Alan Cavalry

 The FiB Steppe Warrior fest continues with these Alan cavalry, who have shields and short(er) spears.

I believe they are Alan Cavalry, reference number WE-SA05 in the FiB Catalogue.  

There are no shield transfers for this lot, so I had to do some old-school "painting of designs" - which is also what happened with many of the Byzantine cavalry I painted last year. 

The patterns are mostly based on Alan symbols - it's not just random you know! 

They've ended up as being quite jolly - originally I was considering just plain shields, but the combination of the high opacity of the newer Fanatic paints and a new brush seems to have allowed me to do some reasonably simple symbols and make them look better by adding lines and circles of dots around and across the shields - so they may get more game time than I was originally thinking!  

The Byzantines Sing the Theme Tune in Kegworth!

 Last week (yoiks!) the now-annual Kegworth Codgers Midweek Challenge ADLG event took place in the now-legendary wargaming venue of Kegworth, with almost 40 players convening on a fine Tuesday morning to partake in 2 days of ADLG, one evening of team curry, and either 1 or 2 nights of real ale at a local hostelry. 

Having set the theme myself, it surprisingly turned out to be one which could acommodate some of the 15mm Byzantine figures I've been painting over the last year - this time as part of a Thematic army in the year 874 AD. 

As things turned out, one player's adverse reaction to the curry (or the beer..?) meant we ended up on odd numbers for day 2 of the event, and so I picked up the bye and played just the three games on Tuesday - but that did mean I was able to get these three, rather unsubtle battle reports out and into the wild in record time.

So, as usual, goggle at the poor military skills on display, boggle at the utterances of the poor troops forced to undertake my poorly thought out orders, and listen in slack-jawed amazement and horror at a Cockney Pub Knees-Up style song about the introduction of the Thematic System into the Byzantine military as the ever-chirpy Byzantine Commander not only writes the army's Theme Tune, he sings it as well !!

There is also the usual post-match analysis from Hannibal, and some glowing reviews of Mark "G." Fry's double-handed tomes covering the Medieval Khmer military machine. 

All three reports are now posted on Madaxeman

 

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. 

Red Copper Camels Part 3 - How big are they again..?

 The Red Copper 3D printed camels were printed out for me by "In the Navy" Harry at "100%" in the "15mm" scale format they are supplied in - but they do look a tad on the large side, and he has also done some at 90% for me too which are still on the painting table. 

I've therefore taken a few shots of them stood next to other 15mm camels I own so you can see whether they look "too big" or not. 

In all of these shots there is a caveat that the Red Copper ones are based on MDF + magnabase + a steel  base, which I did to give them extra heft and weight. 

The other camels will be on either MDF + magnabase, or sometimes even cardboard + magnabase, so will be a smidge lower due to having thinner bases. 

Forged in Battle Camelphracts + Red Copper Camelry @ 100% of the 15mm print size

Red Copper and the (venerable) Essex Successor baggage guarding camelry.

This is quite a difference - in height, but also stylistically too.

Red Copper and the newish Museum Baggage Guard camels from their Z range. 

Height wise the difference is not too much, but the width and overall style of the figures is very different - but viewed from a tabletop commander's standpoint, perhaps not so obvious really.

 

Byzantine Cavalry - the never ending army!

 I now seem to be almost there with collecting countless legions of Byzantine Cavalry to allow me to make up almost all of the Byzantine lists in ADLG - this time it's some "kite shielded" very late ones which I think of as being Nikephorian types, but which Forged in Battle seem to have decided are Thematics. 

The product code on their website for these chaps is a bit of a mix of WE-BT03 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Kavallarioi EHC bow which provides the archers and horses, and some lance-armed riders from the pack of WE-BT02 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Kavallarioi EHC (which look to be exactly the same riders as those in WE-BT04).

Mixing the two packs gives me cavalry units with both bows and lances, which matches their capabilities in the ADLG army lists.  

 Kite shields began appearing in Byzantine art and military texts around the mid-10th to mid-12th centuries, placing them very much in the Nikephorian period, and its those which give these chaps their distinctive look.

These are again using the LBMS shield transfers from Forged in Battle, which have also appeared on some of the Skoutatoi I painted up some time ago. 

Everything here is done with a white base coat, using GW Contrast paints for the brown and black horses, and Army Painter Speedpaint Holy White for the greys as well as a "2nd undercoat" for the one white horse too. 

I may use these as "medium" cavalry, and so I used Army Painter Hardened Leather Speedpaint on the shoulder and body armour that looks like it could be designed to be leather, although there is still quite  a lot of gunmetal - in this case Enchanted Steel Army Painter Speedpaint, which I am becoming a bit of a convert to as it doesn't need a base coat of black to work (unlike my more traditional drybrushed gunmetal approach).

The cavalrymen have base-specific colours on their tunics - this allows me in theory to mix them up across different commands and tell them apart, without being too intrusive or jarring. 

I am still somewhat puzzled by this shield transfer - it looks like it's missing a shield boss or something, but it is a specific transfer for this range and the shields don't have bosses, so perhaps its just a design that I don't quite understand!

The Army Painter Speedpaint Hardened Leather really pings when seen from the back - I also used it for the horses straps and reins, as it self-blacklines really effectively for minimal effort. 

 

The Bosses - and the Baggage

 Rounding out this expansive run-through of the Tlaxcalan army I finished last month is the 3 Commande rbases, and the ritual sacrifice that is the baggage camp. 

These figures are from the command pack, with a couple of extras tucked in as well to bulk out the retinue of the main leader

The big boss is on a 40mm round, with 30mm rounds for the lesser commanders.

The camp, on an 80x40 base, has as its highlight a... tiki bar-style lighter picked up in Walgreens in Key West many moons ago, and kept for exactly this purpose ! 

The eyes light up in a fiery hue when the top of the statue is pressed. 

OK, so Polynesian tiki statues are not exactly Meso-American but hey, did I mention that the eyes light up? 

The sacrificing guys are 3D prints, for which I must thank Harry, and the baggage carriers are F15's figures from Dave from the Podcast, as he had some spares left over. 

All in all it does a pretty good job IMO. 

The boss will see you now...

The Suits are here to see you now !

 Mad as you like, and twice as dangerous, the Suit Wearers are the Military Orders of the Tlaxcalan army.

All of these figures are kind of dressed in the same suit - a bit like a crocodile onsie if I'm honest - but with a lot of bright contrast paints and drybrushing to pick out highlights I'm pretty pleased to have made them look as varied as they do. 

Doing red "lips" aorund each suits "mouth" was a bit of a faff, but very much worth it IMO.

There were just enough back banners in the army pack to add one to each unit of 6 men. 

Warriors in brightly dyes PJs' - who'dve thought it eh?