Kitbashed Arabs... the project at half way through

During the rolling, seemingly endless series of lockdowns and partial lockdowns in 2020 followers of my blog and website will know that I've been gradually building up an "all options" set of Arab troops to make up armies for L'Art de la Guerre in 28mm. The aim is kinda to mirror the 15mm Arab armies that I've enjoyed using in various competitions over the last few years, but also to try a couple of new things along the way - kitbashing and using GW Contrast paints. 

Having - of course - bought far too many figures for the army I decided to start by mainly concentrating on the cavalry first, with a few excursions into infantry for variety.  This set of 50-odd photos you can now access on my site is the first tranche of all of those figures, made up from 5 boxes of plastic figures all mushed together.

What you can now see here is a set each of Gripping Beast's Arab Light Cavalry and Heavy Cavalry, a Fireforge Mongol Cavalry set and two boxes of Gripping Beast's latst Gothic Heavy Cavalry - which are basically armoured lancers on cataphract-style fully barded horses.

Over the next few weeks you will see more of the cavalry on display - and perhaps more of the infantry as well if I get cracking on finishing them too.

Link to the page with all the photos here:

Listen to the 48th episode of the Madaxeman.com Podcast in which I talk about these figures a little (as well as other stuff)

Arab WiP - starting to get the first few done

 As well as experimenting with contrast paints on infantry and horses I have gotten a few bases close to completion already - I find finishing some of them early helps motivate me to do the rest production-line-style, as it gives me an idea of what I'm looking to achieve:

The first lot are a couple of sprues of Perry Sudanese infantry, here representing the ADLG "Impetuous Swordsmen" Tribal or Indian troops that many Arab armies have as a cutting edge to their infantry attack.

They are sprayed with Army Painter Leather, then the flesh has been inkwashed twice with ArmyPainter Dark Tone. The clothes are a base of white with diluted Softtone, GW Contrast Skeleton Horse or Nazdreg Yellow.

The Sudanese haircuts are a lttle distinctive on these, so I tried to use as many bald heads as I could from the sprues instead.

From the back you can see a couple of colourful "belts"to give them a smidge more colour. 

This is a finished Commander base - the horse is pale grey with a white wet-brushed coat on top, the armour is drybrushed ArmyPainter Gunmetal over black, and all of the cloth has been done with Contrast Paints.

The Talassar Blue on the cloak is a fantastic colour. 

The shield was cast-on this metal figure so I sadly couldn't use transfer and had to improvise this half-hearted peacock style thing

He's now ready for sand to be added to his base.

 

More adventures in Contrast Paints

 Now the Arabs are starting to come together I've test-done a few infantry figures to see what difference undercoat makes to the GW Contrast Paints that I'm looking to use for this army.

These are WiP figures - undercoated either in matt white (Halfords car undercoat) or Army Painter Skeleton Bone, and then painted with the same GW Contrast colour.

This is Magos Purple

The guy on the right has a Sudanese head from the Perry sprue

Talassar Blue

Iyanden yellow

I'm pretty sure these are Perry metal figures

Space Marine Red

This is perhaps the most "solid" colour of the lot that I've tried

Warp Lightning Green

Iyanden yellow trousers

Aethermatic Blue

This is perhaps my favourite of the colours so far - but I have a fair few more to try! 

28mm Plastic Arab Kitbashing - continued

Just before I rush outside to spray undercoat I thought I'd take a few snaps of the kitbashed Arab riders and infantry to highlight where the various arms, legs, hands and weapons had ended up. 

These have been glued together and then you'll see some white and yellow patches where I've used polyfiller and wood filler in an effort to make the joins between glued components disappear. After it dries I sand it off with a small round hobby file. 

These are all Gripping Beast plastic Arab bodies with a range of different heads, and the odd different arm added. The armoured heads are from (I believe..) the Fireforge Russian infantry sprue which I think look quite "Arabian Nights" when added to a dishsash-wearing body, and the bald head is a Mongol horseman one from Fireforge's  Mongols cavalry set. 

These are more of the added-skirt armoured Medieval Russian and Viking bodies with a mix of mostly "arabized" heads from the GB Arab infantry and cavalry ranges, and metal shields from Footsore. 

Same guys from the back

These mounted figures are based on torsos from the Gripping Beast Gothic Elite Cavalry set, which has three rather nice fully armoured (or barded) horses and a rather paltry 3 different poses of  riders, all of whom are thrusting with lances or actively charging with swords. 

This pose does however just about work for mounted archers if you snip off the left hand and replace it with a snipped-off hand holding a bow. Luckily there are plenty of these hands spare in the GB infantry and cavalry boxes!

There are loads of bowcases in the GB Arab cavalry and Fireforge Mongol sets so I've also been able to do a load of the Lance/Bow cavalry holding lances and with bows stowed, as well as leaving some just as lancers.

Simply replacing the heads makes a massive difference, but this set of Gothic torsos really does need quite some kitbashing as otherwise the limited number of poses would be, well, quite limiting. 

