South America Inbound

 Having been a great fan of the Fighting 15's / former Black Hat ranges for ages, I have had a South American army on the to-buy list for a long time - and with the closure of Fighting 15's, and hence the potential loss of these excellent ranges (unless Ian sells them on) I decided now was the moment to invest in a new 15mm army.

Given some of my clubmates already have Aztecs and others, the one that looked a little left-out at CLWC were the Tlaxcallans - and the ADLG list has some interesting options for the list, even without the Cortez alliance so Texcallan / Tlaxcallan it was.

I've actually bought a shed-load of them, giving me all options (and probably more). but as has been my habit of late I've started with just a handful to try and get a feel for how they will paint. 

 I've ended up with a bit of a mix in real paints and Contrasts, starting with Contrast Darkoath Flesh for the flesh parts giving them a darker skin tone than the usual "Flesh" on my European figures.

These all have white loincloths, and a palette of bold intense, real paint colouurs in reds, greens and yellows (plus the odd blue).

The "armour" is a speedpaint though, the ever-reliable Aggaros Dunes, with a drybruch to pick out he texture even more.

The feathers were basecoated yellow, and they I gave them a "wash" of Contrast Yanden Yellow to give them more texture than the rest of the "clothed" parts of the figures. 

For basing I have opted to only use grass tufts and foliage on my usual Rustons Woodstain'ed Builders sand + drybrush basing, as they won't appear alongside any other of my troops (who all have static grass) - aside from a handful of European Spanish of course.

The aim overall was to make them colourful, but with a predominance of red as this was apprently a Tlaxcallan colour. I may go harder on this approach with the basic warriors I think.

This lot are now intended to be Otomi mercenaries/allies, which may or may not be correct as now Fighting 15's have essentially closed their website its gotten rather hard to identify the castings and match them to what they are supposed to be.

Anyway, pretty much all of these guys have obsidian-edged 2 handed weapons, so they will work as a coherent and discrete set of figures compared to the rest. 

Very pleased how they have come out, and this test batch has made me look forward to - rather than dread - painting up the rest of the army.

Great Big War Wagons

 Having posted some pictires of some rather large 15mm War Wagons earlier this year, now is the time for something genuinely massive - a 28mm War Wagon. 

The orgins of this beastie lies in the game I played against Mark Fry at Beachhead earlier this year, in which he mentioned that he's accidentally acquired far, far too many pro-painted 28mm war wagons and was now looking to offload some. 

A few quid via PayPal later and I was the proud owner of two handily generic wagons, painted far better than I could ever hope to do myself - all they really needed now was some crew!

The solution to that was a couple of sprues of Perry Medieval Mercenaries from a box shared between me and Dave from the Podcast in my ongoing efforts to tempt him into painting 25mm. 

This was enough for two wagons, and these are the first lot of crew, stuck to a couple of sawn-off lollipop sticks to give a genuine wood effect ont the cab floor (yeah sure..).

And here they are in the first wagon:

 Matching the style of the wagon meant eschewing Contrasts for these guys, and it has shown me that perhaps I need to invest in some proper "triads" of paints going forward as the different reds and yellows I own don't seem to have too much difference once they are layered onto the crews' clothing. 

The next wagon is kinda green, so to match that I am definately going to by some new paints as all my own greens are either rather WW2, or are super-bright for painting Chinese and Eastern/Asiatic ancient troops. 

But, for now, I'm pretty happy with how well my guys match the pro-painted wagon. 

Almughavars!

 As the UK has been recently basking in weather more suited to the beaches of Barcelona, it seems a good time to share some "test painted" Catalan Almughavars from the Lurkio range, now being produced by Gripping Beast.

I'd always had a vague idea of getting myself a Catalan army at some point, mainly as it's a fairly unique army with the unique troop type of Almughavar. 

However the large number of Almughavars needed (of course...) don't really morph into anything else, so it had stayed on the back burner for ages - until a Lurkio "almost closing down sale" a while back tempted me  to grab a bargain with 3 sets of 24 Almughavars at a discount price giving me all I could ever need and more. 

