A small handful of small Samurai

Quite a few years ago I got a Samurai army painted up professionally by Simon Clarke's Lurkio painting shop - the only army in my collection to be painted by someone else. This was mainly as I really didn't fancy (aka didn't think I was good enough) to paint up a Samurai army and do it justice.

In the process of deciding what figures to get painted though, I did buy a few different ranges before finally settling on Old Glory - and in a recent trawl through the spares box I happened to come across a few baggies of Essex Samurai that I'd considered and then rejected for the army. 

Having succesfully added some much easier to paint Light Infantry Ashigaru archers to the army last year, for some reason when I found these actual Samurai I decided that I might actually have a go at these figures too, and see if I could now paint them to a standard which was something even vaguely close to the pro-paint job on the rest of the Samurai in the army. 

And here they are - almost finished, apart from I am still waiting on some transfers for the large banners.

 

From a distance they actually look reasonable IMO - although its one of those "trick of the eye" things that if you zoom in, or blow up the picture too much they can look rather ropey.

The key techniques I used here were;

• Black undercoat, with the armour being done with a coat of Contrast Blood Angels Red straight onto the black. This seemed to give a good simulation of the red lacquer effect that you can often see in Samurai armour in museums
• The "dots" have been done in Skeleton Bone - which has the advantage of not being anywhere near as harsh as a flat white dots would have been. 
• I have also done a few stripes as well to break up the effect, and not tried to do every dot either - often it is just around the edges of a plate of armour rather than at every piece.
• The uniforms are done in solid normal colours to get a good coverage, and look different to the armour effect of contrast on black. 
• I also snuck in a few minor variations of legging and sock colours to make them slightly less uniform - the handful of "military green" belts also helps a lot with breaking things up too IMO.

As long as you keep at tabletop distances the impression is much better as your mind sort of assumes the dots are in the right places as there are too many of them to take in individually I suspect.

Here are some Ashigaru with naginata and a Samurai commander - again waiting for a transfer for his banner 

I followed the "mostly red" theme with them as well.

Here's a base next to a pro-painted base of Old Glory figures. 

The OG 15's are far heftier, as well as being better painted - so you'd really not want to mix them on a sngle base.  But for a couple of units of different status (in a different command maybe?) I'm still happy with how these have come out. 

The Anglo-Saxons invade .. Southend!

The first ever Southern League ADLG event to take place in Southend on Sea took plce recently, and was appositely themed around the year of the Battle of Benfleet, in which the Anglo Saxons kicked the Vikings out of Essex - at least temporarily - and so I decided this was an omen worth embracing by taking an Anglo-Saxon army myself! 

The army was made up of a load of 15mm Anglo Saxons/Vikings/generic Dark Age geezers that I'd rebased during lockdown, and a 3-game event where they would be thematically appropriate was ideal, especially as they were not likely to be all that good.

The event being at Southend also gave me an opportunity to inflict multiple references to both Billy Bragg and Danny Dyer on an unsuspecting wargames population and viewership - a gift that keeps on giving throughout the 3 videos in this competition report. 

Having decided that a night out in Southend on Sea was unmissable, there is also some local tourism involved in the reports

Many thanks again to the Southend Wargames Club for hosting us in their fabulous games bunker too!

 (You'll also no doubt be pleased to know that the Essex branch of the McHugh Carpet Empire also get a welcome plug). 

Enjoy the videos! 

Wiglaf Dark Ages 18mm Figures

I'd seen and heard a lot about the new Wiglaf Miniatures range from Dan Mersey, the rules author of several Dark Ages era games.

The range is nominally for The Age of Penda, designed for the wars of the seventh century AD Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and their enemies and is sculpted by Mark Copplestone, but with more than enough Viking/Saxon/Norman etc figures in my collection already to field a substantial European civil war, never mind a single army I'd been dithering for a while whether to pick some up mainly for comparison purposes.

Then, on Instagram, Dan popped up and said he has some sample bags available, so a quick Paypal transaction later and I soon had a set of 7 of the guys to have a go at painting them up. 

As you can see they are sharply cast models, nicely animated and with some non-generic poses. 

The figures with spears have been cast with open hands, which is always good now that so many of us have cottoned onto the idea of using wire spears or plastic broom bristles !

And here they are painted up and based - I did a kind of slap-chop approach on them in the main, with black undercoat and white drybrushing to give highlights to the paint, but with so much chainmail there's still a lot of drybrushed gunmetal on black anyway.

The chap with the fur cloak gets the wolfskin treatment in this lot.

And from the front at ground level. 

I'm not really all that satisfied with my efforts on the shields as the black lining is a bit sloppy in these closeups however all of the shields have multiple bosses, nails and metal strips designed into them which did rather cut across my simplistic painting approach, 

The big question with any new range of figures like these is "how do they compare to XXX manufacturer", so with that in mind here are the Wiglaf guys next to some Essex Feudal East European spearmen.   I think this pretty much nails the "are they really the 18mm they are marketed as?" debate with a resounding "yes". 

A few more manufacturers to compare - these are my Two Dragons Norman spearmen

Some Corvus Belli (now Plastic Soldier Company) 100YW dismounted knights

Figures from Xystons "biggest ever" (size wise) range of Roman-era Theurophoroi are about the only figures I have that stand up to the Wiglaf guys for size.

Bauda Carolingian spearmen.

So, all in all some very nice figures which are very characterful - and which I probably haven't managed to do full justice to with my painting either (althought with Steve Dean doing the brushwork on Dans own website that's also a pretty high bar to fall short of!). 

But, what is clear is that they are absolutely 18mm in height, so be careful which ranges you are looking to mix them with - or just go ahead and buy a whole army full from North Star!  

