Kegworth Codgers - the Battle Reports

 This year's Kegworth Codgers event was themed for the years in which Kegworth Church was (broadly speaking) built, namely 1200-1299, with a mix of Christian and non-Christian armies who would have clashed in Europe and the Middle East being permitted.

With mostly "Christian" armies entered, I opted to balance the books a little with a Berber army, also fitting in 2 Almughavars which were newly painted.

This meant I ended up with a list who's key attributes were a solid core of spearmen, with a more punchy Almughavars + Javelinmen block to take on terrain and elephants (of which it turned out there were none), a wing command with Medium Cavalry Javelin Elite and some supporting foot, and a third command of 3 Impetuous Medium Knights in reserve to find a suitable gap to aim for and punch through - in theory! 

So, with a trip up the M1 achieved, and a decent few pints on the Monday evening before this midweek extravaganza began, The 2025 Kegworth Codgers Competition was soon playing host to the Berbers.

The reports from all 5 games are now available in video format, either on YouTube or on this website.  

Byzantine Cavalry - the never ending army!

 I now seem to be almost there with collecting countless legions of Byzantine Cavalry to allow me to make up almost all of the Byzantine lists in ADLG - this time it's some "kite shielded" very late ones which I think of as being Nikephorian types, but which Forged in Battle seem to have decided are Thematics. 

The product code on their website for these chaps is a bit of a mix of WE-BT03 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Kavallarioi EHC bow which provides the archers and horses, and some lance-armed riders from the pack of WE-BT02 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Kavallarioi EHC (which look to be exactly the same riders as those in WE-BT04).

Mixing the two packs gives me cavalry units with both bows and lances, which matches their capabilities in the ADLG army lists.  

 Kite shields began appearing in Byzantine art and military texts around the mid-10th to mid-12th centuries, placing them very much in the Nikephorian period, and its those which give these chaps their distinctive look.

These are again using the LBMS shield transfers from Forged in Battle, which have also appeared on some of the Skoutatoi I painted up some time ago. 

Everything here is done with a white base coat, using GW Contrast paints for the brown and black horses, and Army Painter Speedpaint Holy White for the greys as well as a "2nd undercoat" for the one white horse too. 

I may use these as "medium" cavalry, and so I used Army Painter Hardened Leather Speedpaint on the shoulder and body armour that looks like it could be designed to be leather, although there is still quite  a lot of gunmetal - in this case Enchanted Steel Army Painter Speedpaint, which I am becoming a bit of a convert to as it doesn't need a base coat of black to work (unlike my more traditional drybrushed gunmetal approach).

The cavalrymen have base-specific colours on their tunics - this allows me in theory to mix them up across different commands and tell them apart, without being too intrusive or jarring. 

I am still somewhat puzzled by this shield transfer - it looks like it's missing a shield boss or something, but it is a specific transfer for this range and the shields don't have bosses, so perhaps its just a design that I don't quite understand!

The Army Painter Speedpaint Hardened Leather really pings when seen from the back - I also used it for the horses straps and reins, as it self-blacklines really effectively for minimal effort. 

 

Top Tier Nikephorians

 In what may possibly be the final Byzantine Cavalry installment, here are the "Elite" Nikephorian (and perhaps a little later too) mixed bow/lance cavalry all from Forged in Battle.

As with the previous set, these are a mix of archer figures from one pack, and lance armed guys from another, both in the "Thematic" range.

Being half-armoured marks them out on the tabletop as being either "Elite", or "Heavy cavalry" - or indeed perhaps both. 

The colours are the same as for the previous set, although on this picture you can also see some of the bow cases, which are - for no scientific or historical reason - GWs Contrast Akhelion Green, which pools nicely to give a real depth of colour to help pick out the small details of bowcases on these figures. 

I had 8 remaining LBMS kite shield transfers when I did this set, which looked idea - but having cut them all out and stuck them on I suddenly noticed that the trumpeter with the Commander had a hidden shield slung on his back - which meant that this set of 8 was in fact a set of 9 ! 

Mustering all my bravery, a new paint brush, and secure in the knowledge that a shield on the back of a cavalryman would only ever really be seen by me (and from a distance of a couple of feet at best), I attempted to create a "trompe l'oeil" impression of the LBMS design for the vacant shield.

This close up it's clearly not the same, but in all honesty I'm pretty dammed prooud of even being able to get this close - and at tabletop distances with my eyesight its as close to perfect as you can hope for!

The Skoutatoi

If you'd been worried that I hadn't posted any pictures of Byzantines in 15mm for a couple of weeks, then worry no more, as here come the Skoutatoi for my Byantine army! 

FiB tend to chuck in a couple of extra figures into each "24" blister pack, to leave the officers and standard bearers as extras.  

I used the extras up by making a couple of bases with 5 spearmen in the front rank rather than the usual 4, with the theory that I can occasionally use these bases as "supported spearmen", or just call them even more Skoutatoi as needed, depending on the design of the army list.

Shields are of course LBMS transfers, sold to me by Forged in Battle. 

This padded armour is Warlord Games Blood Red from their Speedpaint set.

TheLBMS transfers are smaller than the shields by some margin, so these blue 'blokes face' ones I painted in with a dark blue (and also a mached red) up to the edges of the shields.

