Xyston Persian Bowmen

 Being unable to resist a bargain, I picked up these Xyston bowmen in a tabletop sale at the recent 1-day ADLG event in Reading.   

They are from the time when PSC were re-casting Xyston figures in Siocast rubbery resin (an experiment which by all accounts seems to have now run its course FWIW).

I reckon that Persians and other "Eastern" armies are perfect to get the best out of Contrast Paints, and these chaps have certainly come out pretty well both in terms of the vibrant "silk-like" colours and also with how the paint has flowed into the deep lines cast into the design of the figures 

Its most noticable from the back, where the leather armour comes up a real treat with a coat of Aggaros Dunes on a white undercoat base layer

With ADLG units being 6/base, this set of 16 also allowed me to eke out two units of light foot archers too

Looking at the army list I'm now not entirely sure where these guys will fit in, but I believe that some of the Successor armies get the odd Persian peasant archer unit too so I'm sure they will make an appearance some day. 

Lots of big moustaches!

My existing Persian infantry are Museum Z-Sculpts, which look great when ranked up in a dense formation but actually don't really stand up especially well when compared directly to the equivalent Xyston sculpts one-to-one

The Museum chaps are at the front, and are noticably slighter in build

More significantly however, the level of detail on the Museum castings is far shallower than on the Xyston sculpts, such that after even a thin layer of sprayed-on white base coat the detail on the Museum figures struggles to take the Contrast paints - whereas the exaggerated depths of the Xyston figures really allow this style of painting to "ping" 

It's not terminal - I'll still happily mix these in the same army, and same unit as well - but it is a reminder that different styles of sculpting work better with different paint techniques.

Achilles & The Myrmidions in 15mm

 Having been reasonably succesful with a Mycenean army at Warfare in 2022, and then getting my hands on a proper Trojan Horse at the Alicante event some months later I am now of course tempted to wheel out the Myceneans again at a future event.

At Warfare one of the star units in my army was Achilles and his Myrmidions - but to be honest the figures were not especially "Myrmidion", being mostly these old-style Museum swordsmen sculpts with fairly generic shields.

 So, when Museum came out with a range of Myrmidions, and also Trojan hero figures in their new Z-Sculpts that suddenly seemed like a must-have addition to give me two new units of spiffy Myrmidions with very obvious Included Generals (aka Achilles) leading one of them. 

And here they are - most of the Heroes of the Trojan Age are clustered on the stand on the left, with standard Myrmidions on the right. 

The Heroes are slightly, but noticably bigger than the normal rather slim Myrmidions, and all have unique poses and equipment.

This front-on shot shows the size difference clearly. 

They are nice figures, but I did find them harder to paint than I had hoped as the detail on the figures is really very shallow, which makes spotting which areas to paint, and painting with washes and speedpaints much harder than it really should be.  

There are also some hard to understand elements in the design, especially the "woolly hats" which seem to have horns projecting though them - which to my mind would surely sit better on a metal helmet? 

Perhaps though I've not done enough research and the Myceneans actually had tea cosies over their helmets? 

Here they are from the rear - you can see where I have had to use layered shading to get some texture into the clothing as the figures didn't really do much for the Holy White ArmyPainter speedpaint on their own. 

So, all in all I think they have come out OK - but perhaps not as well as I initially hoped, partly as the detail on the figures isn't as deep as I would ideally have liked, and partly as I found that lack of detail frustrating and as such maybe didn't try as hard as I needed to to adopt the right painting approach for these guys. 

Having painted up a fair few of the Museum Z Sculpts in the last few years I am actually starting to look more critically at them in general, as my experience with these figures is starting to feel like a common thread across all of the others I've painted before now as well. 

Museums Z Ranges look great in the renders, they are nice poses, there's a whole lot to like about them, the price is good, the metal they use has a great pewter-like good quality too - but with so many of us increasingly relying on washes, Contrast and Speed paints to paint our figures, deeper slightly exaggerated details such as those seen on Xyston, or Forged in Battles' ranges are much easier to paint. Their deep details really do come up a treat - whereas some of the details on these Museum Z Sculpts almost seems to disappear even with just an undercoat. 

If only the raised details and undercuts on the figures could just somehow be (I guess digitally?) "dialled up" a little, and perhaps some of the spears thickened too then the Z Range would be as good after people like me have finished painting them as they look in the 3D renders on the Museum site ! 

Indian Chariots from Museum's Z-range

 Museum's annual January sale is always a good opportunity to buy something I don't really need, and this year was no exception. 

Amongst the bits and bobs to round out existing armies I picked up 2 more Indian Chariots - this time from their new Z range to go with the original sculpts of the 2 I had somehow acquired through complete accident in previous years. 

