The Paphlagonians survive a varnish experience

Much to my relief, the ink-washed Xyston figures did come through a spray varnish this morning unscathed.

If anything it seems to have helped highlight the definition and texture of their silk-effect uniforms.

As you can see from the left shoulder of the chap in the front left corner of this base, there has still been some colour-bleed between the different inked colours, but whether it's something which is worth (or even possible) to touch up without making it look worse is questionable.

Now all I need to do is steel myself to grab a very fine brush and paint in their headbands...

15mm Xyston Paphlagonians & Takabara

There's plenty of early classical era armies which have a handful of "Persian Takabara", "Paphlagonian", "Arachosian" or other "Generic Eastern-ish Minor Nation" Medium Infantry, armed either with javelins or spears.  These guys are never vital, but often "nice to have" - especially as Javelinmen in L'Art de la Guerre to give an army a nice little anti-elephant force.

In the same Attack! purchase from Damian at Donnington as the recently-finished Egyptian Marines now come some Xyston Takabara and Paphlagonian infantry to fill that particular gap.

These figures have Thracian-style shields which need to be glued onto the figures (using my standard 2-part epoxy liquid metal).

The shields were close enough in shape that I was able to dig out some unused LBMS Thracian transfers - sadly I only had 4 left, meaning I had to actually paint the other ones myself (nightmare!)

The uniforms are done almost entirely in inks - not even washes, proper Windsor and Newton ink (amazon affilate link) on a white base coat.

This is a technique I've used on Persians in the past, as it gives a distinctive "silks" effect. There are only a handful of colours in use, namely Blue, Vridian, Deep Red and Peat Brown (the latter being on the leather gilets some of the guys are wearing, which were painted either leather brown or Skeleton Bone as a base colour).

The end result is a pretty bright and cheery set of unit, and with shields which don't look too badly out of place even with a few LBMS ones in the front rank as well.

The challenge with using ink as a main colour is that it doesn't fully dry - painting anything next to an inked area leads to the ink bleeding into the new, liquid colour.

That also makes applying varnish by brush almost impossible too - hence these not (yet) being matt varnished, and also not (yet) having painted leather straps as headbands on some of the figures.

My aim is to use a spray varnish instead of trying to brush one on, but at the moment it's too cold outside to risk spraying them.  After that they will look more matt, and be easier to handle.

Museum Miniatures Assyrian Army

Having been rather light on Biblical armies, ADLG and its easy-to-collect army size has allowed me to turbocharge this previously neglected part of my collection.

First up were the Myceneans, and then the NKE ended up being rebased as well. But now, finally, and after 30 years of collecting and gaming I now have an Assyrian army as well!

As with the Myceneans, my choice was to go with Museum figures. They are a little static in their poses and stylized, but for Biblical era I feel that this style works really well.

The Assyrians are a ruthlessly efficient army and so the regular poses of most of the men also feels right. Many of the colour choices were inspired by (but sadly not particularly closely copied from) the fantastic 28mm Foundry range, which have provided three Generals elements for this army as well.

The highlight is of course the Chariotry - which I've tarted up using a common or garden cheap printer and some Google-fu to search for "Assyrian Patterns", downloading and printing out some images to paste onto the walls of the Chariots to surprisingly good effect.

There's a full page of pictures of all of the figures, together with paint selection details (and links to eBay to find the paints) to browse now;

 

There is also a video of all of these photos on Youtube

Xyston "Egyptian Spearmen"

Along with the Assyrians the festive Madaxeman workbench has been a home for quite some time for 2 packs of Xyston Egyptian Spearmen, bought from Damian at Donnington at Attack! in Devizes earlier this year.

They fall into the category of "I'm not quite sure what to do with them but they are great figures so I bought them anyway". If only there was an army list for this I'd be able to field all sorts of stuff from my collection much more often!

There are probably a couple of armies that they can appear in - some of the "non NKE" Egyptian ones in the ADLG lists, and given the shields I could maybe sneak them into an Assyrian or Babylonian lineup as well I guess.

I did the clever painter-y thing on their kilts of doing darker stripes of blue, and then adding a lighter, thinner stripe inside them to give an impression of some texture.

