Showing posts with label forged in battle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forged in battle. Show all posts

15 Nov 2023

Charlemagne in a Shed: The Carolingians at Warfare 2023

In a near-miraculously quick turnaround I've now conjured up all 5 battle reports from last weekend's Warfare 15mm L'Art de la Guerre competition, featuring the on-table debut of a post-lockdown-painted Carolingian army under the command of the one and only Charlemagne himself.

The reports all feature a wildly aggressive approach to gameplay, hurling lancer-armed almost-Knightly Caballeri against pretty much anything that stands in their path and sitting back to watch the results unfold in the usual full-contact cinemascope fashion.

The reports as usual come complete with army lists, commentary from Hannibal, random speech bubbles which bear little if any relationships to the action going on at the time, dreadful cod-French, and some tenuously connected music videos too (including one from Christoper Lee - yes, that one!).


You can also see some close-ups of the Baueda and Forged in Battle figures themselves, and find links to all of the army lists of my 5 gracious opponents too.


Read on to see how Charlemagne's campaign of conquest ended up !   


 

20 Apr 2023

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

6 Oct 2022

A Viking Battle Shed

 With a podcast and a load of painting all at the "finishing touches" stage, I thought I'd sneak out a few photos of Forged in Battle's Viking War Shed, which I picked up as the prize at the WAR 1-dayer competition earlier in the year. 

OK, technically it's a WE-F55 Meade Hall but I'm sure they may have also kept the odd lawnmower and set of garden tools in there too.

The model is a 2-part resin structure, with the roof being separate to the base. There is no internal detail so the roof just gets glued on after placing the posts around the sides.

The pillars and gable ends are separate metal pieces which need to be glued into holes in the base - some of which I had to drill out to take the lug on the metal beam. This was very easy to do with a pin vise, as the resin drills out easily enough.  

Some of the beams then needed snipping down a bit at the top as well to fit under the roof, and a couple needed building up with filler to join up with the roof once it was glued in place too. 


I painted it in a black Gesso undercoat, with many layers of different drybrushed browns and (eventually) pale grey and bleached bone.

Here it is with some 15mm 2 Dragons figures for scale.

I think it has come out as a very nice little building - useful for that Village next to the Waterway that the Vikings, Rus and Saxon types all like to have to narrow the table down so their shieldwall can't get outflanked!

 

18 May 2022

Charlemagne - The Emperor has Arrived!

 A Carolingian army has been sat on the to-do shelf for a couple of years now -  I bought it partly to see what Baueda figures looked like in the metal, and partly as I had already bought 1 dozen of their mounted Carolingian archers with a vague thought of adding them to some generic Gothic cavalry and cobbling together a morph army at some stage. 

Digging into it a bit more I had soon realised that the whole army needed to be, well, "Carolingian-looking" though, hence the purchase. 

Over the past year I'd added some more Forged in Battle cavalry through a few eBay purchases, and that had both bulked out the army and made it harder to begin to paint as well.

However after a road trip to Aachen, seat of the Carolingans and interment place of Charlemagne himself I became inspired enough to pick up the spray can, and to give them a quick and colourful (mostly Contrast) paint job to get them table-ready, in part as I had to paint something to get away from rigging more little ships, and in part as Aachen Cathedral is so fabulous that I convinced myself I didn't need to paint the soldiers all in Middle Ages style duns and tans, as this dude had some style, and also some money to splash around. 

The end result is a fairly over-enthusiastic and colourful army with all of the possible options;

These are Baueda - their horsemen don't mix with FiB's very well as the Baueda ones have very narrow horses and V-shaped riders legs to fit on them, and the FiB ones are chubby beasts with suitably arch-shaped riders legs - so the two manufacturers provide (mostly) separate parts of the army

This is the same unit from the back. There seemed a lot of red and blue in some of the contemporary depictions of the Carolingain military I found, so I felt comfortable giving these "better quality" guys a bold uniform red cloak look. 

FiB horsemen in leather armour, as Medium cavalry. Of course, LBMS shields.

The Horse Archers - a Baueda special, painted ages ago and now rebased to the same scheme as the rest of the army

Armoured cavalry from FiB (maybe a couple of Baueda boys sneaking in there too)

Baueda infantry, apart from the unit in the centre front, who are FiB with the more distinctive Carolingian helmets. Because the Baueda chaps are fairly non-specific they may appear as Saxons or something at some point in future too.

From the back the Contrast Paint style really shows up well. 

