Making 28mm Victrix elephants multi-national

 As heralded last week, I used some magnets to allow the two Victrix elephants in their kit to be used with interchangeable crew and accoutrements (OK, shields clipped to the sides of the howdahs), giving me Successor, Numidian and Roman elephants, just not all at the same time..

This is the full set of clip-on shields and glued-together crew for the two elephants.

You can (just about) see how rare earth magnets have been glued in place between the feet of the guys, so they can connect to a small patch of steel paper that I have glued down inside the base of each howdah to hold the crew in place firmly enough for gaming use.

Here's the "Red & Green" elephant with Successor shields and crew attached - you can see this as a Numidian elephant in an earlier blog post.

I spent quite some time carefully doing the crew as they are the most visual and visible part of the model. 

The elephant is quite a nice model and looks realistically proportioned and animated.

I copied the "bit in the middle" of the pike from the style I did for my Victrix pikemen - but for this figure that bit was included in the casting (moulding?) whereas for the pikemen I had to add it with rolled up paper!

The shield is attached with 2 magnets, as is the spear case at the back. I glued the magnets on the outside of the howdah for the shields, and then realised that they were strong enough to magnetize to another magnet through the walls of the howdah, so the spear case only has 1 maget outside and one on the inside wall of the howdah.

The "blue" elephant with blue crew. 

The shield pattern was a transfer which I blended in with mixed paint to reach the rim of the shield. 

Alwys worth adding eyes to elephants IMO - make sure to add dark black eyebrows too though or it just looks weird. 

I snuck in a couple of 15mm shield transfers as a small bit of decoration on the blanket. 

Here are both elephants togther in Successor kit.

 

And the Blue elephant with a very non-historical "Roman" shield and Roman crew.

I had these LBMS transfers going spare from a much older project, and while I know they are nowhere near the right period for a Republican Roman elephant they do have the advantage of being very "Roman", and also using up some shields and transfers I would otherwise have no need for!

They are now ready to take the field ...once I paint up the 100 or so Foundry legionaries !

28mm Numidian elephant

Victrix sell a rather clever multi-use elephant kit, with 2 elephants and crew for Roman, Greek or Numidian armies all included. 

For my Numidian allied contingent (for the ADLG lists) I have pulled together a set of Numidian crew and some magnetize-on shields, all of which can be added to an elephant to make it "Numidian", with the magnets meaning its not committed to that role full time.

The kit comes with 6 "halves" allowing you to set the 2 elephants up with different alignments and arrangements of legs.

As these are to be used for multiple armies with different crew I went for a very simple plain cloth on the back of the elephant, and block colours on the howdah. 

LBMS do sell wraparound transfers for both, but that would have meant buying lots more identical elephants !

Rather irritatingly I had used up all of the dozen "animal skin" shield transfers in the LBMS/Victrix pack on the actual soldiery, so had to cobble together this rather not-quite-as-convincing hand painted set of skins for the two shields magnetized to the sides of the howdah.

Again the crew's javelins were replaced with plastic broom bristles, as these would certainly snap if you left the original Victrix ones in place and tried to actually use the elephant in gameplay. 

The mahout's hook is also rather brittle and has already been broken off, shortened and glued during painting - long before getting into combat 

Elephants Sir! Faarsands of 'em!

 In the margins of the recent SELWG show in Picketts Lock a well-padded BHGS Teams event took place with sets of three players contesting ADLG glory in three well-themed pools - including Maximum Elephants!

This was where I deployed the might of the Delhi Sultanate for the first ever time in an army packed with grenade-throwing skirmishers, top-drawer Mughal Guardsmen, Abyssinian Melee Specialists and of course three full-fat Armoured Elephants.

Read on to see how this hodge-podge of combat capability fared in 5 lavishly illustrated Madaxeman battle reports aginst the Timurids (twice), Alexander The Great, The Seleucids and also an Indian army from an earlier era.

Swoon as the elephants charge forward into the jaws of melee!

Gasp in awe and delight as brightly coloured warriors engage in mortal tabletop combat

Groan at the endless poor puns and irrelevant animations gratuitously stuffed into the narrative!

I even throw in some very old holiday snaps for you as well !

All 5 reports are now on the Madaxeman.com Website

3D Printed Elephant & Metal Crew

I've just finished painting up a 28mm elephant printed by Disain Studio ( https://disainstudio.com/ ), which I bought from them at Britcon, and then added to it a metal crew from Aventine Miniatures. 

The pikeman has an "extended" waist as I used 2 thin rare earth magnets to fasten his legs and torso together - partly so he can be removed for transit and storage, and partly as he looked a little stubby. 

The elephant (I think) looks far better than most 28mm "wargames" elephants out there, although I have high hopes for the Victric hard plastic one which I'll make eventually. 

The paint job on the elephant is a standard black undercoat with progressively lighter grey drybrushing. I missed a couple of minor casting (printing?) lines just behind the head, which really I should have sanded away, and so had to paint them out using paint as a filler to make them go away - I don't think they show unless you are looking for them.  

The shield pattern is an LBMS Thracian shield, as the ones I have for some Victrix pikemen and hoplites are way too big for this Aventine crewman. I did also have to bend the Indian mahout's legs a little with pliers to make him fit. 

The whole thing is based on a 60x60mm mdf base, with stained and drybrushed builders sand, and a couple of bamboo plants from a Chinese eBay purchase.

I even created a YouTube video with a load more photos and a turntable view of the finished article which you can see here: https://youtu.be/kuRz7GIOdP4

Burton Doubles - Is it now safe to sit quite that close ?

 The UK L'Art e la Guerre circuit continued its return to full-effect with the 2022 edition of the near-legendary Burton Doubles taking place in the traditional; Town Hall venue in February, and of course a rather haphazarly assembled Khurasanian army was there to partake of all of the glory that the home of British Brewing has to offer.

In these four full-colour match reports you can see Dailami Warriors fighting Viking Huscarls, carpet-wearing elephants taking on the Beja Camel Corps, Arabesque bowmen invading the spicier parts of Southern India and a wall of steel-clad cataphracts slamming into another wall of silk-clad spearmen in 4 epic full-screen battles.

There is of course the usual mix of captions, comments, commentary and analysis from expert pundits Al'Shearer and Hannibal himself, a rather brisk passing mention of some of Burtons more exotic restaurants, and, as an added bonus, a video of wildlife-celebrity Chris Packham's favourite dance-floor filler as well. 

Don't dare ever say we don't give you anything that you could get elsewhere in wargames social media world! 

Roll on and enjoy the Reports!    

(And remember, if anyone asks, tell them that the Al'Shearer Infantry told you to do it .. !)

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.

Here's those Arabs... for the last time (for a while)

 Yep, finally the mega-project is done and dusted. Or, matt varnished more accurately. 

That means an "all options" ADLG Generic Arab Dynasties army in 25/8mm plastic and metal is now ready to be used, whenever that may be. 

Here are the final set of full-army photos;

There are plenty more photos of the individual figures on the following pages on Madaxeman.com:

• The Black Guard
• Lots of infantry 
• WiP on Contrast Paints
• All The Cavalry - Part 1
• All the Cavalry - Part 2
• All the Infantry