And here are both of the chariots together - all done in contract paints (of course) for the bright colours and also giving great texture for the crew's skin as well.  

I sort of got mixed up with which crewmember went with which chariot, and I'm not entirely sure where the guy with the palm leaf is supposed to go - but as he is so much fun I squeezed him on the base anyway!

The commanders chariot head on - I used ArmyPainter Speedpaint Holy White for the pale grey horses here 

The ringed effect on the brolly is just an artefact of Contrast Paints - not painted by me at all. The color is Magos Purple.

I now have all 4 Heavy Chariots for an ADLG Indian army - whether I will ever use them in anger is another question entirely!

15mm Samurai Bowmen

ADLG v4 introduced some Light Infantry skirmishing archers to the Samurai lists, adding a much needed troop type to the Samurai roster - however the idea of adding in a few more figures to the only army I have ever had professionally painted was a bit of a challenge, as I'd need to paint them to sort of match the professional paint job on the rest of them!

Most of my Samurai army were also Old Glory figures which come in large bags, so even choosing a comptible range was a challenge - but eventually I settled on these really clean Ashigaru archers from Museum as being both the right height, and also simple enough to be easy to paint to a reasonably close standard to the rest of the army.

Being Ashigaru really reduced the level of detail needed

I also took an ADLG-specific approach to this set of 4 bases, choosing to paint them all in slightly different colours and uniforms to allow them to operate as single units of skirmishers in different commands. 

The pattern of 3 or 4 dots on their clohing fits in thematically with the rest of the army, and is a very simple way to generate a bit of a Japanese vibe (at a 3 foot range!) 

 I'll now have to look out for an event where they can be used!

And here's the army they will be playing as part of:

A Printed Wooden Horse

 At the recent ADLG competition in Alicante, all competitors received a free gift of a 3D-printed Trojan Horse (following on from the little fort given out last year).

Having used a Mycenean army only a few months ago at Warfare, such an accessory was very welcome and so I've managed to give it a very quick paint job and base it up on a 40x80mm ADLG baggage base. 

  And here it is - in the first picture shown next to a base of Museum "pre-Z" Mycenean warriors in Dendra armour, and in the second shown next to the mess on my painting desk. 

A few grass tufts and it'll be ready to take the field next time I use the Myceneans.

Homeric Poetry in Linear Motion - Warfare 2022

 After freezing our nads off at the Ascot racecourse last year, the 2022 edition of Warfare turned up the heating significantly with a trip to the desert in a Biblical-themed competition at the all-new Farnborough venue. 

That meant the Linear B tactics of an improved and enhanced Mycenean army got to have a run out in five games of L'Art de la Guerre, all laced with dreadful poetry, terribly inappropriate speech-bubble captions, almost no tactics and even a smattering of your best quality American Ska-Punk in a series of reports punningly now known as Homer's The Silly-iad.

A fistful of ... Elephants?

A quick bit of just-finished painting today, in the shape of 3 fully-padded-out armoured elephants.

I believe the two outrider ones are Museum, and the one in the middle looks like a Minifigs casting to me.

The Red and White one is painted in normal paints, with the other two having their barding done in GW Contrast paints (Talassar Blue, Yanden Yellow and Blood Angels Red)

The banners are (of course) printed onto normal inkjet paper, varnished and just glued on.

Armoured elephants are a new troop type in ADLGv4, and rather bizzarrely I seemed to be lacking in owning any - so rescuing these three unpainted versions from Clives stash was a must-do.

Fitting all three into one army is a challenge I need to work on - I think there's an Indian army that can have all three, otherwise its 300 points of Ilkhanids or something! 

I'm very pleased with how they have panned out - lets see how they perform once I get a chance to use them.

Museum Z-range Camel Baggage Guards

As a mark of how much my pace of painting has slowed, here's a couple of bases (or packs) of Museum Z-range camel archers I must have bought in the Museum sale back in January! 

These guys are the type who appear as baggage guards for a number of Hellenistic and other Roman-era desert dwelling armies, which I picked up as the Essex camels I had are a little uninspiring (to say the least). 

These were undercoated in white and painted mostly in GW Contrast paints with some other colours added for the details.

This shot shows a Light Camel unit using Essex figures alongside the Museum camels. 

The Essex camels are a little smaller, but viewed from wargaming distances and angles the difference is barely noticable 

This shot shows the "old" Museum double-crewed Biblical Bedouin Giant Camel - still a monster casting, towering over the new Museum figures

 

And here are all three in a procession! 

This pair of Mediocre Medium and Light Camels will be guarding the baggage and frightening enemy Light Horse on a table near you in the near future !