Some day my Ninja will come...

June 2019 - The NEC, UK Games Expo and one of the bigger UK events I will manage to get to this year. So, why not take an almost legendarily unusable army into a theme where it is certain to meet opponents it struggles to deal with?

Well, if that army is a Samurai force that hasn't seen light of day since it's almost-win in Burton last year, the answer is of course a resounding YES!!!

The end result is five full match reports, packed to the sushi-tasting gills with pictures of Samurai figures far better painted than I could ever hope to manage myself, as well as all of the usual videos, jokes, witty banter (some of it from headless ex-warriors serving as markers), and half-baked tactical theories.

In fact, there's even a herd of cows. What more could anyone want in the height of BBQ season eh?

Read on to find out how the Samurai fared against the Song Chinese, Sicilians, French, Ottomans and a properly colourful Samurai Civil War as well (just one) in these 5 fully ninja-tastic reports.

It's A Lightbox!

Having take thousands of photos for this site over the years against various very basic backdrops, usually with an angle poise lamp for lighting I finally bit the bullet recently and bought a mini lightbox (affiliate link) on eBay for just over a fiver - and frankly I'm already wondering why on earth I didn't do so ages ago!

It is roughly a 10" cube with one open side, with the lighting powered by a usb cable from my PC (which drives a line of LED's at the top of the box facing back into it). The one I got comes with a couple of backdrops (white and black - but it will be easy to make more), and folds away quickly for flat-pack storage.

If you want to have a look on your local eBay, this affiliate link will take you straight there (I get a teeny kickback from eBay if you buy one as well using this link).

Here's a load of (un-retouched) photos taken with my usual cheap camera, firstly of some of the Khurasanians I'll be taking to The ADLG Worlds this coming weekend, and then some of the Samurai who were in action at the BHGS Challenge a week or so ago so you can see how the pictures pan out.

What's for Desert? The Egyptians @ Campaign 2019

The Campaign team event has become a bit of a regular feature on the ADLG circuit, and this year I ended up driving a newly-rebased and refurbished New Kingdom Egyptian army in a tightly themed competition against 6 other extremely similar armies.

The Egyptians fought Bedouin Camels! 

They fought an artistically licensed army of Egyptian Undead ! 

And, most of all, they fought Egyptian Civil Wars

These 6 match reports chronicle the complete biblically epic weekend for the NKE, in a widescreen spectacular that only the presence of Charlton Heston could possibly improve! 

A Load of Old Bulls - The Koreans invade Spain

Its Spain - and of course it's 6 battle reports which are as tasty as a Korean barbecue with added Chorizo and Manchego !

The occasion is a competition in Pamplona, the home of the running of the bulls which was of course an ideal place to try out an army which may in itself be a load of old bull.

But even more pertinently they are the Koryo Koreans and their War Wagon Wagon Train, a novelty item often overlooked in ADLG. 

Will the cunning Koreans make the wagons work in these six trucking good battle reports?

The wheels are certainly rolling - will they come off, or will they ride to victory in Spain?

I Sea People!

After being somewhat impressed with a Sea People army last year at a competition in Ireland I've added a few more of the excellent ex-Gladiator Black Hat figures now sold by Fighting 15's  to my New Kingdom Egyptian army such that I can now also field a full Sea People force.

For the Medium Foot I've kept all of the similarly-hatted guys together to give some vague impression of different tribal sub-groupings fighting as pseudo "units"

I didn't really buy enough figures though to make that work for the close formation units, especially as I added in a load of random spare Egyptians and other biblical and loincloth-clad waifs and strays from the parts box to make up the numbers, so the Heavy Foot are a bit more of a mysterious rabble.

Having originally bought the first half of this lot many years ago I'm actually quite pleased that I still had the same flesh wash (GW) to make the new figures look consistent with the old ones as well.

I even picked up some tribes that I didn't have any of first time around.

The colours are entirely speculative - but these are really well animated and easy to paint figures so they may well be sweeping across a table at you sooner than you think!

Galatians ! Faaarsands of 'em Sir!

With a shwoosh of clackers, and a dusting-ioff of the family jewels the Galatians take to the table in five separate match reports against the Romans, Germans, Seleukids, Bactrians and the (who the f--- are the?) Blemmye, in the post-tournament report from Bournemouth earlier this spring.

There is of course the usual mix of captions, videos, both handy and unhelpful rules-related hints and poor quality humour throughout.

This time however you also get a specially themed report of one of the battles which features extensive references to the 1970's Bay City Rollers knock-offs from Bradford, "Smokie" - not for the faint-hearted, so if you are easily offended please feel free to skip report number four!

Go on - get your undercarriage out into the fresh air this lovely spring morning, lie back and enjoy these five fine reports !

Oi! You! Peasants!

The last (for now) iteration of the Great Biblical Army Painting Frenzy is three units of levy.

They fit naturally in the Assyrian army, where the high quality (and cost) of many of the line troops means that adding in some levy occasionally may well be a good idea, but there are other armies than can also use some. too.

With that in mind I chose to use Museum's Minoan and Mycenean range as the basis for these units, making them up out of naked spearmen and bowmen, together with a couple of slinger figures - as how much more generic can you get if you haven't got a uniform at all?

The paint job is kinda simple!

I guess if I ever try and run more than he 9 proper Mycenean spear units I own I could even press-gang these to serve as extra (ill-equipped) spearmen!

Yet more Assyrians...

Finalising (I hope...) the Assyrian project, and having actually looked at what might be a viable list before buying the figures this time I've added some Heavy Swordsmen and Javelinmen to my Assyrian army.

All of these figures are still from Museum Miniatures - it does mean I only have round shields rather than a mix of tower shields and round ones, but hey, I still like them !

For ADLG I'm basing Javelinmen in 5's to a base. These are listed as "Aramaean Infantry Auxiliary spear" on the Museum site, and have an actual Assyrian soldier in the middle of the base as getting two sets of 5 figures out of a single pack of 8 Arameans was sadly beyond me!

These guys count as Swordsmen in the rules, so I've tried to keep the number of upright-held-spear spearmen down somewhat and use a lot of swordsmen in the front rank.

The guy in the second rank with a crested helmet is an Urartian Infantryman according to Museum, but his shield is the same size as the Assyrian figures so he can sneak in as a second ranker pretty easily. Painting the crest black also means it doesn't jump out at you as being different.

The blue shields will mostly be used as the Elite units, with red as the default colour for normal line infantry.

Mahoosive Camels!

Whats that coming over the hill? Is it a Monster ?

Or is it a Museum Miniatures Midianite Bedouin Camel?

Having bought a dozen of the aforementioned creatures recently to flesh out an allied contingent for my Assyrians my plan was to use some old Essex bow-armed camel riders I had kicking about as the Light Camels and use the double-crewed Midianite ones as the Medium Camelry with bows in the core Early Bedouin ally.

Museum figures are made of a really strong but pliable metal compound, so tweaking one of the bowmen's arms and cutting off his bow to turn him into a flag holder to create a Commander/General figure was fairly easy to do;

But just have a look how these beasts compare size-wise to the Essex camels !

They are great figures, even allowing for the single pose - but boy are they huge!