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

15mm Teutons for sale on eBay

On eBay this week is another "downsizing of a DBM/FoG army" ADLG army sale, this time a nicely presented 200+ point 15mm Teutonic army including a wide range of options to form several different variations of this legendarily punchy force.

All the figures have been based and magnabased for storage and transit, and have been double-varnished (Army Painter + Testors Dullcote) for tabletop handling.

Here's the link to the auction which ends on Sunday 14th October, around 5pm UK time

They are based with a snow effect, which on a bigger DBx army can seem a bit limiting by making it harder to do possible morphs into other forces - but with ADLG armies being smaller it's entirely feasible to have a dedicated Teutonic winter-war themed army like this as a stand-alone force.

These guys were originally part of a much bigger DBM/FoG army now being downsized to ADLG, and the sharp-eyed amongst you may have even spotted some of them appearing on the Madaxeman website in several battle reports as part of the legendary DBM Lithuanians a few years back  ...

There's a total of 60-odd foot + 50-odd mounted (so almost 170 "things" in total, if you're working out a fair price).

The army comprises:

• 18 Teutonic Brother Knight figures (Mirliton & Toullier)
• 6 Vassal Knight figures (Mixed - some Museum?)
• 4 LH Crossbow figures (Mirliton)
• 4 Hungarian LH figures (Mirliton)
• 4 Balts with javelin figures (Essex)
• 6 Prussian Medium Cavalry figures (Mirliton)
• 4 LF Bow Balt skirmisher figures (Essex)
• 2 LF Handgunner figures (Essex)
• 16 Teutonic Brother Spearmen (Gladiator) 
• 16 German Militia Spearmen (Essex)
• 8 English Mercenary Longbow (Essex)
• 3 Commanders bases (Mirliton and others)
• 15 Levy figures (mixed)

If you want to expand the army I am happy to either point you at the exact figure codes or have a dig around in the rest of my collection as well to see if I can help out.  I can also add some of the "snow" in the parcel too if you'd like to base up a few more extra figures yourself.

I can also arrange for collection at Warfare, or on a clubnight at CLWC in London so if you are a UK-based player those may be options to save on postage. If you're in Spain or Southern France, I'll also be at the Estella event in late October. 

Part of all bids will go to support SSAFA, the UK armed forces charity.

Here's the link to the auction

It ends on Sunday 14th October, around 5pm UK time - happy bidding!

Improving Some (rather) Old Pikemen

My Classical pikemen date back many years, and are some speed-painted Minifigs figures designed to be shoved together in multiple ranks and viewed from a distance..

Rebasing them from DBx to 40x40mm ADLG bases has given me a chance to tart some of them up a little however.

This has seen some given more colourful uniforms and boldly-painted shields - and others given Veni Vidi Vici shield transfers.

They can all be seen in more detail here

War & Empire Numidians (15mm)

I recently bought some Numidians from War & Empire (Forged in Battle) , which have managed to get painted extremely quickly - probably due to their simplicity!

They are led by some Baueda Generals working in tandem with W&E infantry officers on 40mm round bases for ADLG.

I've also posted some comparison shots to show how they scale with other ranges of Romans and Carthaginians (who they will be fighting with or against I suspect).

All these photos and many more are online now on my site, where I also explain the painting techniques as well (for what they are worth). The figures can also be seen in the 15mm directory

Rounding out (literally) the Myceneans

After a quiet few weeks on the website here's a couple of bits and pieces to round out the Mycenean army that appeared a few months ago

First up is the near-obligatory 25/8mm Genius Commander on a 40mm round ADLG commander base.

He is from Redoubt Enterprises Trojan Wars range, selected as much for his big cowhide double-bass shield as any other reason.

The figure is code TX4, representing Achilles, hero and leader of the Myrmidons on foot in bronze armour with bronze helmet, figure of eight shield

He comes accompanied by shield bearer (who didn't make it onto the base).

Next up are some "Barker Marker" 40x40 bases, featuring 'shrunken' photos of my own chariots taken from directly overhead together with a push-pin handle.  Very simple do to - an overhead photo of a chariot, cropped and resized to fit on a 40x40 MDF base.
 

They function primarily as a ZOC marker, but also as you can see here my Chariots are deeper than the regulation 40x40 and so there may be times when it could be useful to have a 40x40 substitute base to drop in, perhaps when they are turning or in a congested part of the table where the extra 10mm on their bases would get in the way. These markers fulfil that role - and also act as Ambush Markers too for 3 uses from one base.

Finally, some Mycenean-specific hit markers using - again - the textbook cowhide shields.

There are from Magister Militum - £2 for 8.  They also have other shields, and my upcoming Assyrian army will probably feature a similar idea. 

Mounted on 18mm round bases, with the edges colour-coded for the number of hits they are small enough to fit in behind each unit without being too distracting.   Since doing these it's been suggested to me that possibly doing a similar thing with single archer figures could be a neat way of identifying the units with integral archer support.

The Myceneans are done..

Only 6 months after buying them in the Museum Miniatures January sale (for only around £50) a full L'Art de la Guerre army of Myceneans (including units I will probably never use) is now finished and on the tabletop already!

There are plenty of pictures and also a video (of the pictures) on Madaxeman.com right now

This lot fits on an A4 sized piece of paper - not bad for a full army !

Myceneans

I bought a Mycenean (and Assyrian) army earlier this year in the Museum Miniatures sale (25% off every January!), and after spraying most of them in a flesh-coloured undercoat I finally got round to doing a couple of test bases to see how the planned colour scheme works out. 

With flesh undercoat they are very quick to paint - so they could all be on the table very soon.

I'm a big fan of Museum for the Biblical period, as the slightly over-stylized look and limited number of poses seems to work really well in this theme.