Persians, Thracians and ...10mm Barons War?

The last week has seen a bit of a flurry of activity as a few purchases from the Museum Miniatures sale have made it to the top of the pile, together with some more Xyston Persians to go with the Cyrus' Mobile Towers of last year.

These are sold by Museum as Scythian horse archers, from their recent "Z" range of releases.

I'm using them as Thracians, by painting them in a similar style to some rather venerable Xyston Thracian infantry which were bought as a couple of FoG AM units, but which I have recently worked out could almost make up an entire ADLG army with a bit of extra stuff added to them.

As is usual with these new Museum figures, whilst the 15mm scale castings aren't (of course) quite as sharp as the 3D renders on their website would suggest, they do paint up nicely and have a pleasing amount of variety in the poses and clothing of the figures in each set too. 

 

Here I've mixed in a pack of Greek Light Horse (the javelin-armed figures) with mounted Scythian-style archers to create some Thracian cavalry who could serve both as Getae horse archers or as normal Thracians.

 

I've also complete another 4 units of Persian cavalry, with the eventual aim of making up a "loads of poor quality mounted" Achaemenid Persian list for ADLG.

These are Xyston castings, superbly detailed which I have painted up in a rather irregular paint scheme.

 

Most of these figures have some sort of scale armour, so I've done a few with metal and the rest with leather effect on the scales.

These are Thracian light horse javelinmen gain from Museum - the bear-headed Greek Light Horse from Museum making up much of the unit, with some hand-made shields added cut out from stiff card to "Thracian-ize" them.

Again they come with a good variety of poses even within each pack.

This is a head-on comparison photo showing the Xyston cavalry on the left and the Museum Z range ones on the right. The Xystons are two-piece castings and here it really shows how this allows their figures to be "wider" whereas the one piece casting Museum ones are a little "linear" by comparison, with the rider's pose very much in line with the horse. 

Another comparison shot, this time with the Museum figures on the left.

This weekend I also got a parcel through from Ryan McKnight (admin of the very useful Wargames  Events and Shows page on Facebook) who is producing them through a kickstarter at the moment under the banner of Apocalypse Miniatures 

It's many years since I painted up any 10mm medievals, but these look really sharp (and I'm a sucker for a freebie!) so when I was offered some I couldn't resist! 

This coming week I'll be divvying up the sample pack Ryan sent across and arranging a clandestine meeting (probably at the Hangar Lane Gyratory System) with Dave from the Madaxeman Podcast (Frumentarius23 on Instagram) so I can share them with him, and we will both have a go at painting them and see how they come out in the next few weeks.  

 

Festive Persian Siege Towers...? OK, it's a stretch, but...

 OK, maybe not - but if you are prepared to stretch to a bit of Old Testament nonsense and have an Early Achaemenid Persian army you'll probably have wondered what to use for 15mm scale "Cyrus Mobile Towers" at some point in the past... and now, I may have found the answer!

Very recently Pendraken announced an MDF Siege Tower in 10mm scale, which a quick email to Leon revealed was less than 40mm wide, and so would fit on a standard DBx basing frontage - the key challenge for other towers I'd looked at in the past. 

At only a fiver a pop, I quickly ordered a couple and then set to with the wood glue to assemble the two of them. 

With Museum Miniatures releasing some new Persian Sparabara, my own Essex Persian infantry were already slated to be replaced in the new year anyway, but this project meant that some of them won a last-minute reprieve from eBay as I instead upcycled a few bases of mixed bow / pavise infantry for tower crew. 

I then added on some re-purposed Essex War Wagon horses to pull the towers (because I had them lying around with ADLG needing less wagons than previous rulesets), otherwise Museum's Draught Oxen might have been the ideal choice (although it looks like Essex "might" sell the wagon horses separately if you ask nicely too), and with the application of some printed-off "wallpaper" patterns (repeating the idea from my Assyrian Chariots of a few years ago) to give the towers a more detailed look than I could ever hope to paint and, well, Cyrus is your uncle! 

There's about a dozen crew inside each tower, and a couple on the base as well to keep the enemy away from the horses!

You can fit 2 standing Essex infantry on each of the three internal levels. I used the wallpaper on the pavises as well. 

This pattern is one of a number I've made available to download as a pdf from my site, but there are loads of images on Pinterest if you search for Persian or Assyrian Graphics.

The tower is painted in Citadel Magragge Blue - not sure if its still available but it is a nice strong dense dark blue. 

I glued the drop-down "bridge" in the open position to fit more crew in. I may add one of the Museum kneeling archers here too once I get round to buying them. 

Adding a different image on one of the front panels just about stops making the tower look like it's wearing pyjamas. I think.... 

The second tower I did in yellow, trying to blend in the yellow borders on this graphic from Pinterest. 

Here I used much more of a mix of graphics - not sure it's as effective though as the blue one. 

Part of the reason for using a mix of graphics was that the main one didn't scale down well to the smaller panels at the top of the tower.

Again, space on the drop-down bit for a kneeling archer.  

Even the 10mm ladders internally don't look too out of scale. 

This is a standard 40mm wide and 80mm deep DBx "war wagon" base.

• Get the Towers from Pendraken
• Download the Wallpaper
• Oxen from Museum
• Crew from Museum
• Crew from Essex
• Horses from Essex (maybe?)

Happy Christmas! 

  

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! 

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!