Festive Persian Siege Towers...? OK, it's a stretch, but...

 OK, maybe not - but if you are prepared to stretch to a bit of Old Testament nonsense and have an Early Achaemenid Persian army you'll probably have wondered what to use for 15mm scale "Cyrus Mobile Towers" at some point in the past... and now, I may have found the answer!

Very recently Pendraken announced an MDF Siege Tower in 10mm scale, which a quick email to Leon revealed was less than 40mm wide, and so would fit on a standard DBx basing frontage - the key challenge for other towers I'd looked at in the past. 

At only a fiver a pop, I quickly ordered a couple and then set to with the wood glue to assemble the two of them. 

With Museum Miniatures releasing some new Persian Sparabara, my own Essex Persian infantry were already slated to be replaced in the new year anyway, but this project meant that some of them won a last-minute reprieve from eBay as I instead upcycled a few bases of mixed bow / pavise infantry for tower crew. 

I then added on some re-purposed Essex War Wagon horses to pull the towers (because I had them lying around with ADLG needing less wagons than previous rulesets), otherwise Museum's Draught Oxen might have been the ideal choice (although it looks like Essex "might" sell the wagon horses separately if you ask nicely too), and with the application of some printed-off "wallpaper" patterns (repeating the idea from my Assyrian Chariots of a few years ago) to give the towers a more detailed look than I could ever hope to paint and, well, Cyrus is your uncle! 

There's about a dozen crew inside each tower, and a couple on the base as well to keep the enemy away from the horses!

You can fit 2 standing Essex infantry on each of the three internal levels. I used the wallpaper on the pavises as well. 

This pattern is one of a number I've made available to download as a pdf from my site, but there are loads of images on Pinterest if you search for Persian or Assyrian Graphics.

The tower is painted in Citadel Magragge Blue - not sure if its still available but it is a nice strong dense dark blue. 

I glued the drop-down "bridge" in the open position to fit more crew in. I may add one of the Museum kneeling archers here too once I get round to buying them. 

Adding a different image on one of the front panels just about stops making the tower look like it's wearing pyjamas. I think.... 

The second tower I did in yellow, trying to blend in the yellow borders on this graphic from Pinterest. 

Here I used much more of a mix of graphics - not sure it's as effective though as the blue one. 

Part of the reason for using a mix of graphics was that the main one didn't scale down well to the smaller panels at the top of the tower.

Again, space on the drop-down bit for a kneeling archer.  

Even the 10mm ladders internally don't look too out of scale. 

This is a standard 40mm wide and 80mm deep DBx "war wagon" base.

• Get the Towers from Pendraken
• Download the Wallpaper
• Oxen from Museum
• Crew from Museum
• Crew from Essex
• Horses from Essex (maybe?)

Happy Christmas! 

  

15mm Xyston Paphlagonians & Takabara

There's plenty of early classical era armies which have a handful of "Persian Takabara", "Paphlagonian", "Arachosian" or other "Generic Eastern-ish Minor Nation" Medium Infantry, armed either with javelins or spears.  These guys are never vital, but often "nice to have" - especially as Javelinmen in L'Art de la Guerre to give an army a nice little anti-elephant force.

In the same Attack! purchase from Damian at Donnington as the recently-finished Egyptian Marines now come some Xyston Takabara and Paphlagonian infantry to fill that particular gap.

These figures have Thracian-style shields which need to be glued onto the figures (using my standard 2-part epoxy liquid metal).

The shields were close enough in shape that I was able to dig out some unused LBMS Thracian transfers - sadly I only had 4 left, meaning I had to actually paint the other ones myself (nightmare!)

The uniforms are done almost entirely in inks - not even washes, proper Windsor and Newton ink (amazon affilate link) on a white base coat.

This is a technique I've used on Persians in the past, as it gives a distinctive "silks" effect. There are only a handful of colours in use, namely Blue, Vridian, Deep Red and Peat Brown (the latter being on the leather gilets some of the guys are wearing, which were painted either leather brown or Skeleton Bone as a base colour).

The end result is a pretty bright and cheery set of unit, and with shields which don't look too badly out of place even with a few LBMS ones in the front rank as well.

The challenge with using ink as a main colour is that it doesn't fully dry - painting anything next to an inked area leads to the ink bleeding into the new, liquid colour.

That also makes applying varnish by brush almost impossible too - hence these not (yet) being matt varnished, and also not (yet) having painted leather straps as headbands on some of the figures.

My aim is to use a spray varnish instead of trying to brush one on, but at the moment it's too cold outside to risk spraying them.  After that they will look more matt, and be easier to handle.