More of the "Arabian Knights" style bowmen. The GB plastic bowmen are pretty bland so mixing them up with some extra heads and even arms from the mounted boxes (and these Medieval Russian armoured heads too)  really helps make them more interesting as a set.

Here are some "Turkic" - style bowmen using Mongol heads. The one on the left looks to have acquired a Fireforge Mongol arm too, as these are exceedingly (weirdly!) long..

More Mongol and turkic heads on GB Arab bodies. 

Back into (figure painting) gear...

After a month of sporadic holiday (and interior decorating-type painting) I'm finally now starting to think about getting back into gear for some proper painting with the start of my long-promised 28mm 'genric' Arab army for ADLG.

Its a real mix of metals and plastics, with a bit of half-assed conversion going on as well. Here are some of the figures in WiP:

These figures are I think a mix of the Fireforge Byzantine Infantry sprue, with some Gripping Beast Vikings as well to give me a load of armoured bodies to which I add Arab heads from the GB Arab infantry and cavalry packs. 

Here I'm using the trusty favourite of wood filler to create longer robes for them, building up over most of their legs and leggings and then adding in metal Dailami shields from Footsore so I can use the amazing Dailami shield transfers from LBMS for the couple of bases of "elite" Dailami infantry in a number of Arab armies in ADLG 

I will also be making a whole pack of GB plastic arabs, but like many of the recent GB plastic packs (Late Romans.. looking at you here..) they don't have all that much variety so I have added metal figures from North Star, Gripping Beast (I think) and Perry (in order of left to right after the plastic figures) to mix it up a bit. 

I'm also going to make a load of cavalry - these are the GB Gothic Elite Cavalry horses, which are the same as their Roman cataphract pack as well with three poses. Instead of metal armour I've used GW Contrast Paints as a base (with extra detail from normal paints) to create colourful horse barding for the elite horsemen. 

These are some of the GB Gothic riders with "arab" heads and bowcases added 

And from the other angle.. very much WiP, much of the detail isn't added yet.

More riders - one of these at least is I think a Fireforge Mongol body and arms.

Elite mounted bow cavalry!

Here are the Fireforge and GB horses from the Arab Light and Heavy Cavalry boxes which most of the rest of the cavalry will be mounted on. As with the 15mm Hungarians I did the horses all first. 

These have all been undercoated white, painted with a bit of a watered down semi-wash Coat d'Arms horse colour then inked with various layers of ArmyPainter browns and dark tones. 

More to come now I've restarted painting again post-summer!

Lockdown Podcast #9

As the landmark of a double-figure number of Lockdown Podcast Episodes rapidly approaches, and with almost 1,400 Podcast downloads in the last month under our belts the 9th Lockdown Podcast is now out on Podbean, iTunes, Spotify and (soon) the Madaxeman Youtube Channel. 

This week the team of intrepid wannabe gamers and by-now-obsessive painters luxuriate yet again in the riches of a combined painting queue that stretches all the way from the pyramids of Ancient Egypt to the tower stacks of Mega City One.

In the fleeting moments of the podcast that take place before we reach Andy's Quiz Music a wide variety of debates take place - the best board games for feuding siblings, using the type of garden feature which would raise eyebrows in a parliamentary expenses committee for tabletop terrain, genetic similarities between Vikings and Saxons, whether treatments for 10mm addiction could be made available on the NHS, how to sneak lead through domestic customs inspections, and in a newly trimmed version of the ADLG list discussion we all take a vote on who we think would win in a Jurchen Ch'in-Jurchen Ch'in face-off (hint - the Song Chinese always come off worst...).

There's also a whole load of discussion about how Tabletop Simulator (available on Steam) might actually be the solution we all didn't realise we were looking for to get some (virtual) lead on a (virtual) table in the near future - all of which gets crammed in before Andy's Quiz. 

(I promise I'll have some actual picture-led painting and gaming stuff out this weekend as well!) 

A Flurry of Podcasts

Over the last couple of weeks I've been busy chatting online with some of my CLWC cubmates, and the result is a positive flurry of podcasts which are all now available on Podbean, on iTunes and now also on Spotify to be background chatter to yoru weekend of painting. 

First up is a one-off special ADLG 'cast looking at some of the ways to design a New Kingdom Egyptian army list to get the best out of this historically popular, but hard to run army. The 'pod had input from Richard Case, who's previous podcast on the Sassanid Persian army proved very popular.  This podcast is also available to watch and listen to on YouTube with some pictures of NKE figures and match report photos as well.

There are also now two special bonus episodes of the Madaxeman Podcast online, each addressing a very specific topics. The first bonus episode on the vexed subject of how to choose a paintbrush (and how much to spend on it) has been out for a week or so already and has been downloaded almost 100 times so far. A follow-up episode in which the subject of different types of Glue is discussed was also released earlier this week.

