28mm Velites

 I've got a Foundry early Roman army in the lead pile at the moment, but in the interests of getting rid of some left over sprues of the mostly-Victrix Hellenistics I decided to repurpose some of the Victrix skirmishers as Velites - as after all, it's just some dudes with a javelin in a skirt, right? 

And here they are - the vanguard of a 28mm Roman army! 

I have a suspicion these shields are from some Dark Age viking types that have languished in the plastic bits box for a while. They may stay transfer-free as well.

The white tuunics are a base coat of white, then Warlord Holy White, then normal paint white  highlights 

I picked a variety of heads, some bear headed, some with generic Hellenistic/Roman heads

With a few more bases of Light Infantry I already have, this should be enough of a screen for the  armoured Legions of Rome!

Bring & Buy .. & Rebase and refurb!

At the recent Attack! show in Devizes I sort of accidentally managed to buy a 15mm Feudal/Medieval Russian army scaled for L'Art de la Guerre.

It was a bring and buy purchase, and I thought it looked close enough to my own painting style to be compatible with my other Eastern European armies, and also that it looked like it was great value - something I immediately rushed off to tell Jason, who I'd travelled to the show with.. only to find that it was one he'd put on the Bring & Buy himself! 

So, with a transaction which could have taken place in the boot of my car managing also to financially support the DDWG club fund, I now owned a Medieval/Feudal Russian army from Essex minis that only needed a bit of rebasing, a few dabs of paint and the addition of some paper banners to become quite an impressive complement to my existing  Hungarians.

And here they are:

Commanders on 40mm round bases

Heavy Cavalry 

Spearmen

"Guard" cavalry - the elite of the army

Follower cavalry - less well armoured than the others

Light Horse javelins or lancers - these will also appear as Serbian Hussars in other armies I think? 

Steppe horse archers

Russian army infantry bowmen

Axemen (foresters)

The cheering peasants who follow the army

Lesser armoured Medium cavalry.

The flags mostly come from Martins Vexillia site plus some from Alex Flags site

I'm dead chuffed with them, however you’d perhaps be surprised at how little I’ve done to them. 

The main visual differences are adding a few flags, and repainting the spears and bows in a much paler) Vallejo Ochre Brown 70.865, then adding a little black line to delineate the metal and wooden parts of the spears, plus the rebasing.

For some reason (that I don’t quite understand), making the spears and bows really stand out with a pale colour makes a big difference - the spears stand out against what are generally darker figures, and the effect of making them "ping" that results is wildly disproportionate to the fairly limited effort involved.

I've already gone back and done this to a good few of my own armies that originally had dark or dull brown “wood” colours for spears and in every case the visual impact is far more than it feels like it should be.

 

Oh My God! It's a POD!

 After an unfeasible hiatus a new edition of the Madaxeman Podcast has just dropped ! 

In this new episode titled "Melksham? Don't mind if I do!" a part new, part old crew head down to the West Country for a bit of Hard Rock, a lot of beer, pubs and food, and (eventually) some rather eclectic analysis of a variety of unsuccesful army lists used by us all at the recent ADLG competitions held at the Attack! show in Devizes.

The cast are me Dave from The Podcast, Another Dave (technically "the Dave formerly known as Pants"), Jason and Steve, and all of us can now take you on an audio journey way down Melksham Way. 

• The lists we discuss are available on the ADLG Wiki
• The ADLG Army list content starts about 22.45 into the audio version, or a smidge later on the special YouTube "Talking Heads" edition, so if you aren't interested in pubs and the Avebury Stone Circle (really?) you can either start, or stop listening around then as you choose.

Listen on Podbean:

View on YouTube: