Museum Z-Sculpt Persian Immortals in Campaign Dress

 I already have a bucketload of Persians from Museum, but I had been lacking any in Ceremonial dress - so the January Sale in early 2026 was my opportunity, and my excuse was to use them to build the solitary unit of Apple Bearers for the Later Achaemenid army.

And here they are, looking suitably stylish.  This is the pack of Foot Command (2 standard bearers, 2 axemen, 2 trumpeters) all squeezed on a 40x30 base together with 4 rear-rank archers shooting overhead.

They are painted in GW Gryph-Hound Orange with Army Painter Fanatic DaemonicYellow + Royal Blue spots applied on top. 

For the standards, I just painted them in Fanatic Gold, and then gave them a wash with Dark Tone to take the edge off a little. 

Here they are with the Xyston Takabara - not too dissimilar in stature, but best they are not on the same base maybe.

As seems to be the case with many (but not all) of the Museum Z Sculpt figures, the detail on these castings was a little short of what the 3D renders on their website promise, most notably around the belts, straps, scabbards and bowcases. 

This did make them a bit harder to paint with Contrasts than they really should be - in stark contrast to the Xyston figures, where you can practically see where the sculptor has cut out and stuck on thin strips of Green Stuff to make the belts on the figures - but even so I am very pleased with how they all came out. 

There are more pics in the 15mm Gallery on my site.

 

Xyston Takabara

 Earlier this summer I accidentally ordered some Persian Takabara infantry from Xyston, as part of a valiant effort to get value for money out of the postage costs of buying one piece of 15mm artillery from them (which you may have already seen ...).

This first photo shows their backs, as that is where most of the arty stuff is visible, as I did them with a base coat of GW Contrast, and then added double-spots with Army Painter fanatic colours - which didn't run into the Contrasts, much to my relief.

These are great little figures, and even better with LBMS transfers on their shields - although with 4 different sizes and shapes of shields and transfers, each of which is only slightly different, matching them up is a little tricky! 

Because the transfers might not always go on the right shields, its really important with these I found to blend in the edges of the transfers with paint - which I have done with all of the ones here. 

It proved a perfect excuse to get my Wet Pallette out again to do the blending, and a good self-justification for buying some of the ArmyPainter 6-part "triads" as well to blend an exact match for the LBMS transfers too. 

These guys are especially good IMO, with a base of Mantis Warrior Green with Pure Red and Daemonic Yellow dots. 

You may notice that a couple of the archers here are wearing Early Persian ceremonial dress - and are in fact Museum Z-sculpt figures, as it turned out I needed 12 archers to give each base 2 "support" shooters as well as the 4 spear/axe/sword armed troopers.

Anyways, I am really pleased with how they came out - there are some more photos of them in the Photo Gallery on this site. 

Ostrogoths in Milton Keynes : Battle Reports from Campaign 2026

 This year I returned to Campaign for the first time in a while, as part of one of the CLWC teams of three players in the traditionally tightly themed event. The pool I was in was themed for the Wars of Atilla, with Huns, Patrician Romans, Gepids, Arabs and Ostrogoths as the only options.

Having already used Patricians, and Huns, and Gepids, and deciding that the Arab army in this time period was a bit rubbish, the Ostrogoths ended up being the default choice - rather irritatingly as I had recently sold my Sarmatian/Gothic cavalry on eBay prior to replacing them with some as-yet unpainted FiB figures!

That meant my Ostrogoths did look a tad Gallo-German, but they were close enough so that's how they rolled into Milton Keynes ready for battle.

All 5 battle reports are now published in video format. To try and be a bit different I took a lot of the photos from a "helicopter view", trying to take a shot after each player's turn. 

The general idea was to show more of the broad brush strategy of how the battles developed, but of course with a lot of Impetuous Cavalry Lancers on each side the amount of tactican finesse on display was often somewhat limited in practice!

Anyways, the reports are now posted on this website on a single page where you can view them in sequence, or in a YouTube playlist.