This armour is GW Aggaros Dunes contrast type paint. One of my favourite contrast colours. 

These rather odd looking shield transfers seem to be missing a bit  - possibly a cutout for a shield boss? 

Anyways, as they too didn't reach to the edge of the shield I painted in a red edge to each shield before sticking on the transfer (which already has a red edge...)

That also didn't really look right, so I then added an outer edge of yellow with an AK paint pen, which I am finding is much easier to use for touchup than a brush.

This armour is GW Militarum Green - a contrast type paint.

Viewed from above this close up you can see a load of casting lines that I perhaps should have spent more time shaving off .. but, "three foot rule" and all that I guess ?!

An extra shield transfer was cut down and used for the standard bearer. 

Forged in Battle Byzantine Infantry Skirmishers

 Now you're probably sick of seeing horses for my Byzantines, here are some pedestians! 

Yes, the Byzantine armies can often have a handful of foot slingers, archers, and javelinmen - including, in ADLG terms, some actual proper Medium Foot javelineers, and fortunately FiB do a pack of mixed javelins and slings to make up these chaps. 

The pack in question is WE-BE08 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Psiloi (Slingers (12) & Javelins (12), which has rather more slingers than is needed in ADLG, but fewer javelinmen. 

My solution was to base up a mix of Light Infantry with slings and javelins, and then to make up 3 bases of Medium Javelineers using 3 javelin figures and two slingers lurking behind them.

I've painted them in three distinct schemes, which I suspect will help as it seems likely that a slinger and a javelin light foot will be found in each of the three commands in my arm - when it gets on table eventually. 

I also didn't go with shield designs on these, partly as they are lower class troops so may not have invested as much time and effort in shield designs, but mainly as the shields are pretty small, so it would have been too hard to do a decent design on them!

 

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 6

 In this rather large batch of cavalry you will already have spotted a bit of mix-and-match going on in order to make up various types of lance and bow armed horsemen. 

That process, of maxing out the "cavalry", did still leave me with a handful of spare figures to create some actual "light cavalry" - with any shortfall I may need in army design terms being made up by repurposing some of my old Essex Late Roman horse archers if required.

So, here are the dregs, sorry, the Light Horse Skirmishers and Scouts for the Byzantines!

One of the bonuses of ADLG (or indeed any DBX set) is not having to paint up "units" of lots of identical figures, and so I have gone with 3 different uniforms for these chaps to allow them to be clearly identified as beelonging to different commands on-table.   

There are various figures from WE-BE05 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Hyperkerastai (Bow), again using the same paints as in the first post in this set of 6. 

Hopefully these photos, and my witterings about painting them have been of use - if you want to look at more Byzantines these, and many other photos of other ranges, can be browsed in the 15mm Gallery on the Madaxeman website.

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 5

 With teeny-tiny shields, and then slightly larger shields having been ticked off, its now time for the larger almost-Roman-era shields to appear in this ongoing series of Forged in Battle Byzantine cavalry. 

The lance-armed amongst the following chaps are from WE-BE03 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Kavallarioi Lancers, with paints etc being done as per the information in the first post in this sequence. 

FiB tend to include more riders than horses in their packs, so typically you get 12 horses but 2-3 extra riders, in the shape of officer / commander types. This means a lot of included commanders !

This shield has come out pretty well IMO - it is a flat white base coat with Yanden Yellow sloshed all over it, and a red rim applied in real paint - possibly Vallejo Scarlet? The fairly half-hearted shield design was done using a red AK paint pen 

The archers are from WE-BE04 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Kavallarioi Bow

Pretty much all of the shield "patterns" were done with the AK paint pens - worth noting how well and how clearly the yellow design on a red background at the back left of this formation (as you look at them) has some out, as often yellows do fare away on a darker background.

The final trache of cavalry from this painting batch is up in a few days time. 

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 4

 In the 4th tranche of photos of my newly-minted Forged in Battle Byzantines come some even more bow-tastic horsemen, armed with more bows than lances this time.

The idea of basing them up as 2+1 in this way is to allow me to represent the lower quality units in the Byzantine military panoply - the more bows per base, the lower the quality of the unit. 

All paints etc as per the first post in this sequence.

As previously, the archers are from WE-BE05 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Hyperkerastai (Bow), with lancers from WE-BT07 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Prokousatores (Lance & Bow Armed).

I didn't do anything design-wise with these shields - as they are meant to be lower quality troops they just get given a basic shield from the armoury (and the pose of the lancer figure in the centre of each base means you can hadly see the face of the shield anyway).

More to come soon.

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 3

The third tranche of FiB cavalry now hits the screens, with some actual lance and bow armed riders this time to pad out the non-bow-armed "lance-and-bow" cavalry from earlier this week! 

These are a mix of two packs - WE-BT07 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Prokousatores (Lance & Bow Armed) for the lancers, and archers drawn from WE-BE04 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Kavallarioi Bow and WE-BE05 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Hyperkerastai (Bow).

The shield designs (using the word "design" somewhat laughingly..) are hand-drawn using the AK paint pens. They have fairly soft fibre tips so even now, after fairly limited usage, I am unsure whether they will have retained enough sharpness in their nibs to allow me to recreate these rather lacklustre attempts at a Chi Rho design.

And here are the chaps with their sword-waving commanders as well. 

More cavalry incoming soon.