Yummy-yads in Spain - Food, Castles and ADLG!

The Umayyad Caliphate in a few short years managed to build a mighty empire stretching from Asia to the shores of the Atlantic ... but now they faced their greatest mission, The Conquest of Spain (reached via Bilbao airport, travelling in a small metal tin).

Yes, after somewhat of a hiatus here are 5 match reports of yet another fairly randomly selected ADLG army fighting at a competition held in Northern Spain at Estella.

In these reports the Umayyads take on the Armenians, Alexandrian Macedonians, Maurikian Byzantines, Arab Indians and finally the Medieval Polish, whilst Team Central London take on a variety of three course meal options, tapas plates, obscure Basque spirits and rather nice Rioja, all of which get featured heavily in the writeups.

Finally, in a totally new departure, Siege Warfare comes to Madaxeman.com as the intrepid CLWC crack castle-wall-storming brigade meanders through the hinterland of Castile visiting an array of Moslem, Visigothic and Reconquista fortresses, all of which are photographed and presented for your delight and delectation.

Be extra careful if you are squeamish about roast pork products, otherwise just be careful of the poor quality jokes and captions and the sub-standard gameplay (as usual).

Norman / Spanish Mini-Me!

Having recently done some 28mm Norman/Spanish/Crusader spearmen, and seeing that their colour scheme seemed to work, I decided to retro-fit some 15mm mostly 2 Dragons infantry with the same heraldry.

These guys may well get used in an army soon, as some of the castles around Spain the CLWC team saw on our way back from Estella were pretty inspiring in terms of making me want to field a Spanish El Cid era army.

More of these photos in the upcoming Estella Reports!

Egypt Arise! (well, "rebase" actually..)

After a rather salutary outing with the Myceneans last weekend, and rather than focusing on painting new stuff I took it upon myself this week to rebase a 15mm New Kingdom Egyptian army that I've not used all that much in recent years.

The rebasing now puts them onto ADLG 40x40 bases in the main, using MDF from Warbases. Most of the figures are Gladiator Miniatures, a range which has just been bought by Ian from Fighting 15's  with a few Essex and even Irregular Miniatures thrown in for added variety.

The basing is done with sand, glue, Rustins Wood Stain and some drybrushing - the technique is show in this YouTube video I made a few years ago with the same technique for Saga miniatures.

They may not fight any better, but at least they are now consistently based to match my other "Biblical" armies like the Myceneans

28mm Norman-era spearmen & knights

I picked up some great value Saga Norman/Crusader figures at a Bring and Buy a while ago, and have been working out ways of using them also for L'Art de la Guerre.

For the Knights the answer has been to buy a few more mounted figures, based them up on 60x60's to create some extra bases, each with a single figure and two metal-shod strips either side of them. The Saga-based knights can then magnetize onto theses bases, meaning that I get a 3-knight base for the "cost" of just one extra figure.

I'm not planning on using a full Norman army in ADLG (just yet...) but these guys will be a nice Christian Spanish allied contingent for the 28mm Arabs I'm planning on painting sometime next year.

That allied contingent will probably need a couple of bases of Crusader / Spanish spearmen units, so I did pick up 2 packs of Crusader Miniatures Normans who painted up very easily and quickly.

The men are all undercoated in black then quickly painted in a simple uniform colour, which barely shows as there is chainmail covering most of them anyway. The shields are intended to look "Spanish".

These are the Saga spearmen I picked up in the Bring & Buy - their basing is just too big to work using sabots to turn them into close-formation ADLG spears, hence the need for extra figures, but the shield patterns gave me a good key for the rest of the men I painted up to match them.

Some nice and simple figures, and a quick paint job making a ready made allied contingent.