Finally, just in time for your weekend of painting the 8th "Lockdown Special" has been released today covering a broad range of important yet strangely rarely discussed topics such as what colour should rigging be on a 1/240th scale 19th Century Ironclad, do Gnomes still have a place in modern warfare, can a camel get a tan if it stands out in the desert too long, is the Austrian army a painters dream or simply a signifier of laziness, if a Grenzer joined the cast of Eastenders would he become a Geezer, is it still legal to resist buying 10mm Napoleonics and does getting your children to paint Perry plastics fall under the remit of the Modern Day Slavery act?

There is also a phenomenally long discussion on how to assemble and use Hannibals Carthaginian army under ADLG (and instructions on how to skip over it if you're not interested in ADLG list building), and a new feature on what games we have actually played in the last week. Oh, and Andy's Quiz returns - cue the music!  

These and all previous episodes are now available on Podbean, on iTunes and now also on Spotify

Lockdown Podcast VII now out

The 7th Lockdown Podcast (and 3oth all-time Madaxeman Podcast) has now been published on Podbean and iTunes, and is already picking up a steady stream of listeners and regular subscribers on both platforms. It's ideal bank holiday listening for your weekend painting or legally permitted outdoor exercise session. 

This week the team discuss their latest painting haul, chat at some length about airbrushing, take an in-depth look at the Lydian army in ADLG and endure another week of Andy's Quiz Music wrapped around the far more acceptable Andy's Quiz.

Watch out later this week for a special one-off edition covering Paintbrushes !

 

  

The Eclectic Painting Weekend

This weekend has seen a bit of a blitz on the to-do pile, with a load of oddments being finished off, all of which have been falling behind far more exciting projects for quite some time.

The end result is probably one of the most random selection of figures and models ever to have been sprayed with the same tin of Testors Dullcote... and here they are, in absolutely no particular order!

This is the full slab, post matt varnishing.   Yes, those are 28mm garden gnomes...

Possibly the least interesting and impressive thing on the board was this pair of Numidian LH, which have been hanging around for almost a year after not quite being finished at the same time as my Numidian ADLG army. I believe these are Baueda one-piece castings.

Another bit of long-forgotten tidying up, casulaty markers for late C17 FoGR armies. The falling guys are decent, but I went a bit wild on the colours for the prone men!

I had a couple of spare bases for my huge 1/300th refurbishment project lying around, so after a bit of help from Twitter I worked out that these odd tanks were French AA variants of an AMX 13. I don't have too many French tanks but now they do have some AA cover (in a few specific years)

I'd also had this robot lying around, as a keyring toy from Japan. He is now based up and ready to fight alongside my 1/300th SF forces

Another 1/300th refurb is this Iranian F5E fighter. 

Super-clean paint job, as the Iranians F5's don't get to see much action so probably don't get dirty!

These 3 huns are I think Old Glory - I have a handful of bases set up as LH that go with my Roman 28mm army so these may have been the three spares to make up a Medium Cavalry base

In 15mm, a fairly generic chariot with Royal archer from Essex. This brings the total of these types of chariot up to 4 in my collection, which means they can be an allied contingent for any of my proper biblical armies, or the not-quite-Egyptian chariots in a Sea Peoples army. I did the "light blue in dark blue stripe" effect on these that I first did on the Egyptian Spearmen as well

 I might even try and get away with them as Assyrian Light Chariots if I try the non-Sargonid verison of that army sometime.

These are 12 plastic Perry medieval infantry kitbashed together with odd arms and spears from the GB Roman set to give me some proper Medieval Spearmen or (perhaps) Javelinmen, as my other Medieval  28mm Medium Infantry are pretty clearly carrying polearms.

I suspect this may be a Footsore or Crusader from North Star Norman general - he's been done for ages, just awaiting basing, so finally he is now complete.
 

These were the mad bit - some military Gnomes from Brigade Games in the US that I picked up at Cold Wars.

They are the Swiss Gnome of Zurich (throwing Swiss CHeese), a Kaiser Gnome (hurling beer steins as hand grenades) and a Russian Czar Gnome. I was very pleased with the painted beer stein effect I achieved with the German guy - its very impressionistic, but it does sort of work I think.

Totally bonkers, but too hard to resist, these comedy chaps will be leading some of my ADLG armies in the near future!

A couple of mounted Greek officers from the Captains Games range picked up in January to accomany the Museum Z Hoplites if they ever need a separate commander

The "other" light gun that came in the pack of 2 guns and crew from Front Rank along with the heavy gun I used at Roll Call last year - showing how long this has hung on in the pile!

The crew have a shield bearer who I set up protecting the powder box from sparks.

4 dark age LH which I think may be Footsore, not quite finished but they were close enough to varnish at the same time as the rest.

 They are a bit too armoured to be LH to my reckoning, but as there are 4 of them and their horses are way too small to mix with the GB plastics in my Gothic army they are now higher quality LH javelinmen!

And here's the lot again - eclectic to say the least!