Bring & Buy .. & Rebase and refurb!

At the recent Attack! show in Devizes I sort of accidentally managed to buy a 15mm Feudal/Medieval Russian army scaled for L'Art de la Guerre.

It was a bring and buy purchase, and I thought it looked close enough to my own painting style to be compatible with my other Eastern European armies, and also that it looked like it was great value - something I immediately rushed off to tell Jason, who I'd travelled to the show with.. only to find that it was one he'd put on the Bring & Buy himself! 

So, with a transaction which could have taken place in the boot of my car managing also to financially support the DDWG club fund, I now owned a Medieval/Feudal Russian army from Essex minis that only needed a bit of rebasing, a few dabs of paint and the addition of some paper banners to become quite an impressive complement to my existing  Hungarians.

And here they are:

Commanders on 40mm round bases

Heavy Cavalry 

Spearmen

"Guard" cavalry - the elite of the army

Follower cavalry - less well armoured than the others

Light Horse javelins or lancers - these will also appear as Serbian Hussars in other armies I think? 

Steppe horse archers

Russian army infantry bowmen

Axemen (foresters)

The cheering peasants who follow the army

Lesser armoured Medium cavalry.

The flags mostly come from Martins Vexillia site plus some from Alex Flags site

I'm dead chuffed with them, however you’d perhaps be surprised at how little I’ve done to them. 

The main visual differences are adding a few flags, and repainting the spears and bows in a much paler) Vallejo Ochre Brown 70.865, then adding a little black line to delineate the metal and wooden parts of the spears, plus the rebasing.

For some reason (that I don’t quite understand), making the spears and bows really stand out with a pale colour makes a big difference - the spears stand out against what are generally darker figures, and the effect of making them "ping" that results is wildly disproportionate to the fairly limited effort involved.

I've already gone back and done this to a good few of my own armies that originally had dark or dull brown “wood” colours for spears and in every case the visual impact is far more than it feels like it should be.

 

Flagging in Georgia ...?

After the success of adding Religious Icon banners and standards to my refurbished Nikephorian Byzantines, I've been casting around for similar ways of tarting up a few more of my lesser-used figures - a process which has recently seen the Georgians make a rare outing under ADLG.

The foundation of the army are some Legio Heroica figures I got ages ago, and which I think are listed here on their website as Armenian Cavalry. Basically they are a nice range of ever so slightly arab-ized C12 Knights and changing cavalry. 

The Georgians were a pretty chunky empire that sat (and fought) between the Turks and the Byzantines for a good few hundred years, including the Byzantine-Georgian Wars. The county adopted Christianity in 327AD, so by the early middle ages would have been well ensconced in the icon-waving era I reckon.

The ADLG list has 2 incarnations, one with bow-armed Heavy Cavalry and an earlier and more exuberant charging lancer type army - which is the one I'm most tempted towards of course.

This is the list I've used:

Competent CinC
3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous Elite
3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous ----------
3 Horse Archers Light cavalry bow ----------

Brilliant Sub

3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous Elite

2 Russians Heavy spearmen missile support ----------

3 Horse Archers Light cavalry bow ----------

Ordinary Sub

3 Heavy Spearmen Heavy spearmen Mediocre

2 Bowmen Bowmen

2 Light infantry javelin Light infantry javelin ----------

1 Light infantry bow Light infantry bow --------

If you want to try tweaking it, it's also on Little Army Builder - 205.1 Georgian

Getting to 25 units with an army in this era is quite impressive, and the tactics are fairly self-evident in trying to rush and overwhelm one flank whilst hoping that the rather pedestrian and poor quality 3rd infantry-rich command doesn't get into combat too early, and also doesn't get totally run over by the time your other 2 commands have hopefully won the game.  

Anyways, I had the figures already, and I had the idea for the flags - so here is the combination of the two:

The Georgian flag I found available for download on this site. I'm sure being shrunk down to 15mm size isn't  quite what the author expected, but hey, I think it works really well for having the texture already added in a wargaming style.

The other Icon flags are downloads from a Google Search for "Georgian Icon"- if you want to see how that works, here's a link

Most of the images are shrunk down to around 1cm high, and doubled up to make one flag.

Painting round the edges is really important - especially running paint along the edge of the flag.

They did achieve success in their first game on table, but they probably need a non-knight, or certainly a Medium Knight Only theme to do well.

New - Donnington TYW Flags

As trailed in a previous news item, Donnington are about to release some new TYW flags, and Damian was kind enough to send me a set of the Swedish ones.

They come as part of a sheet of 16 different flags including both Company and Command flags for regiments in the army of Gustavus Adolphus during the Thirty Years War.

I quickly added a few to my (sorry Damian!) Lancashire Games Pikemen, who generally serve as Swedes in my armies, and this is the result.

The flags are printed on decent paper, and I stuck them together with my usual adhesive of choice, PVA Wood Glue - my carpenter brother-in-law once told me that PVA Wood Glue was stronger than the wood it joins, so that works for me.

The "rocket science" about Donnnington's flags is that they are printed with a larger-than-the-flag guideline, so you cut out along the guideline, stick them together and then snip off the excess on the three sides away from the flagpole. It's not rocket surgery, but it does mean you are gluing and folding a much bigger piece of paper, which makes lining up the two sides a lot less fiddly.

These are from the Red Regiment - which I suspect will be no great surprise to many of you TYW experts out there...The flags are printed with shading on them to suggest that the flags are waving in the breeze, which as you can see enhances what is actually some very limited "bending" of the glued flags in these photos.

The one I was sent was "Sheet 2", however I've been told that Donnington will be selling at least four infantry sheets and either or two cavalry sheets in this range. I did also paint the edges of the flags red once they were stuck together - because of the guidelines this was a lot tidier than with some other flags I've tried this on.

At £5 per sheet of 16, these flags aren't exactly cheap especially given the increasing numbers of free flags out there, but they are definitely better than the quality I manage to produce using my home printer, and are on better paper stock as well -and they may well see action in the new year!

Donnington Flags

I saw regular show exhibitor Damien from Donnington Miniatures at Warfare last weekend, and he sent me over a bit of info about the flag ranges he's created to go with the rather nice ‘New Era’ Medieval figures he's now producing.

The exciting bit is that apparently some TYW flags are in the works and so if they are up to the same standard as the current flag sheets for Vikings, Saxons, Normans, 100 Years War, Gascons, 14^th/15^th Century Scots, French Ordonnance, Swiss, Burgundians and WOTR it'll be a good extra addition to the list of flag suppliers on my 15mm Renaissance Manufacturers page. 

There is even an instructional video available on the website to show you how to use them.

The flag sheets are available in 15mm scale and in other scales on request to A&M. The number of flags varies, with lots on each sheet - £5 per sheet for 15mm scale and £10 per sheet for 25/28mm scale. For more info contact Ancient & Modern Army Supplies:

Website:                      www.ancient-modern.co.uk