The Paphlagonians survive a varnish experience

Much to my relief, the ink-washed Xyston figures did come through a spray varnish this morning unscathed.

If anything it seems to have helped highlight the definition and texture of their silk-effect uniforms.

As you can see from the left shoulder of the chap in the front left corner of this base, there has still been some colour-bleed between the different inked colours, but whether it's something which is worth (or even possible) to touch up without making it look worse is questionable.

Now all I need to do is steel myself to grab a very fine brush and paint in their headbands...

15mm ADLG Arab army on eBay

Downsizing my oversized 15mm ancients collection means I have realised that I enough spares to sell on eBay a whole "Arab" army, using figures from various manufacturers to make up armies for many of the "Arab" forces in the L'Art de la Guerre rulebook. 

That means that on eBay right now is an army made up of the following ADLG-based units;

• 3 Generals

• 1 Elephant 

• 2 "Dailami" Medium Foot

• 6 Ghilman Bow-armed Cavalry 

• 4 LH with bow

• 2 LH with javelin/Impact

• 1 LH Javelin

• 2 LF Bow

• 4 HI Spearmen

• 4 "DBx" bases of Bow + 2 "DBx" bases of Swordsmen, plus metal sabots to base them as bow-only or as mixed units

• 3 Knights

• 2 Spearmen

• 1 Crossbow unit

• 1 LF Bowman

• Army Baggage Train 80x40 base

Allied "Christian" contingent of

The figures are mostly Essex, but also include Outpost (most of the Arab cavalry) and a few others. They are all based and magnabased.

The auction ends around 8pm on Sunday 20th UK time. 

WW2 15mm stuff - going on eBay

With my 4 Bisley 15 drawer filing cabinet (eBay link) figure storage solution rapidly approaching "full" status, rather than test the floorboards (and my domestic harmony) with a 5th cabinet it's become time to have a bit of a new year clearout.

The end result is that onto eBay rumbles a 15mm WW2 Russian army (well, probably more like a company with armour support) as well as some excess 15mm German armour.

The Russian figures - and there are nearly 200 of them - are mostly original Battlefront metal Russians - well fed little chaps with those cute big round heads. 

Originally collected and based for Peter Pig's PBI ruleset, there's also a host of casualty markers included.

The accompanying armoured support is eclectic and numerous - T34's, KV1's as well as some more exotic bits of machinery as well.

PBI bases its LMGs and AT rifles as separate teams, as well as officers for each platoon and company HQ.

The tanks are mostly (but not all) Rocco plastic ones in 1/87th scale. That makes them a smidge larger than normal 1/100th 15mm vehicles, which I feel fits better with the slightly oversized 15mm infantry that Battlefront make.

They are also better proportioned than many of Battlefront's supposedly 15mm-scale AFV's, which seem to be stretched vertically to scale with their infantry too.

And then, in a separate listing, the German armour.

Two Forged in Battle Tiger 1's, and a couple of (I think) Skytrex metal PzIV's both is late war cammo schemes.

(this is the one out of the FiB 3-pack that I'm keeping - the ones on sale are identical, but are numbered 201 and 213)

Both lots are on eBay now and will end next Sunday evening (20th) around 7pm. A %zge of all sale fees go to SSAFA, the armed forces charity. 

All the links in this post will take you to eBay to bid for them if you wish.

15mm Xyston Paphlagonians & Takabara

There's plenty of early classical era armies which have a handful of "Persian Takabara", "Paphlagonian", "Arachosian" or other "Generic Eastern-ish Minor Nation" Medium Infantry, armed either with javelins or spears.  These guys are never vital, but often "nice to have" - especially as Javelinmen in L'Art de la Guerre to give an army a nice little anti-elephant force.

In the same Attack! purchase from Damian at Donnington as the recently-finished Egyptian Marines now come some Xyston Takabara and Paphlagonian infantry to fill that particular gap.

These figures have Thracian-style shields which need to be glued onto the figures (using my standard 2-part epoxy liquid metal).

The shields were close enough in shape that I was able to dig out some unused LBMS Thracian transfers - sadly I only had 4 left, meaning I had to actually paint the other ones myself (nightmare!)

The uniforms are done almost entirely in inks - not even washes, proper Windsor and Newton ink (amazon affilate link) on a white base coat.

This is a technique I've used on Persians in the past, as it gives a distinctive "silks" effect. There are only a handful of colours in use, namely Blue, Vridian, Deep Red and Peat Brown (the latter being on the leather gilets some of the guys are wearing, which were painted either leather brown or Skeleton Bone as a base colour).

The end result is a pretty bright and cheery set of unit, and with shields which don't look too badly out of place even with a few LBMS ones in the front rank as well.

The challenge with using ink as a main colour is that it doesn't fully dry - painting anything next to an inked area leads to the ink bleeding into the new, liquid colour.

That also makes applying varnish by brush almost impossible too - hence these not (yet) being matt varnished, and also not (yet) having painted leather straps as headbands on some of the figures.

My aim is to use a spray varnish instead of trying to brush one on, but at the moment it's too cold outside to risk spraying them.  After that they will look more matt, and be easier to handle.