Random 15mm January Work in Progress

 With the Lockdown Podcasts due to start again next week and the UK in what feels like it will be a hard-lockdown lasting at least into March, I've been chewing away at some bits and pieces before embarking onto an actual major project.

Here's a few photos of the WiP figures (all pre-matt varnishing, as it's too cold to do) - there are loads more photos on the Madaxeman Website

These are a mix of Essex and Magister Militum/Chariot hoplites, with a lone New Museum commander in the front rank.

The white leather armour itself was white undercoat, then a wash of ArmyPainter Dark tone to pick out the details, then it was painted white leaving the recesses clear of paint so the shading was left only in the recesses.

These are mostly the "boring" Essex Arab spearmen, again stripped in Biostrip, undercoated in white and then with GW contrast paints applied to mirror the 28mm figures I did a few months ago.

These are Donnington New Era arabs, based up as Saririyah Pikemen from the Fatimid Egyptian army list and painted in Contrast paints

The Donnington New Era arabs fit well next to Essex infantry size-wise

I've also been thinking about upgrading my Roman Carroballistas for a while, and Tamsins painting of these Donnington figures flagged up in the podcast spurred me on to finally get around to it

The ballista and cart on the left is from Donnington, on the right its from Essex - but all the crew are Donnington, sold as singles.

This is a rebasing project, separating my rather vast (mostly) Two Dragons Rus/Viking DBM army into separate ADLG Rus and Viking forces (and possibly creating a Viking army I can sell on eBay too)

I'm also taking the rebasing moment as an excuse to repaint the spears as well. Spears do tend to get chipped and bent, so repainting them all makes a big difference to how new the army looks.

Getting distracted by a variety of projects is sometimes a good thing, as it does mean you can get a sense of achievement from making a noticable difference to some figures - and at the moment we all need some achievements to mark down!

Equally, taking advantage of the extra time we've all been gifted at the moment does allow some experimentation, and the hoplites certainly fall into that category as I tried a very different painting style, taking almost a week to do these handful of figures

Either way, a break from launching into the next major project is great, and when it throws up some interesting figures, paint styles and creates some reason to use new(ly rebased) armies in future that otherwise might have languished in a drawer thats great too.

There are loads more photos of these on the Madaxeman Website

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! 

  

The Eclectic Painting Weekend

This weekend has seen a bit of a blitz on the to-do pile, with a load of oddments being finished off, all of which have been falling behind far more exciting projects for quite some time.

The end result is probably one of the most random selection of figures and models ever to have been sprayed with the same tin of Testors Dullcote... and here they are, in absolutely no particular order!

This is the full slab, post matt varnishing.   Yes, those are 28mm garden gnomes...

Possibly the least interesting and impressive thing on the board was this pair of Numidian LH, which have been hanging around for almost a year after not quite being finished at the same time as my Numidian ADLG army. I believe these are Baueda one-piece castings.

Another bit of long-forgotten tidying up, casulaty markers for late C17 FoGR armies. The falling guys are decent, but I went a bit wild on the colours for the prone men!

I had a couple of spare bases for my huge 1/300th refurbishment project lying around, so after a bit of help from Twitter I worked out that these odd tanks were French AA variants of an AMX 13. I don't have too many French tanks but now they do have some AA cover (in a few specific years)

I'd also had this robot lying around, as a keyring toy from Japan. He is now based up and ready to fight alongside my 1/300th SF forces

Another 1/300th refurb is this Iranian F5E fighter. 

Super-clean paint job, as the Iranians F5's don't get to see much action so probably don't get dirty!

These 3 huns are I think Old Glory - I have a handful of bases set up as LH that go with my Roman 28mm army so these may have been the three spares to make up a Medium Cavalry base

In 15mm, a fairly generic chariot with Royal archer from Essex. This brings the total of these types of chariot up to 4 in my collection, which means they can be an allied contingent for any of my proper biblical armies, or the not-quite-Egyptian chariots in a Sea Peoples army. I did the "light blue in dark blue stripe" effect on these that I first did on the Egyptian Spearmen as well

 I might even try and get away with them as Assyrian Light Chariots if I try the non-Sargonid verison of that army sometime.

These are 12 plastic Perry medieval infantry kitbashed together with odd arms and spears from the GB Roman set to give me some proper Medieval Spearmen or (perhaps) Javelinmen, as my other Medieval  28mm Medium Infantry are pretty clearly carrying polearms.

I suspect this may be a Footsore or Crusader from North Star Norman general - he's been done for ages, just awaiting basing, so finally he is now complete.
 

These were the mad bit - some military Gnomes from Brigade Games in the US that I picked up at Cold Wars.

They are the Swiss Gnome of Zurich (throwing Swiss CHeese), a Kaiser Gnome (hurling beer steins as hand grenades) and a Russian Czar Gnome. I was very pleased with the painted beer stein effect I achieved with the German guy - its very impressionistic, but it does sort of work I think.

Totally bonkers, but too hard to resist, these comedy chaps will be leading some of my ADLG armies in the near future!

A couple of mounted Greek officers from the Captains Games range picked up in January to accomany the Museum Z Hoplites if they ever need a separate commander

The "other" light gun that came in the pack of 2 guns and crew from Front Rank along with the heavy gun I used at Roll Call last year - showing how long this has hung on in the pile!

The crew have a shield bearer who I set up protecting the powder box from sparks.

4 dark age LH which I think may be Footsore, not quite finished but they were close enough to varnish at the same time as the rest.

 They are a bit too armoured to be LH to my reckoning, but as there are 4 of them and their horses are way too small to mix with the GB plastics in my Gothic army they are now higher quality LH javelinmen!

And here's the lot again - eclectic to say the least!