Showing posts with label hoplite. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hoplite. Show all posts

12 Nov 2023

28mm Hellenistic Cavalry

My Successor/Hellenistic project moves on apace, with a recent spell of dry(ish) weather allowing me to do some outdoor spray undercoat, and then matt varnishing to make a dent in the cavalry contingent of this almost-all 28mm Victrix army.


An ever-increasing proportion of my painting is drifting towards Contrast (and Speed..) Paints, and the horses in this army I think will all end up being completed in this "so good it feels cheaty and a bit dirty" medium. 
 

Agaros Dunes is the leopard pelt colour here, with the firm favourite of Warlord Holy White for the grey horse. 


These are Heavy Cavalry lancers - I replaced the Vixtrix-supplied lances immediately, as they are very obviously not going to stand up to any sort of wargame handling at all, and drilled out the hands (manually) to accommodate home-made spears from 1.1mm (0.45") styrofoam round rods from Plastruc. 


These are really flexible, so will bend but not snap while also being really lightweight - a great combination where metal spears of this length would no doubt end up getting caught while being handled and then would break off the guys hands at the wrist. 


The Plastruct material is also really soft, so I was easily able to squash the ends of each spear flat, and then cut it into a V shape to form spear points which are also wider than the spear shafts.

If you want to pick some up for yourself, here's an affiliate link to eBay UK https://ebay.us/QLbKOr (and if you end up buying anything from it I'll geta teeny tiny commission from eBay too!) 


These are javelin-armed regular cavalry - I think the spears are a mix of the Victrix originals and also some slightly more robust Gripping Beast ones from their Roman and Arab boxes. 


If you keeping all of the spare arms you can then cut some spear-holding hands off at the wrist, do the same with the Victrix guys wrists and then glue the GB hands and spears to the Victrix guys arms to give your troops more robust spears, straight out of the bits box  


The white clothing on these cavalry is normal white paint layered over a base of Holy White - shield patterns from some spare Hoplite waterlide transfers, on a shield painted with a Contrast Orange which I think gives a really good "it could be burnished bronze" effect.

More pics to come over the next few days. 



20 Nov 2022

3D prints - The Greeks

Those of you who listen to the Madaxeman Podcast will have heard us talking about 3D prints a fair amount recently - and in the lastest episode ("Huge Grenadier Hat Malarkey") we even committed to the idea of Tamsin printing off some figures for us all to have a go at painting as well. 

These are the 3D Breed "free" models (STL files to be precise I believe) that are given away as tasters to their range, and come in both 15mm and 28mm styles. Tamsin printed them off for all of the Podcast crew and I've now managed to finish prepping and painting the Greek Hoplites I ended up with, and have taken a few photos of them here:


  These are the beasties in their au naturel purple plastic form, with "supports" still in place. This looks a right mess and a faff, but using a sprue clipping tool (a necessary investment for anyone making plastic figures these days IMO) they did clean up eailly easily and quickly to then undercoat for painting.


And here are 2 of the finished 28mm figures


They are chunky fellows, but I think that is entirely down to the style of the sculpts, as the Reconquer 3D prints were much finer (although made using different technology too)


The figures weren't printed with bases so I glued them to a Commander's 40mm round base and also glued them together as a pair to give them more stability and usability 



The spear of the guy with the red shield is printed, the blue one I cut out, drilled the hand and added a wire spear.



These are the 15mm versions, tucked into some metal figures as extras on commander bases. Again they were glued both to the base itself and to the other figures.


We'll be talking more about these figures on the next episode of the Madaxeman Podcast which is out now and can be reached directly here

1 Sept 2021

Line Up, Line Up.. for some Egypto-Greek ADLG action at the Seaside!

The second full set of post-Lockdown match reports hit the South Coast this time in 5 games of Egypto-Greek linear nonsense as a lockdown-repainted set of Hoplites meets some lockdown-rebased Egyptians to cobble together a podcast-busting Saitic Egyptian army to take on all comers in a Greek & Roman World themed event.

Marvel as possibly the most one-dimensional army to hit the table in years attempts to outfox, out play but much more often simply outlast its varied opponents as they take on the Graeco-Indians, Seleucids, Late Romans, Ch'in Chinese and Classical Indians in these 5 ADLG match reports.

As usual they feature all of the nonsense you have by now grown to expect, including comments on local wildlife, restaurant reviews, beer analysis, very bad puns, randomly generated Egyptian curses, priapic wooden war wagons, a smattering of Greek and Egypto-Arabic swearwords and buckets of pictures with somewhat inappropriate captions and speech bubbles.







The reports are online and available to peruse now

15 Jan 2021

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

26 Mar 2020

Museum Hoplites Part II

The hoplites are now ready for battle! 

Yes, with a smidge more painting and a decision on basing driven largely by the UK government's decision to close all DIY shops and impose a total lockdown on all non-essential travel (thus denying me the opportunity to buy some wood filler) the Museum Z-crew are now ready to take the table. 

