Teeny Tiny Pirates

I had sworn that I was done with rigging tiny ships, but being gifted a pair of 1/700th Warlord Games Black Seas Brigs by Andy (a covermount giveaway on one of the wargames mags a few years ago) unfortunately meant the glue, tweezers and swearing all made a quick reappearance as I conjured these two little ships up into a pair of Pirate brigs.

Other than the rather obvious "Pirates are COOL!" malarkey, flagging these with the Jolly Roger does open up trying a couple of the scenarios from the Black Seas rulebook - and with my French and British fleets now stretching up to 1st Raters, the 6 brigs I already have flagged as French and British are more than enough anyway.

 

Being covermounts these were missing the sails, which come pre-printed on thin card in an actual Warlord set. 

 

Luckily Warlord provide a downloadable set of sails for Brigs and Frigates to print out at home. 

Matching up the front and back on my printer proved rather more tricky than I hoped it would be, so in the end I just printed them on two sheets of paper and glued them together - which gave the sails more robustness anyway compared to a single sheet of paper.  

The other thing "missing" would be ratlines, which Warlord provide as black-printed acetate sheets. These ones feature the more expensive and sophisticated laser etched metal ones which I ended up buying from Ali Express in China as a bit of an experiment in seeing how long delivery would take - which was not that long at all.  

I think they do look good, but whether the extra faff is worth the squeeze I'm not sure - maybe next time I might buy some sails and ratlines from Warlord anyway for a few quid?  

On what are gaming pieces after all, I doubt anyone will notice the difference, and the Warlord acetate sheets are far easier to cut out and stick on than the super-fine laser-etched ones on these little guys. 

The Skoutatoi

If you'd been worried that I hadn't posted any pictures of Byzantines in 15mm for a couple of weeks, then worry no more, as here come the Skoutatoi for my Byantine army! 

FiB tend to chuck in a couple of extra figures into each "24" blister pack, to leave the officers and standard bearers as extras.  

I used the extras up by making a couple of bases with 5 spearmen in the front rank rather than the usual 4, with the theory that I can occasionally use these bases as "supported spearmen", or just call them even more Skoutatoi as needed, depending on the design of the army list.

Shields are of course LBMS transfers, sold to me by Forged in Battle. 

This padded armour is Warlord Games Blood Red from their Speedpaint set.

TheLBMS transfers are smaller than the shields by some margin, so these blue 'blokes face' ones I painted in with a dark blue (and also a mached red) up to the edges of the shields.

This armour is GW Aggaros Dunes contrast type paint. One of my favourite contrast colours. 

These rather odd looking shield transfers seem to be missing a bit  - possibly a cutout for a shield boss? 

Anyways, as they too didn't reach to the edge of the shield I painted in a red edge to each shield before sticking on the transfer (which already has a red edge...)

That also didn't really look right, so I then added an outer edge of yellow with an AK paint pen, which I am finding is much easier to use for touchup than a brush.

This armour is GW Militarum Green - a contrast type paint.

Viewed from above this close up you can see a load of casting lines that I perhaps should have spent more time shaving off .. but, "three foot rule" and all that I guess ?!

An extra shield transfer was cut down and used for the standard bearer. 

Some "Yuge" War Wagons !

 Having sold a few of the textbook Essex War Wagons in recent years, I've accidentally drifted back into owning more than I will ever probably use as a result of picking up some because they looked interesting, and more latterly being given some 3D prints as giveaways along with competition entry. 

Mixing metal ones from different manufacturers, 3D prints in resin and even an MDF one does however lead to some serious variations in scale, or perhaps more accurately, "size" between the different ranges - and that is very much reflected here! 

This one was a 3D print handed out to competitors at the Akra Leuka Tournament in Alicante in January 2025.  I've added some Essex & Mirliton crew who are sort of randoms, all picked out of the bits box. The wagon is enormous and I needed to sit the crew on 2 lolly sticks to give them the extra height to see out. 

This cute little box on wheels is the Fireforge MDF kit of a 15mm war wagon. The wheels are a bit "Fred Flintstone" and it comes without the oxen, again from the bits box (I think Mirlitons Carroccio wagon comes with 4 which was too many to fit on a base) so these have at least got some wagon-pulling experience in a previous life

The lid of the Fireforrge MDF kit does however lift off, and they supply this folded-out lid that becomes a pavise shield thingy too. Even so its a huge blocky wagon.

Here is the 3D print and the MDF kit side by side. 

And, for a contrast, the 3D printed wagon and a Museum wagon side by side. 

I guess I know which one I'd prefer to be defending!

From the other side the sheer scale of the folded-out roof on the 3D print is even more striking.

Here is the front-on view. No room for horses or oxen on an 80mm long base with the 3D print.

This is the Museum wagon. They are ridiculously good value, especially in the annual Museum sale when you can pick them up for under £4 each.

Having draft horses as well is a bonus - my bits box is only so deep after all!

This is the 3D print again - the flag is one I Googled looking for a Hussite Flag

The imposing wall of defence - ideally they will only attack from this side!

I haven't glued the crew in though, so if needed they can turn around as a block of 4 and fight over this side too.

All in all a real mix - I suppose there is no reason all "wagons" would be the same size (unlike say, people or horses) but if I do get these all on table at the same time I am sure some eyebrows will be raised nevertheless!

Museum Z-Range Gallowglass

 Earlier this year I dithered for a while before just sneaking into the end of the Museum Miniatures January sale to pick up some mail-clad, axe-waving figures to use as Galloglass / Galloghalich / Gallogalisghaghs / whatever, those post-Viking 2-handed axemen who feature in Irish and Scottish armies of the early Medieval period. 

