Refurbished Hittites

The epic task of selling off our late clubmate Clive's collection (on behalf of his family) was not 100% succesful. A rather battered looking Hittite army, presumably bought for DBM or DBMM, resolutely refused to tempt any of the people I offered it to - presumably the near total lack of chariot wheels and crew, and the 50%+ lack of even chariot bodies to accompany the vast numbers of horses was somehow off-putting!

Rather than consign it to the recycling pile however, I decided to take it on as a project, and contacted the nice folks at Essex as I know they have sold separate components in the past. 

They were happy to supply me with horseless chariots and crew, so after a lot of soaking-off of the robust original bases, a full rebasing, and the addition of some new, fully wheeled-up chariots the army has now become a pretty decent ADLG Hittite/Ugaritic force  

This is a pure-play Essex chariot, mounted on a 40mm round base to act as a General 

Both of these are the original Lancashire Games chariot bodies, some with wheels scrounged from the bits box (possibly stolen from unused Napoleonic gun carriages...) and a mix of the Essex and original Lancashire crew

Essex chariot bodies, painted in a simple GW Contrast red with white trim, with Lancashire horses and Lancashire crew 

This may well have been the only "original" chariot from the Lancashire range to survive, with even their own wheels !

Lancashire crew, Essex chariot body, Lancashire horses 

There were hundreds of these slingers from the Lancashire Makedonian range, all based as LI, which makes me suspect it was a DBMM army. They unfortunately suffer from the occasional Lancashire Games issue of very weak ankles, so I'm not sure how long they will survive. ADLG doesn't use many slingers, so I used a load of the spare ones to base up in blocks of 7-8 to use as Levy

These bowmen are very nice figures, and have robust ankles too.  I can see them making appearances in other Biblical armies as well.

I suspect these may be Essex refugees who snuck into the army - based up as Javelinmen, with a lone slinger hidden in the middle of the pack to bulk out the 8 of these figures to two bases of ADLG-appropriate numbers

These are the main body of infantry - using some bowmen to again boost numbers. The simple paint job the original painter did looks very effective, but is really just some easy-to-do dots - very effective for the effort!

The army list has some Elite bow units with Pavise, so having also found these pavises hanging around it seemed an ideal opportunity to use them.

The figures are mostly from the Lancashire Games range, and you can see a load more pictures of this army online in my 15mm figure gallery 

Blue Moon Swiss Pikemen

At Cold Wars I picked up a pack of Blue Moon 18mm Swiss Pikemen (15WS-105: Swiss Pikeman Advancing), partly because I was one pike block short* for my 15mm ADLG Swiss army, partly because I really like the small handful of Blue Moon figures I already own (namely their Three Musketeers set) and also as I just wanted to spend some money with traders in what was a very quiet, "even of lockdown" trader hall.

Those figures and now finally finished, and out of the pack of 30 figures I managed to conjure up two 12-man pike blocks (on 40x40 ADLG bases) as well as half a dozen halberdiers.  

The figures all came without pikes or weapons, so I also took the opportunity to try something I'd stumbled across online where a blogger gave instructions how to make plastic spears with actual tips - a much more sophisticated approach than the 'brass rod with the end painted silver" approach I'd been using beforehand. I've sadly failed to remember where I saw this idea, but I've dug out another site with exactly the same technique.

The figures were really clean and well cast out of the packet, and I duly followed instructions and created plastic pikes and halberds for them all with 0.8mm plastic rod, squeezed at the end and cut to shape. The pikes do have proper points, whilst the halberds are relatively unsophisticated long blades on the end of a pole. 

One downside I discovered however was that with the pikes being soft-ish plastic it was impossible to force the pikes through the partly-open lower hands of the men (which you can do with brass rod). As drilling out a load of hands which are cast close to the mens bodies wasn't something I really wanted to do, these pikemen ended up all holding their pikes at the butt-end in their left hands.  

I went with a black undercoat, drybrushed white using a tip from Dave on the Madaxeman Podcast a couple of weeks ago. I had throught this technique was about getting extra depth for the colours when using semi-transparent paints, but he pointed out that a white drybrush also really helps pick out the contours of the figure and guides your painting of them, which an all-black undercoat can make quite difficult to follow. 

Here they are almost done. As usual I used a very narrow colour palette, with white and red being the first two colours onto the figures. 

I've been struggling with getting good consistency and coverage from my go-to red, Army Painter Pure Red, and so recently changed to Vallejo Scarlet and Vallejo Dark Vermillion, both of which seem much better so far. The blue is a Vallejo Game Colour Electric Blue, and the yellow is Army Painter, but always on a full white undercoat. 