Persians on Campaign

The annual Milton Keynes fest of wargaming saw the Persians of Cyrus take to the field in 5 ADLG battles - see how they fared on the swings and roundabouts of life in this series of geometrically accurate reports from Campaign 2018 

See how the Persians fared in a Civil War, against the Lydians, the Medes and the Babylonians (twice!) together with the usual mix of videos, comments and rules hints  

Massive Heeds, Sausages and Tie Fighters - ADLG from the NEC.

With this year's BHGS Challenge taking place in the galaxy-sized open spaces of Birmingham's NEC expo centre, the first army to be dropped to the planetary surface was also a brand new to the table outfit - the much-trailed Sassanid Persians.

Resplendent in their new livery, the "Sausages", as they have been affectionately known to generations of wargamers were certainly Feeling the Force as they deployed an army built around a massive Death Star, surrounded by horsemen with Massive Heeds (or those 'lightbulb' hats to be more precise).

To find out what happened, the best bet is to see if your local protocol droid will help you translate each of these 5 match reports into something sensible.

You can also listen to a podcast at the end of Battle Report # 4 to help you learn how to build a good Sassanid list in ADLG - which is much easier than having to ask a couple of favours from some guys who look just like Tuskan Raiders...

May the Sausages Be With You..!

The Sassanids are Coming!

For what might well be the first time in almost a decade I've just ordered myself a whole "new" 15mm Ancients army - Sassanid Persian - for ADLG.

To be honest I thought for a short while about just getting some Levy Spearmen, as I have plenty of "Arab" cavalry who could do service as Clibanarii at a pinch, as well as generic Light Horse and Light Infantry, and even some elephants who could be re-crewed easily enough... but a combination of really, really wanting some figures in those a-historical lightbulb hats, and the fact you can cook up an ADLG army in far fewer figures than it takes for FoG made me decide that now was the time to add one of the few truly distinctive armies to the collection. Having said that, I'll be recycling my Greek/Makedonian Cataphracts, or possible the Tibetans ones and also some of the other LF with javelins from other armies. Why go too crazy...?

The shopping list I was working to was based on being able to copy the lists currently in the ADLG Wiki (plus a bit more), which came out as about 8 bases of Clibanarii, 3 Elephants, 4 bases of Levy (going with 7 figures to a base so they can be 2 ranks of spears or 1 of Mob),  a couple of bases each of LH with Bows and Javelins and 3 Generals. So, a whole new army in about 20 bases!

After a bit of searching I have decided to go with 3 main manufacturers:

• Legio Heroica for most of the Clibanarii, Generals, and some LH and LF
• Irregular Miniatures for the Levy, the LH with Javelins and some different Generals
• Donnington, for the Elephants

I did also toy with the idea of Lurkio and Eureka as well but that would have involved splitting the order into too many small chunks - and also there is a finite amount I'm prepared to pay for Levy Spearmen figures, which Eureka, nice as they are, somewhat exceeded!

The orders are now all in, and hopefully the figures will be back and ready for priming in early October (after Derby when I pick up the Elephants from Donnington).

Painting progress will be reported here...

Saumur - Taking bows and arrows to a tank fight...

As L'Art de la Guerre continues it's inexorable advance in popularity right across the world (it's set to be the biggest competition at the upcoming "The Worlds" in Belgium later this month, with almost 50% more players, drawn from more countries than any other ruleset on offer there), the opportunity to take part in an overseas holiday competition was inevitably going to come around sooner rather than later - and where better do do so than the home of the rules, France, and an event held in one of the most amazing wargaming spaces imaginable - the French Tank Museum in Saumur in the stunning Loire Valley.

I had chosen to take an Early Achaemenid Persian army, mainly on the rationale that I had a lot of Sparabara figures that hadn't seen light of day in years as well as some new cavalry from Xyston (very nice) and Forged in Battle (not quite as impressive). The competition mandated an allied contingent too, which for the Persians was an armoured hoplite Greek command.

After a "fantastique" drive down to Saumur (after getting around the brain-bender of crossing the channel and going into Europe the day after the Brexit vote..) the competition est arrive, giving me 5 games in which to see if my ADLG knowledge and skills stood up to the test of playing against French experts, in French.

The end result was plenty of good learning experiences as various French players gave my army some stiff lessons about new and different ways to play (yes, barbarian armies are more than viable in ADLG!), and the even more surprising appearance of the use of "tactics" and "maneuver" by my forces as we battled to hang on in there and not get crushed underfoot

See for yourself how the Persians did in these "incroyable" 5 fully-featured battle reports ...

Faenza Game 2 now posted

Persians vs Romans, Kenneth is back....

Shadows in The Desert

The highly regarded "Shadows in The Desert" by Kaveh Farrokh, covering the Achaemenids, Parthians and Sassanids is now out in paperback in both the UK and US already. Amazon are selling it at 30% off list price.

• UK Version of Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War
• Us Amazon Version of Shadows in the Desert