Showing posts with label Gladiator Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gladiator Games. Show all posts

17 Mar 2021

Cooking up ADLG lists for... Fighting 15's

As regular listeners to the Madaxeman.com Podcast will know, Andy of "Podcast Quiz" fame is a longtime friend of Ian at UK manufacturer and retailer Fighting 15's 

(Late Roman Light Horse Bowmen from the Gladiator range)

Through that connection I recently had a request from Ian to see if I could help him in drawing up some ADLG army lists for some of the Gladiator Games range of 15mm ancients figures he now produces, so he could then use those lists as the basis for discounted, ready-made army packs.

The parameters were simple, yet intriguing - construct a viable ADLG list using some of the Gladiator Games ranges using at most 128 "figures" (as in, mounted count as 2 figures, foot count as as 1 each), ... and also make sure that the army featured the right multiples of figures so that they could also work reasonably well as starter packs for unit-based rulesets other than ADLG.

It was an interesting challenge which piqued my curiosity - and if the end result was going to be that ADLG gamers would have an option to buy some decent figures at lower cost and with less wasteage, what was not to like ?! 

In addition to designing these "128" figure lists, Ian then set me the exra challenge of coming up with "Booster" packs to add more options to the baseline starter lists... of course, these also had their own rules, which in this case was that they needed to be 32 "figures" strong.

Over the last couple of weeks therefore I've been playing around with the Online Army Builder to try and conjure up some credible, viable ADLG starter armies that keep to Ian's "128 figures" and "32 figures" parameters - and I'm glad to report that it is possible, and the lists and boosters I've conjured up actually seem perfectly reasonable to boot. 

Ian liked the work I did for him, and has now reorganised some of the Gladiator moulds and been busily casting up new batches of figures such that the first batch of ADLG Ready Made Army Packs have now started to appear on the Fighting 15's Website.

The initial two lists I looked at were Late Romans and Huns, which are now both on sale at £39.95 for around 128 metal figures - incidentally working out at just 31p per figure, one of the best per-figure prices for any current 15mm range (which listeners to the Podcast will know is a hot-button topic for us).

The first two lists to be finished are Hunnic and Late Imperial Roman 

The Huns:

A straightforward list to build to be honest, especially as the figures are extremely interchangeable - I took the view that the LH and MCv can mix figures and weapons with impunity, and as long as the HCv are visibly different to the lighter-equipped horsemen it all kinda works. This is how it all panned out;

The Booster Pack also worked out well within the "32" limit, as that allowed the Gothic Foot option to be added with 4 units of hairy infantry including command figures, and the same pack works with the Late Roman army as well. There are also Herul and Gepid Cavalry in discounted booster pack that works for both armies too.   

(Hunnic command from the Gladiator range)

The Late Romans:

There are lots of ways to build a LIR list, some more unusual than others, but as a baseline starter army I thought that having a mix of Legions & Auxilia plus a decent mounted wing was probably the way to go. This was what I ended up with;

The mounted wing is arguably a smidge over-sized, but is still a legitimate way to build out an army. Ian's requirement to also try and keep to multiples of figure types that wouldn't be too out of place in other unit-based rulesets is what drove the call on this front, however having a Roman list which isn't all Legions and Auxilia does make it a bit more interesting to play with so that's not a bad outcome anyway I suspect. 

The army list is written in a way which makes "32"-strong booster packs really easy however, so there is an option for 32 Gothic Foederate foot, and then another pack with a couple of extra units of Auxilia and Legions too. 

(Late Roman Legionary from the Gladiator range)

Meso-Americans are now also available I understand, and we're planning a podcast on some of the lists as well in the next couple of weeks - so watch out for those too! 

5 Mar 2021

Refurbished Teutonics & Medievals

 With a massive stack of bases from Pendraken's Minibits offshoot in my possession I've been taking a short break from painting and instead doing some upgrade and refurbishment work on a whole load of under-loved and slightly tired looking older figures recently. 

It not only makes a change from painting, but upgrading the basing and tidying up long lost figures does mean you can achieve a result really quickly!

The latest batch to into the ankle-deep water bath are some medievals, from Roundway and Fighting 15's Gladiator Games ranges (more of which later!) which I have rebased and added a few extra bits to as well.

These figures are mostly (all?) from the Gladiator Games Crusades ranges, listed as "Frankish" crusading dismounted knights and spearmen. 

Rebasing them allowed me to go over some of their clothing which had gotten a little faded in the last, erm, 20+ years !

These are also Gladiator Games crossbowmen - some are in the Frankish Crusades range, others in their Feudal and Medieval sections. 

The pavises are home made.

 I used 2 glued together business cards to get a pavise of the right thickness, then added a further thin strip of business card, over which I glued printed off pictures of some "real" reneactor pavises I found on Pinterest. 


The central added strip of card gives the finished pavise some depth and 3D-type effect, as a simple flat panel just doesn't really look right somehow.

I added in a few spearmen and officers to make the pavisiers a bit more, well, combatitive-looking too.

The level of detail you can get with a fairly normal modern printer is way beyond what I could manage myself with a brush - these ones did have a few blobs of gold and bronze added to them though, so there is some artistry there on my part!

These are halberdiers from Roundway - originally they were based on 2 DBx bases 4 men across, but in transferring them to ADLG double-ranked bases I've put 7 figures on each base as it still looks like a close formation unit but with a bit more space to see the figures - and swing a halberd around too!

These are my go-to generic "medieval halberdiers" for mamy armies. 

They are also almost colourful enough to play as Swiss if needed.

Basing them as 7's left four spare figures, so adding in a couple of spare Essex halberdiers also gave me an extra Medium Foot halberdier - who almost certanly will be Swiss at some point!

Here's the double-double ranked version of all 28 of them.
 

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