White undercoats for the men, black for the shields. The shields are stuck on with my go-to solution for shields, 2-part "liquid metal" epoxy from Araldite (affiliate link).

Basing is the usual sand + Rustins Wood Stain + 2 layers of drybrushing before adding some tufts and static grass

28mm Norman-era spearmen & knights

I picked up some great value Saga Norman/Crusader figures at a Bring and Buy a while ago, and have been working out ways of using them also for L'Art de la Guerre.

For the Knights the answer has been to buy a few more mounted figures, based them up on 60x60's to create some extra bases, each with a single figure and two metal-shod strips either side of them. The Saga-based knights can then magnetize onto theses bases, meaning that I get a 3-knight base for the "cost" of just one extra figure.

I'm not planning on using a full Norman army in ADLG (just yet...) but these guys will be a nice Christian Spanish allied contingent for the 28mm Arabs I'm planning on painting sometime next year.

That allied contingent will probably need a couple of bases of Crusader / Spanish spearmen units, so I did pick up 2 packs of Crusader Miniatures Normans who painted up very easily and quickly.

The men are all undercoated in black then quickly painted in a simple uniform colour, which barely shows as there is chainmail covering most of them anyway. The shields are intended to look "Spanish".

These are the Saga spearmen I picked up in the Bring & Buy - their basing is just too big to work using sabots to turn them into close-formation ADLG spears, hence the need for extra figures, but the shield patterns gave me a good key for the rest of the men I painted up to match them.

Some nice and simple figures, and a quick paint job making a ready made allied contingent. 

28mm Assyrian Generals for ADLG

Whilst an Assyrian ADLG army still sits in it's original shipping box almost a year after buying it in the Museum Miniatures January sale, I have been occasionally browsing eBay and other sites for some 28mm Assyrian Generals to use as commanders with the 15mm army.

And now I've found some - and even better, they are Foundry figures!

ASS005 - "Heavy Infantry Command 1" on their website, picked up off eBay for a snip and now all set to lead the Assyrians to victory (I hope...).

My painting doesn't sadly match that of Foundry's professionals, but I did attempt to use the same sort of colour scheme, which will no doubt become a reference for the rest of the army once it's done.

I also normally only put one figure on a base for these commanders, but with a blister pack with musicians and standard bearers who otherwise won't get used, and also realising that 15mm Chariots will never fit on a 40mm round base I just went for it and added all the figures to 3 Commander bases.

This link will take you to a listing of 28mm Assyrians on your local eBay

In places their eyes are a little "fried egg" - egg-specially when viewed close up - and I might go back and touch them up if I have the inclination, even though at gaming distances they are perfectly OK

This link will take you to a listing of 28mm Assyrians on your local eBay

War & Empire Sassanid cataphracts

As well as picking up some Numidians at Britcon from West Wind's war & Empire range I also added a set of 12 of their Sassanid cataphracts to my collection.

OK, I do have lots of cataphracts already, but none which were overtly Sassanid - so a blister pack of a dozen seemed like a good chance to add 3 units to my mostly Legio Heroica ADLG army, and to get some size comparison photos of the W&E cavalry as well.

Here are the full dozen from the blister pack. The pack has (well, mine did have) more riders than horses, with a few officers and standard bearers to include if you want - which of course I chose to do.

Cataphracts are a decent host for a Sub General in ADLG, so the standard and sword-waving chaps in the middle may well be an embedded Sub General with some regularity.

Here are 8 of the W&E guys, with a textbook Essex cataphract unit in the middle of the line.

The proportions are a tad different, with the Essex ones looking bulkier and having stumpier horses but bigger bodies for the men, but they are basically the same height at the end of the day.

This shot has the Legio Heroica Sassanid Asarvan cavalry in the line. Again, not a great match in terms of stature but a decent one in terms of overall height.

The W&E Cataphracts are from their first range of releases, which seem to have fairly slight and short cavalry riders so perhaps later ranges will be a bit chunkier.

Here's the General and standard bearer. I wanted a fairly colourful mix of figures with different types of barding to match the look and feel of my existing Asarvan.

From the rear you can also see they have a fair selection of cloaks, allowing a more irregular look as well.

The size comparison shots for the Numidian foot can be seen here