Slowly making their way to the "done" pile of my 28mm Successor and Hellenistic project are some more pikemen, and a rather random find of what I suspect may be very old Wargames Factory Hoplites
9 Jun 2024
A few more 28mm Hellenistics
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.
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.
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!
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
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
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