And these are the jolly little chaps - rather "hobbity" if I may say, but not without their own charm and looking somewhat similar in style to some of the Baueda ranges too (so maybe the same sculptor?).

A I wasn't entirely taken with the sculpts, rather than paint all 72 in one go I decided to just do 24 of the more static-posed ones, and to experiment with a mostly contrast paints style to see if I could bang them out quickly and be done with them.  

As most of my other Medievals are traditionally painted with black undercoat, I wasn't sure if doing these in Contrasts would work well together with some of my existing Knights and other morphed troops who make up the rest of the Catalan army.

Having tidied them up, matt varnished them and added basing they look OK - this lot are a bit hard to judge in some ways as these are all the static poses, so there isn't much dynamism.

  

From the back you can see the quite nice way the Hardened Leather Speedpaint has worked for the belts to pick them out and do a bit of almost blacklining for me. 

I ended up overpainting some of the contrasts with "highlights" of normal paints too in the end to try and beef up the otherwise rather washed out colours. 

There are people out there who swear blind that Almughavars shouldn't have shields, but there are just too many of these guys with shields to leave the shielded ones out. 

Painting them was a bit of a dilemma too, as the shields are too tiny for me to even attempt any sort of heraldic pattern, so I just went for some simple "Catalan" stripes in the end. 

I'm pleased with how they have come out in the end, as I didn't have high hopes for these guys after seeing the castings - buyers remorse for not just spending the extra dosh to buy the far better Eureka ones I think - but they are decent enough given the price point they were at in the "closing down" sale. 

At full price from Gripping Beast these guys are now about 68p a figure, with the Eureka ones not much more at 75p each, making it a bit of a no brainer to go Eureka IMO

Either way, at 67p or 75p, I doubt I'd have ever bought an army's worth of Almughavars, so these hobbity chaps are as good as it's ever going to get for an army I may only use a handful of times!

Spain's Archeology Museum in Madrid - the Military Stuff

I've just posted a YouTube video of the photos I took earlier this year at the Madrid Archeology Museum . 

Unsurprisingly they focus on objects and displays with a vaguely military theme, including Classical & Roman era Iberian armour, weapons and grave goods, Greek artworks, and Successor coinage featuring some of those famous generals you've certainly heard of before.

There's also a medieval Persian helmet, a bit of European medieval wall-art, Visigothic weapons and other stuff, Ptolemaic Egyptian funery gear and a host of other mostly "ancient history" bits and pieces too. 

Accompanying it all is my often staggeringly uneducated and ill-informed commentary, but don't let that put you off, as if it does, just turn the sound down as I also took photos of most of the caption boards that accompany each display as well!

The video is available now https://youtu.be/L1kkzKt1Gl4?si=b9Z5fBBwoQEVOcvF

The Khurasanians go to Spain !

 In these 6 all new, all singing and flamenco-dancing battle reports you can thrill, gasp, gag and feel mildy queasy all at the same time as you read the epic tale of how a 15mm Khurasanian army fared as it took to the stage at an international ADLG event held in sunny Spain back in April of this year.

As usual there are plenty of nonsensical historical "facts" (ahem) about the armies in play, a smattering of vaguely related videos, and loads of pictures of 15mm toy soldiers verbally harassing both me, and one another.

This time however the Khursanian army is commanded by none other than Frank Zappa alter-ego Sheikh Yabouti, leading to some rather hippie-esque post match analysis, including almost enough 1970's references to make up for the near-total lack of self-reflection and self-awareness of his own role in his many downfalls. 

Nasty Medieval Hannibal also has his say as a counterpoint to the Sheikh's nonsense - and as usual he lands far more punches than he pulls. 

In a brand new, international-reader-friendly initiative I have (OK, AI has..) managed to translate all 6 of the reports into the languages of my opponents (3 into Spanish, 1 into German, 1 into Portuguese and 1 into....Australian!) 

So, pop a shrimp on the barbie, pull up a chair, slice yourself a chorizo, break open the Hob-nobs and pop a tinned sardine on top as you prepare to read through all 6 (or 7, if you also read the Australian one) Madaxeman battle reports! 

