Museum Z-Range Gallowglass

 Earlier this year I dithered for a while before just sneaking into the end of the Museum Miniatures January sale to pick up some mail-clad, axe-waving figures to use as Galloglass / Galloghalich / Gallogalisghaghs / whatever, those post-Viking 2-handed axemen who feature in Irish and Scottish armies of the early Medieval period. 

I've been using Vikings for these guys when I've dropped an army on table, but it isn't quite right and with some decent looking figures in Museum's new Z range Saxons that looked like they would fit I decided to drop some cash and buy on in there with some packs of 15/ASX13 Dark Ages double handed axe plus a few more Saxon range figures for added variety (as the ASX13 only has 3 poses) 

I decided to go old-school with these and paint them up with a black undercoat and "normal" paints, partly just to make sure I could remember how to do it in this age of Contrasts and Washes! 

They start off on lolly sticks with a Halfords black undercoat, and the main colours you can see here are:

• Vallejo Ivory (the off-white)
• Warlord Fanatic White
• Warlord Army Green
• Warlord Abomination Gore (dark red) 
• Warlord Fanatic Gunmetal
• Warlord Fanatic Leather Brown
• Warlord Deep Blue

Given this is a fairly limited pallette I was quite pleased with the mix of coherence and variety this set of paints achieved.

The first really surprising thing about these figures was that they all have shields on their backs! 

Having looked again at the pictures of the renders on Museum's site, you can just about make out the shields, but I'd honestly not noticed them when I bought them, as all of the shots are taken from the front angle of the figures which very much hides the shields. 

This is a mixed blessing - being Galloglass I didn't really want them to have shields, but then again my opponent won't really see them anyway ... and I will get to see my own handiwork in painting them, which is a rare bonus too! 

From the front..

Quite different from the front and the back! 

And here are the "lightbox" photos of the finished set.

Overall I'm really pleased with them. Unlike some recent Museum purchases the casting on these really does stand up to scrutiny and matches the quality and detail of the 3D renders on the site - even if my own painting can't meet that same standard!

One final note of weirdness was that I had left out some figures from this batch, as they mostly had very distinctive "Saxon" helmets, and were mostly spear-armed. 

I undercoated these leftovers in white to see what they would have looked like done in Contrasts, and that's when I noticed that some of the figures seemed to be a very different scale to the rest - notably the little trumpeter in the same pack (15/ASX91 Anglo Saxon Med Command) as a much larger axeman and spearman 

You can see the trumpeter, and the three guys to the left of him in this photo all from the same pack and range  - all of the spearmen here are much bigger than the childlike trumpeter. 

I used another trumpeter figure in with the main set of figures and he doesn't look out of place or scale at all, so I'm not quiet sure why these spearmen are so huge when figures in the same range (and pack!) are much larger?

Who knows.. ! 

 

The Anglo-Saxons invade .. Southend!

The first ever Southern League ADLG event to take place in Southend on Sea took plce recently, and was appositely themed around the year of the Battle of Benfleet, in which the Anglo Saxons kicked the Vikings out of Essex - at least temporarily - and so I decided this was an omen worth embracing by taking an Anglo-Saxon army myself! 

The army was made up of a load of 15mm Anglo Saxons/Vikings/generic Dark Age geezers that I'd rebased during lockdown, and a 3-game event where they would be thematically appropriate was ideal, especially as they were not likely to be all that good.

The event being at Southend also gave me an opportunity to inflict multiple references to both Billy Bragg and Danny Dyer on an unsuspecting wargames population and viewership - a gift that keeps on giving throughout the 3 videos in this competition report. 

Having decided that a night out in Southend on Sea was unmissable, there is also some local tourism involved in the reports

Many thanks again to the Southend Wargames Club for hosting us in their fabulous games bunker too!

 (You'll also no doubt be pleased to know that the Essex branch of the McHugh Carpet Empire also get a welcome plug). 

Enjoy the videos!