Welcome to the Madaxeman.com Wargaming Websites own Blogger-powered Blog. It carries updates of all the latest Ancients, Renaissance, Malifaux, WW2, Ultra-modern, ACW and other wargaming periods and projects as soon as they are added to Madaxeman.com.
This blog is part of Madaxeman.com. Items posted here automatically appear as news items on the front page of Madaxeman.com.
It's a standard Blogger Blog, so if you have a Blog or Google ID you can follow Madaxeman.com like any other blog.
Blog Site Pageviews
Followers
Affiliate Links
When you click on links to various merchants on this site and Madaxeman.com and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network
Having lent my 28mm Patrician Roman army to someone to use at last year's Warfare ADLG event, actually seeing this venerable army on table gave me a pang of nostalgia for what was one of my very first 28mm ancients armies (OK, of my "second wind" of buying and painting 28mm figures anyway).
Having painted up lots more stuff since then I'd sort of convinced myself that these guys were just, well, not all that nice, and a little too overindulged on the "soft tone Army Painter wash" front to make them look overly battle-worn.
The reality on the Farnborough tabletop however was much brighter and nicer than I remembered, with the notable exception of the always-shoehorned-in "gothic" foot I used as Foederate infantry.
These guys were actually Dark Ages Scots from Old Glory - nice enough figures, and perfectly fine playing at being Vikings, Saxons or a lot of other hairy barbarians - but always a bit of a stretch when used as Frankish axemen in a Late Roman army.
With Wargames Atlantic releasing a new "they could be anything" box of Romano-Barbarian warriors around that time I immediately resolved to buy a set and try and paint up some properly "Frankish" infantry to go with my Romans, but using a slightly brighter colour palette (OK, not so much ink wash) to give them a bit more ping.
And these are the results:
The front rank are all Wargames Atlantic figures from their Dark Ages Army Builder set, painted with "Breton" stripey tunics and given a random range of shields and weapons - mostly axes to make them Franks.
All of the stripes have been done with the classic "fat dark line, thinner lighther line" technique using paints from the newish Army Painter Fanatic 6-part triad ranges.
The guys at the back are an odd bunch - picked up from a Warlord stand at a show, they were a blister of "Warlord Resin" figures which I think are mostly from an "SPQR: Dacia & Sarmatia - Dacian Tribesmen with javelins" set, which came with a few slingers as well.
These resin figures came with open hands making it a simple job for me to add in some axes from the Wargames Atlantic sprue (and the bits box) to make them into "Franks"
The shield patterns are also a mix - the "Roman" one is a LBMS transfer on a Gripping Beast plastic shield, whereas the others are waterslide transfers from Battle Flag, which don't quite fit on the Wargames Atlantic round shields but are close enough that with a bit of blending of paint colours and some layers of varnish to seal them in they just about work better than me trying to paint them myself.
Here's a "YouTube Shorts" video of them rotating slowly on a turntable.
All in all I'm pretty happy with them, and I will be painting up a few more bases to ake up a decent sized block of Frankish infantry to fight alongside my long-neglected Late Romans in the coming months.
Looking more specifically at the Wargames Atlantic figures, they are, if truth be told, perhaps a smidge on the bland side when it comes to variety of dynamic poses - and there isn't a huge amount of deeply cut detail on them either. As such, using "proper" layered painting techniques like I did on these ones is very much the way to go I think (rather than relying on washes and Speedpaints).
But, at £30 for 48 perfectly servicable figures, honestly, what's not to like - especially if they can be padded out with some random bits-box purchases from the discount bin at a show too!
Having posted some pictires of some rather large 15mm War Wagons earlier this year, now is the time for something genuinely massive - a 28mm War Wagon.
A few quid via PayPal later and I was the proud owner of two handily generic wagons, painted far better than I could ever hope to do myself - all they really needed now was some crew!
The solution to that was a couple of sprues of Perry Medieval Mercenaries from a box shared between me and Dave from the Podcast in my ongoing efforts to tempt him into painting 25mm.
This was enough for two wagons, and these are the first lot of crew, stuck to a couple of sawn-off lollipop sticks to give a genuine wood effect ont the cab floor (yeah sure..).
And here they are in the first wagon:
Matching the style of the wagon meant eschewing Contrasts for these guys, and it has shown me that perhaps I need to invest in some proper "triads" of paints going forward as the different reds and yellows I own don't seem to have too much difference once they are layered onto the crews' clothing.
The next wagon is kinda green, so to match that I am definately going to by some new paints as all my own greens are either rather WW2, or are super-bright for painting Chinese and Eastern/Asiatic ancient troops.
But, for now, I'm pretty happy with how well my guys match the pro-painted wagon.
This year's event at Beachhead 2025 L'Art de la Guerre 28mm competition allowed me to wheel out yet another Successor/Macedonian army from the collection, as this time my generic 28mm mostly-Victrix guys would be appearing as the Lysimachid Successors.
The event was a 5-game themed event in which everyone had to use at least 2 of Elephants, Camels or War Wagons - hence this rather odd AI-generated image of camels, elephants and a Victorian Bathing Machine seemingly converted into a War Wagon, posed by an English seaside resort pier!
Anyways, my choice was to take 2 Elephants, with some newly minted Victrix plastic kit elephants raring to get on table and a lack of either war wagons or camels in my 28mm collection also contributing significantly to my decision-making process.