• Game 1 Khurasanian vs Ghaznavid    (also in Spanish)
• Game 2 Khurasanian vs Ottoman Empire     (also in German)
• Game 3 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire    (also in Portuguese)
• Game 4 Khurasanian vs Wars of the Roses   (also in Spanish)
• Game 5 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire   (also in Spanish)
• Game 6 Khurasanian vs French Ordonnance  (and also in Australian)

(Over the next few days and weeks I will also be publishing some Spanish Military Tourism videos, using photos taken during our trip to Madrid and the surrounding towns, so look out for that as well) 

More 3D printed Numidians

 I've finally finished off the 3D printed, 3D Breed-designed Numidians I started back in April, and what a jolly nice - but jolly brittle - bunch of fellows they are too.

I've based some up as "Cavalry" at 3 figures to a base, and some as "Light Horse" at 2 to a base 

They are great looking figures, but OMG these particular prints are really brittle.

So far I think I've completely broken 7 of the horses off their bases (ie legs snapped, superglue comes out..) simply in the process of painting and photographing them, and I've lost count of the number of spears that have pinged off, usually into god knows where.

The saving grace is that they do glue back together again very easily, but with this second batch I've deliberately attempted to position all of the figures such that they can be superglued to an adjacent model at some point, in the hope that it makes them a bit more robust.

Part of the problem is no doubt that they are so light, which means it's super easy to knock them off the table, or see them slide off a tray when you are carrying them around. 

I've also used far less magnabase on each base compared to metal figures, as otherwise I feared that I'd break them almost every time I tried to lift them out of the tin.

I suspect there are better, more flexible and robust resins out there that would make these a bit more survivable - and in future this will get even better as materials technology improves as well.  

I also saw that the eBay seller I picked these up from no longer has any items listed for sale, after what looks like a lot of negative feedback for late deliveries in recent months too. 

My guess is that suspect he's found the whole "setting up a 3D printing business" a little harder than expected, and has thrown in the towel - somthing I can imagine will happen with a number of other sellers on eBay and Etsy going forward.  Perhaps this brittle resin lead to a higher volume of returns than expected, and that also contributed to him stopping too - who knows? 

But, despite the missing javelin-ends, and bits nipped out of some of the horses legs, all in all they are still nicer looking figures than any metal 15mm Numidan range I've yet found. 

Whether I am confident enough in them to pack them up and take them to a competition though is something that needs much more careful thought! 

 

Trajan's Column

On a recent trip to Rome I kinda stumbled across Trajan’s Column - rather hard to do I know given it's sort of a big stone column in the middle of Rome, but there is a lot of construction work around there at the moment due to the new Metro line, and to be honest I'd rather forgotten it was there as there is just so much other stuff to see in Rome! 

Anyways, I took the opportunity to take some photos and videos of it to share, as for wargamers and modelers, Trajan’s Column is an near-legendary goldmine of first-hand information. 

The carvings provide rare, direct insight into Roman legionary gear—such as segmentata armor, scutum shields, pila, and helmets with varying crest styles. 

They also depict auxiliary troops in distinct dress and cavalry in motion, giving hints to tactical formations and battlefield logistics. 

Importantly, the Dacians themselves are richly portrayed, often wielding the distinctive falx—a curved, two-handed weapon—and wearing flowing garments and Phrygian-style caps, setting them apart visually and culturally from their Roman foes.

Erected in 113 AD in Rome, the Column is a monumental celebration of Emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. 

The 30-meter-high stone column has over 150 scenes depicting Roman legions in action: constructing camps, crossing rivers, engaging in battle, and interacting with both allies and enemies. These finely detailed reliefs offer one of the most comprehensive, near-contemporary depictions of the Roman military in the early 2nd century AD.

While some artistic license may be present, especially in the repetition of certain motifs, the overall fidelity and variety of military details make the column an essential reference for reconstructing units and skirmishes on the tabletop. 

Whether you're painting an army or designing scenarios based on the Dacian campaigns, a closer look at Trajan’s Column may well be useful - so hopefully these pictures (which you can click on the blog to see full size) and videos will be of interest and use.

I could have taken more, but at some point I had to get back to my actual holiday... so enjoy!