I've been using Vikings for these guys when I've dropped an army on table, but it isn't quite right and with some decent looking figures in Museum's new Z range Saxons that looked like they would fit I decided to drop some cash and buy on in there with some packs of 15/ASX13 Dark Ages double handed axe plus a few more Saxon range figures for added variety (as the ASX13 only has 3 poses) 

I decided to go old-school with these and paint them up with a black undercoat and "normal" paints, partly just to make sure I could remember how to do it in this age of Contrasts and Washes! 

They start off on lolly sticks with a Halfords black undercoat, and the main colours you can see here are:

• Vallejo Ivory (the off-white)
• Warlord Fanatic White
• Warlord Army Green
• Warlord Abomination Gore (dark red) 
• Warlord Fanatic Gunmetal
• Warlord Fanatic Leather Brown
• Warlord Deep Blue

Given this is a fairly limited pallette I was quite pleased with the mix of coherence and variety this set of paints achieved.

The first really surprising thing about these figures was that they all have shields on their backs! 

Having looked again at the pictures of the renders on Museum's site, you can just about make out the shields, but I'd honestly not noticed them when I bought them, as all of the shots are taken from the front angle of the figures which very much hides the shields. 

This is a mixed blessing - being Galloglass I didn't really want them to have shields, but then again my opponent won't really see them anyway ... and I will get to see my own handiwork in painting them, which is a rare bonus too! 

From the front..

Quite different from the front and the back! 

And here are the "lightbox" photos of the finished set.

Overall I'm really pleased with them. Unlike some recent Museum purchases the casting on these really does stand up to scrutiny and matches the quality and detail of the 3D renders on the site - even if my own painting can't meet that same standard!

One final note of weirdness was that I had left out some figures from this batch, as they mostly had very distinctive "Saxon" helmets, and were mostly spear-armed. 

I undercoated these leftovers in white to see what they would have looked like done in Contrasts, and that's when I noticed that some of the figures seemed to be a very different scale to the rest - notably the little trumpeter in the same pack (15/ASX91 Anglo Saxon Med Command) as a much larger axeman and spearman 

You can see the trumpeter, and the three guys to the left of him in this photo all from the same pack and range  - all of the spearmen here are much bigger than the childlike trumpeter. 

I used another trumpeter figure in with the main set of figures and he doesn't look out of place or scale at all, so I'm not quiet sure why these spearmen are so huge when figures in the same range (and pack!) are much larger?

Who knows.. ! 

 

Video Reports from Beachhead 2025

 This year's event at Beachhead 2025 L'Art de la Guerre 28mm competition allowed me to wheel out yet another Successor/Macedonian army from the collection, as this time my generic 28mm mostly-Victrix guys would be appearing as the Lysimachid Successors.

The event was a 5-game themed event in which everyone had to use at least 2 of Elephants, Camels or War Wagons - hence this rather odd AI-generated image of camels, elephants and a Victorian Bathing Machine seemingly converted into a War Wagon, posed by an English seaside resort pier!

Anyways, my choice was to take 2 Elephants, with some newly minted Victrix plastic kit elephants raring to get on table and a lack of either war wagons or camels in my 28mm collection also contributing significantly to my decision-making process.

I also wanted to use all 6 units of these 28mm Victrix Successor Pikemen figures I had gone through the effort and pain of assembling, and then painting - having only managed to field armies with 4 Pikemen units up until now. 

Add in a vague plan to use all of the different Successor armies at some point in time and I ended up with the Early Successor Lysimachid list from the Battle of Ipsos.

After surviving the trip down to Bournemouth, and also a night in a rather cheaper-than-we-had-hoped hotel, Beachhead 2025 played host to the Lysimachid Successors in 5 different battles against the Carthaginians (elephants), Italian Communes (war wagons), Phyrrus of Epirus (elephants), the Classical Indians (take a wild stab in the dark why don't you?) and the Hussites of Jan Zizka (war wagons again, of course)!

The full set of 5 YouTube Video Battle reports from this fiesta of 28mm action, plus an accompanying episode of the Madaxeman Podcast are now all posted online for you to watch and listen to in various formats:

• On YouTube as a "playlist" to watch all videos in sequence
• On Madaxeman.com, with all of the videos embedded in a single page

Enjoy reliving early February at the English seaside !

Forged in Battle Byzantine Infantry Skirmishers

 Now you're probably sick of seeing horses for my Byzantines, here are some pedestians! 

Yes, the Byzantine armies can often have a handful of foot slingers, archers, and javelinmen - including, in ADLG terms, some actual proper Medium Foot javelineers, and fortunately FiB do a pack of mixed javelins and slings to make up these chaps. 

The pack in question is WE-BE08 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Psiloi (Slingers (12) & Javelins (12), which has rather more slingers than is needed in ADLG, but fewer javelinmen. 

My solution was to base up a mix of Light Infantry with slings and javelins, and then to make up 3 bases of Medium Javelineers using 3 javelin figures and two slingers lurking behind them.

I've painted them in three distinct schemes, which I suspect will help as it seems likely that a slinger and a javelin light foot will be found in each of the three commands in my arm - when it gets on table eventually. 

I also didn't go with shield designs on these, partly as they are lower class troops so may not have invested as much time and effort in shield designs, but mainly as the shields ate pretty small, so it would have been too hard to do a decent design on them!