LF
• Irregular Miniatures for the Levy, the LH with Javelins and some different Generals
• Donnington, for the Elephants

I did also toy with the idea of Lurkio and Eureka as well but that would have involved splitting the order into too many small chunks - and also there is a finite amount I'm prepared to pay for Levy Spearmen figures, which Eureka, nice as they are, somewhat exceeded!

The orders are now all in, and hopefully the figures will be back and ready for priming in early October (after Derby when I pick up the Elephants from Donnington).

Painting progress will be reported here...

The War Memorial of Korea Museum

I was recently fortunate enough to go to the very impressive Korean War Memorial Museum in Seoul, which has an unsurprisingly large amount of Korean War and post-war Korean stuff in it, as well as some pretty solid ancient history, with uniforms, artifacts, armour and some impressive paintings of the Goguryeo and Joseon eras.

These are the nearly 100 pictures I managed to take before my phone ran out of juice, starting in the grounds with Korean War and post war aircraft and AFVs, then moving inside to the uniforms and kit from the Goguryeo Korean and Joseon Korean Dynasties era.

Some of the Ancient photos can be clicked to give you a marginally bigger but higher resolution original image.

Here's just a taste of whats in store...

A West Country Monster! 25mm ADLG from Devizes

With the purchase and painting of far too many Perry 25/8mm medieval figures having been successfully concluded in less than a year - racing ahead of many other odds and sods on my painting table in the process - the time came to let the rabbit see the carrot and head down to the glorious West of England to take part in a hastily arranged but still over-subscribed 25mm ADLG competition at Devizes Attack! 2016.

The Perry figures were duly packed into the box and the car, and soon the 6x4 table was graced with the first ever Madaxeman.com 25mm ADLG competition army - an "all the toys" Condottieri affair.

The results were a visual feast as the 60mm x 60mm multiple-rank basing format (or 60mm x 40mm for some stuff) of L'Art de la Guerre appeared to work really well in giving a sensible balance between having enough moving pieces on table (around 20-odd), with enough figure density (2-4 ranks for everyone) but still leaving space for a degree of maneuver which prevented the games descending into the sort of head-on table-edge-to-table-edge slow motion crash that has bedevilled unit-based 25mm games in the past.

Glory at the eye candy, be mildly entertained by the usual crap captions and inane post-match analysis, and educate yourself with a host of rules hints, tips and explanations for the Most Popular Ancients Competition Ruleset In the World Right Now.... in full-on plastico-vision Big Toys widescreen !!