Achilles & The Myrmidions in 15mm

 Having been reasonably succesful with a Mycenean army at Warfare in 2022, and then getting my hands on a proper Trojan Horse at the Alicante event some months later I am now of course tempted to wheel out the Myceneans again at a future event.

At Warfare one of the star units in my army was Achilles and his Myrmidions - but to be honest the figures were not especially "Myrmidion", being mostly these old-style Museum swordsmen sculpts with fairly generic shields.

 So, when Museum came out with a range of Myrmidions, and also Trojan hero figures in their new Z-Sculpts that suddenly seemed like a must-have addition to give me two new units of spiffy Myrmidions with very obvious Included Generals (aka Achilles) leading one of them. 

And here they are - most of the Heroes of the Trojan Age are clustered on the stand on the left, with standard Myrmidions on the right. 

The Heroes are slightly, but noticably bigger than the normal rather slim Myrmidions, and all have unique poses and equipment.

This front-on shot shows the size difference clearly. 

They are nice figures, but I did find them harder to paint than I had hoped as the detail on the figures is really very shallow, which makes spotting which areas to paint, and painting with washes and speedpaints much harder than it really should be.  

There are also some hard to understand elements in the design, especially the "woolly hats" which seem to have horns projecting though them - which to my mind would surely sit better on a metal helmet? 

Perhaps though I've not done enough research and the Myceneans actually had tea cosies over their helmets? 

Here they are from the rear - you can see where I have had to use layered shading to get some texture into the clothing as the figures didn't really do much for the Holy White ArmyPainter speedpaint on their own. 

So, all in all I think they have come out OK - but perhaps not as well as I initially hoped, partly as the detail on the figures isn't as deep as I would ideally have liked, and partly as I found that lack of detail frustrating and as such maybe didn't try as hard as I needed to to adopt the right painting approach for these guys. 

Having painted up a fair few of the Museum Z Sculpts in the last few years I am actually starting to look more critically at them in general, as my experience with these figures is starting to feel like a common thread across all of the others I've painted before now as well. 

Museums Z Ranges look great in the renders, they are nice poses, there's a whole lot to like about them, the price is good, the metal they use has a great pewter-like good quality too - but with so many of us increasingly relying on washes, Contrast and Speed paints to paint our figures, deeper slightly exaggerated details such as those seen on Xyston, or Forged in Battles' ranges are much easier to paint. Their deep details really do come up a treat - whereas some of the details on these Museum Z Sculpts almost seems to disappear even with just an undercoat. 

If only the raised details and undercuts on the figures could just somehow be (I guess digitally?) "dialled up" a little, and perhaps some of the spears thickened too then the Z Range would be as good after people like me have finished painting them as they look in the 3D renders on the Museum site ! 

Roman Clibanarii

At Warfare last year I accidentally placed in the 15mm ADLG competition, for which part of the prize package was a blister of Forged in Battle 15mm Roman cavalry.

These chaps were Clibanarii on half armoured horses and armed with Kontos, bow & shield, from the Early Imperial era - a troop type I rather unusually didn't really own (unless you count my repeated and shameless morphing of Early Byzantine cavalry to fulfil that role when and if they were called upon to do so!).

So, I decided to paint these guys up, and to do so with ADLG specifically in mind, as in I painted all 4 bases in slightly different liveries so they could be used as units that would be easy to tell apart if they were in different commands. 

With the EIR and LIR armies only having a couple of these in each list the round dozen were also slightly overkill, so I managed to find some spare unarmoured horses to make one base up without horse armour to play the role of an Average unit, two as standard half-armoured Clibanari and one as a half-armoured unit with a commander figure for an embedded General.  

FiD do seem to throw in extra figures to each pack so I also have 2 spares left over, which are being baked into a separate Commander's base as we speak. 

They were done mostly in Contrast paints on a white base, using Snakebite Leather for the really visible shoulder and skirt leather armour, and (of course) drybrushed Gunmetal on a black base for the actual armour. I spent extra time with a magnifying glass doing some of the detail on their straps and uniforms (if you note the reins for example, they even have two layered colours of leather brown on them for extra depth), which I think has paid off pretty well given it's a level of committment I rarely approach with 15mm figures !

These also look a little more spiffy than usual in these photos as I took the pictures before matt varnishing them, so they still quite literally have a little more sparkle. 

I'm really pleased as to how they have come out, as these FiB figures really do take paint extremely well. The shields are the only "meh" bit, as I was lacking in inspiration and they are so small that it seemed like it would be both too hard to put any design on them. I also feared that any design I did conjure up might just look odd at that small a scale and size anyway.

The set is listed on the FiB site as a Random mix of 12 cavalry, including command. Figure code WE-RM09 Roman Clibanarii, 3rd century

The Idlers of March : a new podcast episode lands!

After a lengthy hiatus (since November last year!!) the Madaxeman Podcast is back with a new daffodil-sprouting episode recorded earlier this week at the very start of March 2023. 

