Newline Designs "Hittite" Chariots

Newline Designs make some of the best value (and actually, "best" by any criteria) 28mm Biblical figures out there IMO, and I have previously bought a near-full Later Assyrian army from them which has taken to the competitive tabletop on several occasions.

With a couple more events coming up this year where the Assyrians could potentially appear I have been looking at adding some 2-horse chariots to my army in order to repurpose it as an "Early" Assyrian force, getting some more usage out of the many infantry, cavalry and chariots who have done such sterling service as Later Assyrians/Sargonids over the last few years. 

Unfortunately Newline don't make "Assyrian" two horse chariots, and their 4-horse ones are so hefty that it's impossible to imagine two horses pulling them at all, never mind at speed over a battlefield... so a bit of morphing and imagination was needed as I bought a set of three "Hittite" chariots for the princely sum of just £24 to repurpose as Assyrians.

And here they are - well, almost.. 

As you can see I have used some "wallpaper" on the fronts of the cabs to make them look a bit more like my existing Assyrian troops. 

These chariots come with three crew, a driver and two spearmen. In ADLG the crew for Assyrian chariots are archers, so I have some Assyrian bowmen on order to slot into these cabs at a later date.

I elected to use Contrast paints for part of the colour scheme for these - my Assyrians are in block colours, but I do like the more washed out effect for wood grain which is cast onto the model - it reallt picks out the grain nicely.

Here you can just about see where I have magnetized the javelin-armed crew members either to the base of the chariot, or in some cases to the side walls.

The idea is to allow them to be swapped out for the Assyrian archers when they arrive, and also to use up some of the large number of rare earth mini magnets I seem to have acquired with no real plan as to how to use them over the years! 

Of course, doing it this way opens up the oppotyunity for these three to become the nucleus of a Hittite army in future as well.. which with Newline's annual sale knocking 25% off of these beasties, making them a ridiculous £6 each (compared to Foundry's eye-watering £18 per single chariot!) is a real possibility in future!

This slightly darker, more solid-paint model seems to have had some frosting on the wallpaper when the matt varnish was being sprayed, which I didn't notice as I rushed them to the lightbox. 

 

Another coat of brush-on matt varnish should hopefully fix it. 

Some very nice models indeed, and amazing value to boot!

Assyrian Beachhead! 5 Video Battle Reports

Back at the start (or maybe even just before) of Lockdown I'd painted up a 28mm Assyrian army, and used it with some success at Roll Call as well - however for Beachhead 2023, in a Biblical & Early Classical period I had initially hoped to field a 15mm Hittite army rebuilt from some of the last knockings and scraps of Clive's Stash. 

Odd numbers in both 15mm and 25mm periods put paid to that idea, leaving the Hittites in the drawer and me floating across into 25mm to even up numbers using pretty much that same Assyrian army that had done quite well in 2022. 

The army list I used this time was however a little different to the one that I had used at Roll Call 2022, as I was expecting to have to deal with more shooting from my opponents as a consequence of the more biblical-orientated theme - but in essence it was still pretty much the same. 

I also wanted to use more of my Heavy Infantry units, or which only 2 of the 4 had made it onto the  table - these 25mm Newline Designs figures are great, but they are kinda wasted if they only ever get to go on parade in the Really Useful Box Barracks!

To find out how this revised force actually did you now have 5 consecutive video battle reports to watch either on YouTube, or on the Madaxeman Website followed by a video showing all of the Assyrian figures in my collection.

Roll Call Reports - in Video Format

 After the success (over 600 views!) of the Beachhead video reports, and also with a rather extensive writeup of the 4-day trip to the Braubach tournament in the pipeline I've decided to put my 5 games at Roll Call out as a video as well.

You can therefore see in rather over-saturated detail the Mighty Assyrians take on some Galatians, Romans, Classical Indians, Warring States Chinese and finally the Seleucid Empire in 5 HD-quality badly-narrated reports which are available now on the Madaxeman YouTube Channel.

 Yes, you can now spend just under an hour waiting for the theme tune to crop up and interrupt my inane ramblings as I try and graft some semblance of tactical nous onto the generally shambolic shufflings of the 28mm army of Assyria (which has also featured heavily on this blog after being painted during lockdown).   

As usual, the army lists are all in the Wiki, and in case you're wondering, the figures are from the excellent but oft-overlooked Newline Designs range, with dismounted generals from Foundry

Newline Assyrian Chariots - the army is complete!