 

Unlike most of my other medieval figures the Swiss I have are generally not ink-washed, as their bright colours seems to work better if they are not muted - Swiss are stand-out troops anyway so why not make them "ping" a bit more? Paul Frith's 28mm Perry Swiss army also provided some inspiration for this approach when I played it last year at a competition - although it's not nearly as aggressively black-lined as these ones are.

 

I have however blacklined them - not a technique I usually do as it's a PITA, and not really compatible with ink-washing but here it seemed necessary to highlight the different blocks of colour. 

 

To give them a little more detail I added some white-on-red crosses onto some of their backs, sleeves and trousers. These I didn't blackline - there is a limit to my steadiness of hand!

The Blue Moon figures are very clean designs, but despite being marketed as 15mm by Old Glory UK I'm much more inclined to regard them as being the "15mm/18mm" scale as they are described by Blue Moon in the USA. 

Stood next to some Mirliton Swiss pikemen here the difference in stature and height is obvious, with the Blue Moon men being a full head taller than the Mirliton ones - although ensuring that the pikes are the same height on both blocks of men does go a long way to obscuring the difference in stature on the tabletop. 

Facing off against the Mirliton men I think my money is on the Blue Moon soldiers to win this particular push-of-pike! 

Here the QRF pikemen join the line on the left, with Blue Moon in the middle and Mirliton on the right of the photo. QRF are also "true 15mm" and are tiny next to the Blue Moon guys - the following photo where the Blue Moon figures are unpainted shows how the addition of equal-height pikes does tone down the difference in stature though. 

 

Overall I do really, really like these figures, but they are big, and stylistically very different to other ranges so it would be pretty much impossible to mix them in the same unit with any other manufacturer. Side by side in different units is just about OK at tabletop ranges though. 

This one packet of unarmoured pikemen also doesn't quite have enough variety of poses for my taste  (there are too many flat beret hats, which when painted in a range of colours can make the unit look a little like a packet of M&M's when viewed from above!) so I'd buy a mix of armoured and unarmoured men next time and mix them together were I to do this experiment again.

The jury is very much out however on whether the plastic pike-making experiment is one I'll continue with, as I've already snapped a couple of pikes with just normal handling. They do glue back on very easily (the plastic doesn't melt with Superglue thankfully) but I suspect the problem may be that the 0.8mm plastic rod I used (from Plastruct) is either just too thin, or too brittle to really work as it should. Creating the points is easy, and very effective so I may try that part of the technique again with 1mm rod, or even go thicker for spears for some 28mm figures. 

Casting around online the more permanent solution seems to be to buy a cheap sweeping brush head, and cut off the bristles - but that's currently harder to do with online shopping as Amazon doesn't tend to say how thick the individual bristles are on the brushes they are selling!

And finally, here they are with their Gnome of Zurich leader hurling his stinky cheese at the enemy! 

* This is of course a lie. I don't "need" any more pike blocks, I have got 9 already, and a load of other medieval ones who could be pressed into Swiss service if needed. But as long as I don't tell myself I'm sure I won't realise.

The Sassanids are Coming!

For what might well be the first time in almost a decade I've just ordered myself a whole "new" 15mm Ancients army - Sassanid Persian - for ADLG.

To be honest I thought for a short while about just getting some Levy Spearmen, as I have plenty of "Arab" cavalry who could do service as Clibanarii at a pinch, as well as generic Light Horse and Light Infantry, and even some elephants who could be re-crewed easily enough... but a combination of really, really wanting some figures in those a-historical lightbulb hats, and the fact you can cook up an ADLG army in far fewer figures than it takes for FoG made me decide that now was the time to add one of the few truly distinctive armies to the collection. Having said that, I'll be recycling my Greek/Makedonian Cataphracts, or possible the Tibetans ones and also some of the other LF with javelins from other armies. Why go too crazy...?

The shopping list I was working to was based on being able to copy the lists currently in the ADLG Wiki (plus a bit more), which came out as about 8 bases of Clibanarii, 3 Elephants, 4 bases of Levy (going with 7 figures to a base so they can be 2 ranks of spears or 1 of Mob),  a couple of bases each of LH with Bows and Javelins and 3 Generals. So, a whole new army in about 20 bases!

After a bit of searching I have decided to go with 3 main manufacturers:

• Legio Heroica for most of the Clibanarii, Generals, and some LH and LF
• Irregular Miniatures for the Levy, the LH with Javelins and some different Generals
• Donnington, for the Elephants

I did also toy with the idea of Lurkio and Eureka as well but that would have involved splitting the order into too many small chunks - and also there is a finite amount I'm prepared to pay for Levy Spearmen figures, which Eureka, nice as they are, somewhat exceeded!

The orders are now all in, and hopefully the figures will be back and ready for priming in early October (after Derby when I pick up the Elephants from Donnington).

Painting progress will be reported here...