Or, more likely, they are now ready to stay in a drawer until playing soldiers again is no longer something that would contribute in any way to the potential collapse of the NHS. 


The figures - and especially their shields - as pretty big, probably at the 16-17mm end of the scale without quite reaching "giant Xyston ranges" levels. That allows a 40x30 base to be pretty well filled with 7 figures (4+3), so I eked out 5 bases-worth from 4 packs, adding in this ex-Warmodelling brand mounted officer picked up at the PAW show in January to one of the bases to represent a unit with an embedded general.


With sand and woodstain basing and a bit of static grass they are now basing-compatible with my Biblical armies, which gives them a handful of opportunities in some of the more obscure later ADLG lists to appear alongside Egyptians and (occasionally) Asssyrian-style chariots.


There is a mix of armoured, linen cuirass, skirt and nude figures, but I just mixed them all up together for variety.


This view more clearly shows the different armour (or not!) styles


The transfers are great, but still do leave a big lip around the edge of the shield which for some of the designs (with detail right up to the edge of the transfer) is rather tricky to blend in with matching paint out to the shield rim. 

The base on the right shows this - the guy at the front ended up with a contrasting shield rim, whereas the guy behind I just about managed to blend in the rim with a similar red to the transfer itself.


The "white" shields are a bit easier, and I went with a simple bronze rim for most of them anyway


As well as packs of mixed poses, there are separate packs of just the standing guys - my view is that you probably need a number of these standing pose packs to make up the bulk of the rear ranks in your army or units, otherwise if you just go fo rmixed packs you could end up with a few too many kneeling and, erm, lurching men in the front rank


I kept the crests all black - there's probably more than enough colour in the shields and their rims already and I didn't fancy drifting itno rainbow territory onn the crests too


Ta-dah! 

19 Mar 2020

New Museum Miniatures Hoplites

With most of the world in lockdown, everyone's minds turn away from gaming and towards... painting and mail order!

For these chaps the mail order bit had been done during January in the Museum sale, making these figures pretty much the cheapest metal (or plastic - yes, I did the maths!) on the market right now, which is remarkable given they are the new digitally sculpted Museum Hoplites from their new "Z" range. 

The paint job is definitively incomplete, but rather than wait until they are finished I thought some WiP shots might be good to get out into the internet-verse right now, partly as everyone is sat staring at a computer trying not to OD on (usually depressing) news, and partly to try and inspire you to support some of the gaming hobby retailers who will be missing out on trade show impules purchases for the next few months or so.


The Museum figures can be bought with LBMS shield transfers - which you can only buy from Museum themselves.

There are only 3 basic poses, but you can get (I think) 4 different states of undress for the men as well, which means there is more variety apparent from the back than the front.


Museum also do a range of helmet crests - all of the helmets are the same across the figures (at the moment..) but you do hardly notice that - at least with my painting !


I have given some of the shields a coloured edge to add a little bit more variety to the figures - once they are finished I might do a few more with bands of alternating light and dark for more interest too.


LBMS do a special range of 11mm diameter transfers for these guys because the Museum Z-range shields have been designed to be bigger, and flatter than most other manufacturers hoplite shields, specifically to take LBMS transfers more easily. I have a suspicion this might even have been something I actually suggested to Dave at Museum when he posted some WiP shots of the sculpts on Facebook... but that may just be me making stuff up to make myself feel more important!


The hoplites feet have really well-cast sandals - these have no more complex paint job that flesh paint with a diluted coat of army painter wash to create the detail in the sandals.


Likewise this guy is just wash over matt flash


Here they are next to some Chariot Miniatures and Essex hoplites. Apart from making my 20 year old attempts at painting shields look suddenly pathetic you can clearly see the difference in shield sizes, and in figure height  - I suspect this is enough to make these Museum guys a little difficult to mix with other manufacturers for most wargamers.


The Museum guys "might" be on slightly taller basing, but probably only 1mm, as they are on 2mm MDF with no magnabase, whereas the other older chaps are on hardback envelope card + magnabase


This is a shot of the Museum guys with some Xyston - I think these are Theban - Hoplites. A better fit, but the shields are still noticably bigger


Here they go toe to toe


And with Xyston Paphlagonians - a relatively new figure for Xyston I think?  These seem a better match.


And a set of two bases.

The shields are big enough that I have managed to base these in 7's, using afront rank of 4 and then 3 behind for an ADLG Heavy Infantry base - fitting two ranks of 4 might well have been a bit of a crush.

There's still plenty of tidying up of these to do, and I also need to decide if I base them with sandy-coloured wood filler or use the sand + woodstain + drybrush technique that my newer Biblical armies now are mounted with.

Once they are done they'll appear here again!   
Share this page with

Search Madaxeman

The Madaxeman Podcast

The Madaxeman Podcast
Listen now on Podbean

Past Updates

Popular Posts