Showing posts with label 15mm ancients. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 15mm ancients. Show all posts

23 Dec 2018

Museum Miniatures Assyrian Army

Having been rather light on Biblical armies, ADLG and its easy-to-collect army size has allowed me to turbocharge this previously neglected part of my collection.

First up were the Myceneans, and then the NKE ended up being rebased as well. But now, finally, and after 30 years of collecting and gaming I now have an Assyrian army as well!

As with the Myceneans, my choice was to go with Museum figures. They are a little static in their poses and stylized, but for Biblical era I feel that this style works really well.

The Assyrians are a ruthlessly efficient army and so the regular poses of most of the men also feels right. Many of the colour choices were inspired by (but sadly not particularly closely copied from) the fantastic 28mm Foundry range, which have provided three Generals elements for this army as well.

The highlight is of course the Chariotry - which I've tarted up using a common or garden cheap printer and some Google-fu to search for "Assyrian Patterns", downloading and printing out some images to paste onto the walls of the Chariots to surprisingly good effect.

There's a full page of pictures of all of the figures, together with paint selection details (and links to eBay to find the paints) to browse now;



 



There is also a video of all of these photos on Youtube

18 Dec 2018

Xyston "Egyptian Spearmen"

Along with the Assyrians the festive Madaxeman workbench has been a home for quite some time for 2 packs of Xyston Egyptian Spearmen, bought from Damian at Donnington at Attack! in Devizes earlier this year.

They fall into the category of "I'm not quite sure what to do with them but they are great figures so I bought them anyway". If only there was an army list for this I'd be able to field all sorts of stuff from my collection much more often!

There are probably a couple of armies that they can appear in - some of the "non NKE" Egyptian ones in the ADLG lists, and given the shields I could maybe sneak them into an Assyrian or Babylonian lineup as well I guess.




I did the clever painter-y thing on their kilts of doing darker stripes of blue, and then adding a lighter, thinner stripe inside them to give an impression of some texture.


White undercoats for the men, black for the shields. The shields are stuck on with my go-to solution for shields, 2-part "liquid metal" epoxy from Araldite (affiliate link).



Basing is the usual sand + Rustins Wood Stain + 2 layers of drybrushing before adding some tufts and static grass



13 Dec 2018

WiP 15mm Assyrians

A Museum Miniatures January sale order finally makes it onto the painting table... after the somewhat disappointing outings so far for the Mycenaeans, these are the first bases of Assyrians to be fully finished as I test out colour schemes for this army.



The uniform scheme I’m going with is rather dour, with dark blues and reds. This seems to suit the ruthless efficiency of the Assyrian war machine. 

No doubt the final army will also end up having the old classic wargamers trope of different coloured shields for the Elite and Regular quality troops!

 


I an still undecided about patterned horse blankets. Could easily look too gaudy. 



My original army list to use the figures I bought doesn’t bear much resemblance to any of the Assyrian lists I’ve been beaten by this year, so an extra order may be required. Luckily there should be another sale along soon!

 



28 Nov 2018

Yummy-yads in Spain - Food, Castles and ADLG!

The Umayyad Caliphate in a few short years managed to build a mighty empire stretching from Asia to the shores of the Atlantic ... but now they faced their greatest mission, The Conquest of Spain (reached via Bilbao airport, travelling in a small metal tin).


Yes, after somewhat of a hiatus here are 5 match reports of yet another fairly randomly selected ADLG army fighting at a competition held in Northern Spain at Estella.


In these reports the Umayyads take on the Armenians, Alexandrian Macedonians, Maurikian Byzantines, Arab Indians and finally the Medieval Polish, whilst Team Central London take on a variety of three course meal options, tapas plates, obscure Basque spirits and rather nice Rioja, all of which get featured heavily in the writeups.


Finally, in a totally new departure, Siege Warfare comes to Madaxeman.com as the intrepid CLWC crack castle-wall-storming brigade meanders through the hinterland of Castile visiting an array of Moslem, Visigothic and Reconquista fortresses, all of which are photographed and presented for your delight and delectation.


Be extra careful if you are squeamish about roast pork products, otherwise just be careful of the poor quality jokes and captions and the sub-standard gameplay (as usual).

10 Nov 2018

Egypt Arise! (well, "rebase" actually..)

After a rather salutary outing with the Myceneans last weekend, and rather than focusing on painting new stuff I took it upon myself this week to rebase a 15mm New Kingdom Egyptian army that I've not used all that much in recent years.

The rebasing now puts them onto ADLG 40x40 bases in the main, using MDF from Warbases. Most of the figures are Gladiator Miniatures, a range which has just been bought by Ian from Fighting 15's  with a few Essex and even Irregular Miniatures thrown in for added variety.

The basing is done with sand, glue, Rustins Wood Stain and some drybrushing - the technique is show in this YouTube video I made a few years ago with the same technique for Saga miniatures.


















They may not fight any better, but at least they are now consistently based to match my other "Biblical" armies like the Myceneans

14 Oct 2018

War & Empire Sassanid cataphracts

As well as picking up some Numidians at Britcon from West Wind's war & Empire range I also added a set of 12 of their Sassanid cataphracts to my collection.

OK, I do have lots of cataphracts already, but none which were overtly Sassanid - so a blister pack of a dozen seemed like a good chance to add 3 units to my mostly Legio Heroica ADLG army, and to get some size comparison photos of the W&E cavalry as well.


Here are the full dozen from the blister pack. The pack has (well, mine did have) more riders than horses, with a few officers and standard bearers to include if you want - which of course I chose to do.


Cataphracts are a decent host for a Sub General in ADLG, so the standard and sword-waving chaps in the middle may well be an embedded Sub General with some regularity.


Here are 8 of the W&E guys, with a textbook Essex cataphract unit in the middle of the line.

The proportions are a tad different, with the Essex ones looking bulkier and having stumpier horses but bigger bodies for the men, but they are basically the same height at the end of the day.


This shot has the Legio Heroica Sassanid Asarvan cavalry in the line. Again, not a great match in terms of stature but a decent one in terms of overall height.


The W&E Cataphracts are from their first range of releases, which seem to have fairly slight and short cavalry riders so perhaps later ranges will be a bit chunkier.



Here's the General and standard bearer. I wanted a fairly colourful mix of figures with different types of barding to match the look and feel of my existing Asarvan.


From the rear you can also see they have a fair selection of cloaks, allowing a more irregular look as well.

The size comparison shots for the Numidian foot can be seen here
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