War & Empire Numidians (15mm)

I recently bought some Numidians from War & Empire (Forged in Battle) , which have managed to get painted extremely quickly - probably due to their simplicity!

They are led by some Baueda Generals working in tandem with W&E infantry officers on 40mm round bases for ADLG.

I've also posted some comparison shots to show how they scale with other ranges of Romans and Carthaginians (who they will be fighting with or against I suspect).

All these photos and many more are online now on my site, where I also explain the painting techniques as well (for what they are worth). The figures can also be seen in the 15mm directory

Flagging in Georgia ...?

After the success of adding Religious Icon banners and standards to my refurbished Nikephorian Byzantines, I've been casting around for similar ways of tarting up a few more of my lesser-used figures - a process which has recently seen the Georgians make a rare outing under ADLG.

The foundation of the army are some Legio Heroica figures I got ages ago, and which I think are listed here on their website as Armenian Cavalry. Basically they are a nice range of ever so slightly arab-ized C12 Knights and changing cavalry. 

The Georgians were a pretty chunky empire that sat (and fought) between the Turks and the Byzantines for a good few hundred years, including the Byzantine-Georgian Wars. The county adopted Christianity in 327AD, so by the early middle ages would have been well ensconced in the icon-waving era I reckon.

The ADLG list has 2 incarnations, one with bow-armed Heavy Cavalry and an earlier and more exuberant charging lancer type army - which is the one I'm most tempted towards of course.

This is the list I've used:

Competent CinC
3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous Elite
3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous ----------
3 Horse Archers Light cavalry bow ----------

Brilliant Sub

3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous Elite

2 Russians Heavy spearmen missile support ----------

3 Horse Archers Light cavalry bow ----------

Ordinary Sub

3 Heavy Spearmen Heavy spearmen Mediocre

2 Bowmen Bowmen

2 Light infantry javelin Light infantry javelin ----------

1 Light infantry bow Light infantry bow --------

If you want to try tweaking it, it's also on Little Army Builder - 205.1 Georgian

Getting to 25 units with an army in this era is quite impressive, and the tactics are fairly self-evident in trying to rush and overwhelm one flank whilst hoping that the rather pedestrian and poor quality 3rd infantry-rich command doesn't get into combat too early, and also doesn't get totally run over by the time your other 2 commands have hopefully won the game.  

Anyways, I had the figures already, and I had the idea for the flags - so here is the combination of the two:

The Georgian flag I found available for download on this site. I'm sure being shrunk down to 15mm size isn't  quite what the author expected, but hey, I think it works really well for having the texture already added in a wargaming style.

The other Icon flags are downloads from a Google Search for "Georgian Icon"- if you want to see how that works, here's a link

Most of the images are shrunk down to around 1cm high, and doubled up to make one flag.

Painting round the edges is really important - especially running paint along the edge of the flag.

They did achieve success in their first game on table, but they probably need a non-knight, or certainly a Medium Knight Only theme to do well.

Limerick 2018 - The Emerald Isle's first ever ADLG competition!

There once was a man with an axe,
Who played ADLG to relax.
A comp in Limerick Town,
Would see much Guinness go down,
On the plane was a Chinese army he'd packed.

That Keith Duffy bloke was nowhere to be seen,
But the chap from the Hobbit - yes, he'd been!
The Emerald Isle suits this game,
You can drink as yer' playin',
Which in Limerick makes everyone keen!

There were five games that went down in two days,
Although hangovers made most just a haze,
Many dice they were rolled,
And when the final bell tolled,
Well.. you must read on to see what Hannibal says!

(if that all makes no sense, there are 5 new ADLG battle reports now on Madaxeman.com featuring Han Chinese in action in Ireland!)

Alexander The Great plays ADLG at The Worlds 2018

Salamanca, Charleroi... and to that roll of honour and glamour is now added Birmingham next to the M42 in a big steel shed.

Yes, Alexander's army makes yet another outing as I hadn't really gotten round to picking an alternative, and takes on all comers in an open, 5-game competition to determine who is the best ADLG  player in the whole wide world!

That sees the exploring Macedonians travel to the ends of the earth as they visit China, Italy (twice!), India and Byzantium in some pretty intense time-travelling battlefield action.

 

There are victories, defeats, wins and draws along the way as Alexander and his merry men chew up the green tablecloths and burp up last night's curry in equal measures as they try and add navigating the Solihull one-way system to their already impressive list of achievements.

Persians on Campaign

The annual Milton Keynes fest of wargaming saw the Persians of Cyrus take to the field in 5 ADLG battles - see how they fared on the swings and roundabouts of life in this series of geometrically accurate reports from Campaign 2018 

See how the Persians fared in a Civil War, against the Lydians, the Medes and the Babylonians (twice!) together with the usual mix of videos, comments and rules hints  

Bank Holiday Pavisiers

With a long weekend in prospect I've had an opportunity to finish off a few odd units which have been hanging around the painting table for a while, starting with these Medieval Crossbowmen with Pavises, from Donnington's New Era ranges.

The "German" designs were done mostly using up some of the smaller "eagle" images in a set of LBMS 25mm knightly heraldry

The "Fleur de Lys" are very old Veni Vidi Vici waterslide transfers.

This time I remembered to turn the loading man around. He comes with a pavise, the other three pavises I bought in a separate pack

I didn't find enough of the fleu de lys designs to do all 5 pavises on the base, hence the rather incongruous "board head" on the rearmost pavisier.

The kneeling chap is exactly the right height to shoot through/round the notch in the Pavise - well done on that bit of clever design Damian!

Whether its worth paying a point for a Pavise in ADLG is debatable, but if you have a spare point left its a good way to spend it up. They also do look really cool !

Both are based on tidy 40x40 MDF bases from Warbases. 

And here they are next to some almost-pavise-free Donnington and Essex crossbowmen.

Myceneans

I bought a Mycenean (and Assyrian) army earlier this year in the Museum Miniatures sale (25% off every January!), and after spraying most of them in a flesh-coloured undercoat I finally got round to doing a couple of test bases to see how the planned colour scheme works out. 

With flesh undercoat they are very quick to paint - so they could all be on the table very soon.

I'm a big fan of Museum for the Biblical period, as the slightly over-stylized look and limited number of poses seems to work really well in this theme.

Nikephorian 15mm Cavalry Conversion

Inspired by the rather lovely Nikephorian armies which were on display in Patras, and realising that I have far too many early-ish Byzantine cavalry to ever use in one army I was recently inspired to convert some of them to later Nikephorian Byzantines.

Or, to be more accurate, I;

• sliced off the Essex Thematic (?) Byzantine Cavalrymen's small round shields with a scalpel, 
• replaced the too-thin, too-bendy Essex lancers with cheap sewing pins bought from eBay while I was at it
• cadged some kite and heater shields from a clubmate and glued them onto the now-sliced-off bits on the figures bodies.

After a bit of a go at painting overly-complicated shield patterns copied badly from other websites later, here you go - 6 units of Nikephorian Byzantine Lance & Bow armed Heavy Cavalry ready for the table!

The unit with the General in the centre has brass rod for its spears - I then realised that they are clearly just too thick for these chaps though, so I did the rest with cut-off sewing pins .

They won't win any awards, but not too shabby for a bit of recycling methinks.

On a similar basis, I also re-painted the shields on some almost-never-used Skoutatoi and glued the bases together to make ADLG units. Here's the slightly less impressive result.

The Icon standard is just downloaded off a Google search for Byzantine Icons, printed out and stuck on.

Maybe an army to use at Cry Havoc later this summer?