Despite the absence of any badger-related content, we do manage to cover shopping expeditions (online and in real life), take a diversion into discussing the merits of Siocast/Warlord Resin/"I Can't believe It's Not Called Airfix" plastic figures, get into a bit of Spartacan slap-chop via an azimuth spray disaster, go all Judge Dredd, barely mention cricket nets, explain to Adam what he's been missing all this time as a sidebar to the great "Amos vs Drummer - Who's The Expanse's Greatest Ever Character (and why it's obviously Drummer)" debate, talk about castles in Spain and why the second most successful Berber invasion of the Iberian Peninsula landed in Valencia instead of Alicante, have a peek at Andy's trophy haul and (eventually) learn how he ended up out of pocket after accidentally buying his own birthday presents from his wife.

There's also a return for Andy's Quiz, with a brand new Two Ronnies-style twist this week as we accidentally give you the answers to the questions from the episode before last.

The pod can be listened to on Podbean, or by searching for The Madaxeman Podcast on any of your usual podcast providers' platforms

The Army of Spartacus in 15mm

 A few years ago (2019 to be exact) I won an unpainted army in a raffle at the L'Art de la Guerre Worlds in Rome. The figures were from Italian manufacturer Strategia Nova, and the prize was actually an Arab army, however as I have Arab figures in abundance I asked the guy who'd provided them if I could swap for a different army. 

And, of the ones he had, the Slave Revolt army of Spartacus looked like the best bet!

I've now finally finished painting the army (almost 4 years later!), and have uploaded them all to my website in their full Cinemascope glory, complete with an added YouTube video so you can watch the pictures that are already on my website flash past you in a matter of minutes as well. 

Some highlights are:

Basing underway

The Slaves

The better armed slaves 

Slaves in captured Roman equipment 

Spartacus leading his Gladiators

Big Spartacus 

More poorly armed rebelllious slaves

The Work in Progress.

You can see more shots of the finished and part-painted army on my website via that link, or watch a YouTube video of them too. 

I'm Spartacus!

 I've finally given into the inevitable and started painting a Spartacus Slave Revolt army that I won (in a raffle) at a competition in Rome way back in the summer of 2019 

They are 15mm, mostly Strategia et Tactica figures from Italy supplemented by some Forged in Battle chaps and no doubt all sorts of odds and ends from the bits box too by the time the army is done.

My intention was to do mostof them with a black undercoat and then try a zenithal (ie from above) white spray to try and pick up highlights before actually painting. 

The zenithal spray didn't really work as planned, I suspect because a can of spray paint doesnt eject the paint fast enough to "miss" the undercuts. This meant that they ended up part highlighted and partly undercoated in grey - probably an airbrush would have been better.

To compensate I added a white drybrush to them to really pick up the highlights so I could then aim for a mostly Contrast Paints approach

This is the first test batch taken to completion - I think I have (at last!) managed to make a half-decent job of putting faces on the little blighters as well, with a Darkoath Flesh undercoat and picking out the noses, chins, cheekbones and brows of these well-cast figures with a normal Vallejo skin tone flesh paint.

There are however many more to do... so watch out for them over the next few weeks and months!

A few more bits and pieces

The lead pile clearing continues with the following, some of which have actually been done for a while but haven't been photographed before now.

These are Blemmye cavalry from 15mm.co.uk - possibly to feature as African Kingdoms or even top quality Numidians at some point in future. 

They are (typically for 15mm.co.uk) rather small as this comparison to some Old Glory/Exxex Numidians shows

An Essex scythed chariot, made bold (and done easily) with Contrast Paints

Forged in Battle Numidian foot, given slightly bolder shields than my first pass at this lot had ended up with

These are I think Donnington, and were some of the refugees from Clive's collection that didn't go into a complete army 

 

3D printed chubby Samnites, upscaled from 10mm 

 

Xyston Ancient Spanish - a spare few figures I didn't paint when I did my Spanish army some time ago 

More of the 3D chaps 

I also have repainted an old Mirliton Late Feudal army - these are now mixes crossbow/spear militia, with printed shields/pavises. The crossbowmen may have some Essex dudes in there too 

Another couple of units with printed shields. I mean, who could expect me to paint THAT ! 

Teutonic Brother Crossbowmen with printed pavises   - these are Gladiator Games figures. 

Random bits and pieces

 With 2 full armies in the paint queue, I finally got around to tidying up some of the odds and sods that had been cluttering my paint table for, well, in some cases, many years!

The ends results are eclectic, and not all done in Contrast Paints either (to make a nice change!) 

First up, some dynamic falling knights from Donnington's 100YW range, based up as exuberant hit markers 

Next, and the main batch, some 28mm metal knight figures of unknown (ie unpainted on a Bring & Buy) origin.  

I've used waterslide transfer paper and my home printer to make the symbols for the heraldry so that's why they look so precise - my painting hasn't suddenly improved !

Irritatingly a bit of ink wash seems to have congealed on this guy's shield.

They are done up as Spanish Knights, with Castile and Leon heraldry 

And a few other cities and statelets too

I really like these figures - they came with separate hands to mix and match weaponry

One unit is in non-Spanish colours

I've had this guy hanging around for ages, but drilled out his hand and added a Valencian flag 

More weirdly, these are some sort of random armoured horsemen on what I am pretty sure are old Essex Han Chinese chariot horses, painted up as African Kingdoms mounted warriors or cataphracts

The padding really helps create a bright and unusual looking unit. 

I did also add some cotton as  horse-hair style pennants to differentiate the Elite from the Average ones. 

More random stuff to come soon!