I also wanted to use all 6 units of these 28mm Victrix Successor Pikemen figures I had gone through the effort and pain of assembling, and then painting - having only managed to field armies with 4 Pikemen units up until now.
Add in a vague plan to use all of the different Successor armies at some point in time and I ended up with the Early Successor Lysimachid list from the Battle of Ipsos.
After surviving the trip down to Bournemouth, and also a night in a rather cheaper-than-we-had-hoped hotel, Beachhead 2025 played host to the Lysimachid Successors in 5 different battles against the Carthaginians (elephants), Italian Communes (war wagons), Phyrrus of Epirus (elephants), the Classical Indians (take a wild stab in the dark why don't you?) and the Hussites of Jan Zizka (war wagons again, of course)!
The full set of 5 YouTube Video Battle reports from this fiesta of 28mm action, plus an accompanying episode of the Madaxeman Podcast are now all posted online for you to watch and listen to in various formats:
Having just gotten back from plating ADLG at Beachhead (where I somehow ended up 2nd in the 28mm pool with 3 wins and 2 defeats - go figure!), I have managed to quickly upload the "top 3" lists from the 15mm and 28mm competitions to the ADLG Wiki on this site.
As heralded last week, I used some magnets to allow the two Victrix elephants in their kit to be used with interchangeable crew and accoutrements (OK, shields clipped to the sides of the howdahs), giving me Successor, Numidian and Roman elephants, just not all at the same time..
This is the full set of clip-on shields and glued-together crew for the two elephants.
You can (just about) see how rare earth magnets have been glued in place between the feet of the guys, so they can connect to a small patch of steel paper that I have glued down inside the base of each howdah to hold the crew in place firmly enough for gaming use.
Here's the "Red & Green" elephant with Successor shields and crew attached - you can see this as a Numidian elephant in an earlier blog post.
I spent quite some time carefully doing the crew as they are the most visual and visible part of the model.
The elephant is quite a nice model and looks realistically proportioned and animated.
I copied the "bit in the middle" of the pike from the style I did for my Victrix pikemen - but for this figure that bit was included in the casting (moulding?) whereas for the pikemen I had to add it with rolled up paper!
The shield is attached with 2 magnets, as is the spear case at the back. I glued the magnets on the outside of the howdah for the shields, and then realised that they were strong enough to magnetize to another magnet through the walls of the howdah, so the spear case only has 1 maget outside and one on the inside wall of the howdah.
The "blue" elephant with blue crew.
The shield pattern was a transfer which I blended in with mixed paint to reach the rim of the shield.
Alwys worth adding eyes to elephants IMO - make sure to add dark black eyebrows too though or it just looks weird.
I snuck in a couple of 15mm shield transfers as a small bit of decoration on the blanket.
Here are both elephants togther in Successor kit.
And the Blue elephant with a very non-historical "Roman" shield and Roman crew.
I had these LBMS transfers going spare from a much older project, and while I know they are nowhere near the right period for a Republican Roman elephant they do have the advantage of being very "Roman", and also using up some shields and transfers I would otherwise have no need for!
They are now ready to take the field ...once I paint up the 100 or so Foundry legionaries !
Victrix sell a rather clever multi-use elephant kit, with 2 elephants and crew for Roman, Greek or Numidian armies all included.
For my Numidian allied contingent (for the ADLG lists) I have pulled together a set of Numidian crew and some magnetize-on shields, all of which can be added to an elephant to make it "Numidian", with the magnets meaning its not committed to that role full time.
The kit comes with 6 "halves" allowing you to set the 2 elephants up with different alignments and arrangements of legs.
As these are to be used for multiple armies with different crew I went for a very simple plain cloth on the back of the elephant, and block colours on the howdah.
LBMS do sell wraparound transfers for both, but that would have meant buying lots more identical elephants !
Rather irritatingly I had used up all of the dozen "animal skin" shield transfers in the LBMS/Victrix pack on the actual soldiery, so had to cobble together this rather not-quite-as-convincing hand painted set of skins for the two shields magnetized to the sides of the howdah.
Again the crew's javelins were replaced with plastic broom bristles, as these would certainly snap if you left the original Victrix ones in place and tried to actually use the elephant in gameplay.
The mahout's hook is also rather brittle and has already been broken off, shortened and glued during painting - long before getting into combat
Next up in the Numidian allied contingent (after the infantry) are the famed Numidian Light Horsemen.
These have been painted in exactly the same way as the infantrymen, with Speedpaint Holy White on a white base layer, topped off with Vallejo white for the clothing and a couple of layers of Darkoath Flesh Contrast for the skintones
Again I went for a fairly subdued and simple palette for the Commander, with a plain red cloak and red ribbons on the banner & standard.
The horses are just a straight layer of Contrast on white - the "black" horse is Black Templar.
LBMS transfers (these are however only sold by Victrix directly) for the win, with some blending and painting-over on the edges of the transfers to get them to wrap around the edges of the shields.
I kept the horses in the main fairly pale for that desert rider look - the rope is just Speedpaint Leather on the white base.
I did replace most of the spears with plastic broom bristles on these, as the Victrix spears are often rather flimsy so for ones that may get handled a more robust spear is better - even if drilling out the hands is a bit of a PITA sometimes.
.jpeg)