15mm Ancients - ADLG resurrects the painting urge..

Having become increasingly enamoured of ADLG, I finally got around to buying and painting up some proper Carthaginian cavalry and elephants recently, have fudged both types with dubious Greek proxies and morphs for pretty much the best part of, erm, mumble mumble years.

The 200 point format of ADLG means you have an army with just 20-25 elements (around 35-40 bases in old DBX/FoG money, with infantry being 2-bases and cavalry, elephants and psiloi being singles), so adding an odd element here or there to an existing army is a simple way to tart it up a bit.
The pictures of both are now included in the 15mm gallery - sadly Corvus Belli are no longer being produced, but I think that Martin at Vexillia still has a handful of the elephants on sale.

Both will be making an appearance this weekend at a 24-player ADLG event at Central London - how long they will appear for in the battle reports is an entirely different question!.

Renaissance (ish) Chinese Musketeers for FoGR

This painting project has been hanging around since - I suspect - late 2012 when I think I bought some Lamcashire Games Arab and Chinese musket-armed figures at Warfare. Some of the Arabs were done in time to appear as Maratha infantry at Clevedon 2013 but the Chinese have languished in the painting pile .... until now!

You can click on these images to get a bigger picture:

They are from Lancashire Games Boxer Rebellion range (what with me never being one to go for the obvious morph) and have the twin advantages of being a/ cheap, and b/ definitely not obviously belonging to any actual Renaissance Chinese historical era, which is my excuse for using them as generic musketeers or arquebusiers for any sort of Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesian or other army from that FoGR army list book.

In an even more shameless morphing plan, they were painted to match a front rank of Essex Han-era Chinese spearmen, who you can see in the last picture. The Lancashire figures are stylistically very different, and a lot taller... but at wargaming ranges the difference is not too ridiculous. Sort of.

And given that they will only surface sporadically, getting 10 bases of interesting-looking infantry for under £7 is a pretty decent deal in anyone's book.

The real upside would be if someone comes out with a set of rules covering the Boxer Rebellion using DBX basing conventions. When that happens I'll be halfway to starting another period too!

Totentanz Miniatures - 15mm Renaissance comparison shots

I've just finished painting up 2 units of TYW miniatures, from Spanish manufacturer Totentanz.

Aside from the now-obligatory use of flowers on the bases, I actually think that they have come out pretty well - more a reflection of the figures rather than my painting!

As this is a new manufacturer I have also posted a load of comparison photos so you can compare height and stature against around a dozen different manufacturers.

(Testudo by Khurasan vs Totentanz)

15mm Renaissance comparison photos added

I've added a few shots of the Donnington Louis XIV figures from the previous post into the 15mm Comparison gallery - so you can see them against Essex, Hallmark and Lurkio figures for scale.

They look to be a good match for Lurkio's range, but not so close to the others. 

QR Miniatures Pancerni

Just realised that I'd not posted any pictures of the Pancerni after putting up some carbine-armed horse from QR of Poland.

Well, here they are (click on any photo for a larger version)

I added the rather oversized lance myself - I think the figures actually come with swords and stuff, but I seem to have mislaid some of the hands (which are separate)

Nice to see someone actually shooting a carbine from horseback

This shows them next to Old Glory Pancerni. They are a little less bulky in these shots, but on the table the difference is really not noticeable at all.

The Jacobite 15mm ranges find a new home..

At Warfare today I discovered that the Jacobite Miniatures ranges formerly carried by Stronghold have found a new home - the moulds for the ranges previously sold by Stronghold have now been acquired by a chap who plays at the Wargames Association of Reading club, and are gradually going back onsale under the name Elite Wargames And Models.

Apparently they got basically a load of unmarked moulds from Stronghold, and so are gradually working through the moulds they have to try and piece together the ranges. They have no website as yet, but one is probably coming - in the meantime they can be reached at elitewargamesmodels@gmail.com. So, I guess email them for a list of the figures they are selling right now.

Here are some pictures of them in the bare metal:

Compared to Essex figures (below)

 Compared to Peter Pig figures (below)

 and compared to Old Glory Figures (below)

I've also updated the Renaissance and Ancients manufacturers directories with the new details.

15mm Renaissance Manufacturers Directory

I've now added a 15mm Renaissance Figures Manufacturer directory to the site to complement the 15mm Ancients one. You can now see a full list of 15mm Renaissance figure manufacturers, with details of the ranges they carry, links to their website and also have the ability to rate their figures and see what other gamers have voted for.

Camelot Games

Now added to the 15mm manuacturers directory, as well as an Italian distributor for the Miniature Wars ranges. Camelot sell several ranges including Polybian/ MRR Romans, Huns, Vikings & Rus, Crusader Knights & Arabs, and CXIII medievals