FiB Light Horse. I only needed 2 bases, so mixed in a few of the other riders with the Medium cavalry

Javelin skirmishers. Fairly weedy dudes, not sure how long their ankles will survive in-game handling TBH

And, the whole set - 38 bases including Generals. I suspect some Vikings will also freelance as mercenaries at some point when they finally get on the table too.

There are even more photos in the 15mm photo gallery of these dudes. 

 

5 Jul 2020

More War & Empire Sassanid Cataphracts

Painted up at pretty much the same time as the Carolingians are three more units of War & Empire / Forged in Battle Sassanids Cataphracts. 

I'd already got 3 units worth, which isn't quite enough for a proper Sassanid army (you kinda need 4 at least I think) so rather than stick with using Roman-style ones, when I saw a pack on eBay for a tenner for 12 mounted figures I dived in and doubled the force.

These chaps have a lot of variety in the pack, and handily come with 13 riders, one of whom is a standard bearer and one an officer/General type with a mace so you can choose whether to have a standard-bearing officer in one of the units or not. 


They paint up super-easily, with simple cloaks and just enough variety to keep them interesting.


 You can also comfortably get 4 on a 40mm wide base by staggering them slightly front and back


I chose to give just a few of them cloth (or cloth-covered) armour, the rest are in full metal again to get a smidge more colour into the block. What's not to like, especially for just a tenner post-free ?!



 

1 Apr 2020

15mm Forged in Battle Scythians

Madaxeman Podcast-participant Dave Saunders has been chewing through a Forged in Battle Scythian kickstarter army in the last week or so of being furloughed, and has kindly shared some pictures of his work with the podcast WhatsApp group

In the interests of putting as much eye candy out there as possible to inspire you whilst we are all locked in our houses I've taken the liberty of sharing them here as well.












These guys also now appear in the Skythian folder as some of the 3,600 photos now in the 15mm Ancients Figure Gallery 

28 Mar 2020

Lockdown! The Madaxeman.com Podcast returns..


With much of the gaming world in lockdown it's become impossible to go to the pub and talk rubbish about wargaming - so why not listen to 5 random blokes talking rubbish about wargaming for an hour or so while you're doing some painting? 

"It's basically a Poundshop Top Gear, but with more dice and less casual racism"
(The Daily Mail)

In this first of many (probably) Lockdown Special Podcasts the team wrestle with audio quality across a variety of supposedly professional-grade audio conferencing apps, and chat tosh about a number of barely related topics.

"Convinced me my wife was right and I did actually need to go and re-grout the shower"
(Angus Deayton, former TV celebrity)

Subjects covered include Forged in Battle's Kickstarters, the pseudo-wargame Rommel, the state of the Flames of War market, Essex, Xyston and Museum miniatures latest releases, Herve Caille's Bataille Empire rules, their experiences of the last overseas conventions before we were all confined to barracks and even whether World of Tanks might be worth us all re-installing?


"Made me wonder if perhaps Trump is onto something, and it might be best to re-open the country at Easter"
(Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, US Freshman Senator)

Listen or download here via this link


23 Sept 2018

War & Empire Numidians (15mm)

I recently bought some Numidians from War & Empire (Forged in Battle) , which have managed to get painted extremely quickly - probably due to their simplicity!


They are led by some Baueda Generals working in tandem with W&E infantry officers on 40mm round bases for ADLG.


I've also posted some comparison shots to show how they scale with other ranges of Romans and Carthaginians (who they will be fighting with or against I suspect).


All these photos and many more are online now on my site, where I also explain the painting techniques as well (for what they are worth). The figures can also be seen in the 15mm directory

19 Aug 2016

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 ...

28 Apr 2013

Sunday afternoon...

The end of the saga of the Pirates doesn't mean that painting has stopped. This weekend I've been doing some finishing off, and a bit of upgrading.


First up are the Scots Highland infantry - a mix of Minifigs, Essex and Peter Pig figures to give me 2 x 8 bases of Highlanders for the upcoming Central London round of the Southern League. Here the chaps are, half Army-Painter'ed (the Dark Tone one, which is quite black - good for the grey coats they often wear) and half yet to be varnished.

I also then got tempted to "upgrade" a load of Medieval spearmen by adding a wash of Dark Tone on some fairly well travelled figures - these are mostly a Mirliton army I won at the Worlds in Rome almost a decade ago. There are also three Forged in Battle Tiger I's, and a handful of other spearmen and crossbowmen from my Teutonic army, which I've been toying with inking for several years. Still haven't done the knights though - but no hurry as they are almost unusable as an army in FoGAM

There are even 2 bases of XVII Century French horse who sneak into the bottom left of the photo. Just waiting for them to dry so I can spray varnish them in Dullcote

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