Finally, in this three part 28mm Biblical special, the Chariotry - the strike force of the army weighing in at a very reasonable ₤22/each.

I'd picked up four chariots, as that's the maximum number allowed in the ADLG Assyrian & Sargonid list. As you'll see here I used the near-revolutionary (yet still blindingly obvious when you think of) it technique of printing off some pictures from the internet and wallpapering the designs onto the big slab sides of the chariot boxes.

The four crew have plenty of room to walk around in the cab, so they four chariots could be posed in a variety of different ways - they sure aren't any sort of tight fitting jigsaw puzzle that only goes together in one formation, allowing you to put even more variety into the army by varying the poses.

There are loads more images on the main website of these chariots, together with the Infantry and Cavalry which you can reach via this link 

Newline Assyrian Cavalry - the 28mm Assyrians, Part II

OK, so here are the Cavalry. Not quite as good painting-wise as the foot, as I'm a bit lazy/unskilled on the whole "horse painting" front but the mass effect I think is OK.

The Newline figures themselves are also still great, as even with only one set of cavalry the three different poses in the pack, as well as separate shields and spears still give a decent variety.

These 12 horses are supposed to be pulling chariots - I made a mistake in mixing them all up on the undercoating table, and then compounded that mistake by mis-counting how many of each type of horse I actually had (15 "normal" ones and 16 "chariot pulling" ones).

By the time I'd realised I'd painted them up it was too late to go back and change them. It does mean these guys have some serious armour around the neck of each horse though, which is probably a win for them

(Mercenary Skythians)

The rest of the photos are at: https://www.madaxeman.com/main/28mm_Assyrian_Cavalry.php

(Chariots coming up when I upload the photos... )

Assyria Uber Alles (scales..)

Over the last few days I've managed to get a few more of the Newline Designs Assyrians (that I only bought in July...) painted up for a Biblical Era L'Art de la Guerre army I plan to try and use next year, all of whom match the 15mm Museum Miniatures army I already have.

They are all infantry, which is down to me prioritizing them over the rather more important cavalry and chariots in this army - and here they are, along with some of their smaller brothers in arms!

Newline 28mm Assyrians - the test batch

Lacking a 28mm Biblical army, I've been dithering about picking up an Assyrian army for some time now, on the basis that it is a decent list which I've used in 15mm with some degree of success, and more importantly that it's small, so hopefully not too expensive.

With multiple hoverings over the Foundry website failing to convince me I wanted the army enough to spend Foundry prices (£22 for a chariot! Ouch!), whilst browsing the traders at at the recent Attack! show in Devizes I stumbled across Newline Designs, who I'd mostly associated with 20mm ranges in the past but who also have a substantial range of 25/8mm figures as well.

They had a great value Assyrian Army pack (2 chariots, 9 Cavalry, 80-odd foot for about £75 from memory), with a special show offer of 20% off as well on the pack and any extras.. so a sub-£100 Assyrian Army was immediately bought!

So far I've only painted up a few figures just to see how they come out (the whole army will be a more production-line project), and I've also taken the "same army, different scales" principle to it's logical extreme by painting them up exactly the same as my 15mm Assyrians !

And here they are, next to the Museum 15mm Assyrians, and also some Foundry Commanders that I use in my 15mm army.

They are still a WiP project - I've not even done a full MF base of 6 infantry

The Newline figures come with figure-metal spears which I plan to replace with wire ones - like this guy. The sword is also from the bits box - all the Newline guys come with spears.

Here they are with the Museum 15mm figures

Same shield patterns - not too difficult to be honest...

The Armoured Slingers are over-supplied for ADLG armies in the Newline army pack, but the handful of spares will fill in as back rank figures in bigger units of Line Infantry

A generous three poses of bowmen - here's two of them.

This is the Newline chaps next to some Foundry Officers - a great match on size and body mass as well. The Newline guys look a bit shorter here, but their bases are lacking in magnabase so they are a little shorter due to that reason, not figure height.

Here are the Newline slingers and some more Foundry officers with equal height basing. A near perfect match - apart from on price!

Once the spears arrive I'll get cracking on the Assyrian production line - even these 28mm Chariots will end up with scaled-up versions of the same "wallpaper" I used on the earlier, smaller 15mm versions.