Ninja Time!

Whist my 15mm Samurai army is already too extensive to really use in one go, that doesn't stop a steady drip-drip of additional units and, well, cool toys being added to it from time to time.

The latest incremental unnecessary items are a Japanese folklore-inspired replacement Stampeding Herd ("Expendables" in ADLG terms), and some good-at-hiding Ninja ambush markers as well.

These all come from Philp Mann's recent Kickstarter project, and were obtained by "ADLG-R" guru "Aussie Simon" on my behalf.

Oni are basically Japanese Troll/Demon things, with a long tradition of being generally unsubtle and violent - and most usually bright red as well ! As such a herd of Oni seemed a great way to represent a more mythic retelling of the use of a stampeding cattle herd in the Battle of Kurikara

The Oni's flesh is all painted with the new Citadel Contrast Paints - Blood Angels Red, Akhelian Green (the blue coloured one oddly enough) and Creed Cammo for the Green ones. There's more Contrast Paint malarkey coming soon ...

Oni typically carry these types of iron clubs called kanabō. In Japan the expression "oni with an iron club" means to be invincible or undefeatable - not something my cattle herds have really achieved all that often it must be said!

The ninja figures are really nice, with a lot of variety but are a smidge large to use alongside or mix in with my Old Glory Samurai -  but being ninjas, they are good at hiding and sneaking around so I have press-ganged some into service as ambush markers. 

 I've colour-coded the three 40x40 markers using the flower grass tufts - each base also has the ninjas with a small bit of the same colour on their inner-garment sleeves

The Red markers above, and below the green ones

Here are the sets of figures next to the Old Glory Samurai for scale comparison.

As you can see, the Ninjas are not too far off, but just a bit too far for using together with the Old Glory figures for my taste.

A fistful of 15mm Swiss

With a one-day Late medieval themed competition looming, it seemed a good time to upgrade my handful of Mirliton Swiss pikemen into a L'Art de la Guerre Swiss army capable of taking to the table.

With the Mirliton ranges no no longer being available in the UK, I decided to try a different manufacturer to round out the 5 pike blocks I owned already. After a bit of browsing I settled on the perhaps unlikely choice of QRF/Freikorps, on the basis that they looked to be a similar heft and body shape to the Mirliton figures, and also as they too had open hands for separate weapons.

The QRF figures are a smidge more frail, and are less "frilly sleeved" than the "a bit frilly" Mirliton figures, but with a good selection of flags downloaded from Alex Flags, compatible basing and similar paint schemes they look pretty decent at tabletop distances to me.

These are 40x40 bases with 12 figures in 3 ranks - an  ADLG Kiel

I chose to blackline these figures - not a style I usually adopt, but with the blocks of adjacent colour on the Swiss and my reluctance to ink-wash a set of figures with so much white on them it helps to make the limited palette of contrasting colours pop a little more 

It can of course end up looking like Mondrian was their official uniform designer.

The bases are painted in a Homebase testor pot - nice and cheap !

The Mondrian effect is very visible from the back

As I've probably posted before, making sure to paint the edges of the flags to remove that unsightly white paper line along their edges is really important and makes a huge difference to the overall look and feel. If you don't do this your eye is automatically drawn to the (white) edges of the flags, breaking the illusion of the figures.

Here are some of the QRF/Freikorps guys next to the Mirliton figures (LKM on the right)

I also based up some halberdier units - these are pretty flimsy and I can see some casualties in the halberd-blade department as soon as they take to the table in battle conditions

Another view of the two types - Mirliton on the left, QRF on the right.

 Halberdiers again.  Not that great close up, but these are painted for tabletop distance viewing.

 Mirliton in the foreground, QRF from Berne behind them

Building the Lancastrians in 25mm for ADLG

Following on from the battle reports of the surprisingly effective Lancastrian ADLG army, I thought it might be interesting to share how the army was put together in terms of figures and basing, and the thought behind the list design as well.

Most - but not all - of them are Perry plastics, making this a very cost-effective army to build. There is now a summary of the figures I used,  how the army was designed and was supposed to work (in theory and then in practice) and also some ideas as to how I painted them up on the main website now. If you wish you can buy yourself a set of the whole lot for under £100!

Full details of the figures are on madaxeman.com

Lambs to the Slaughter! The Assyrians invade Patras in 5 new battle reports!

The much-trailed Assyrian army has finally made it not only onto the table, but onto a plane, and into a 5-round competition in sunny (and rainy) Greece at the 2019 Patras Challenge.

The Winged Lion of Assyria takes on three very different Roman armies, a Classical Indian and finally the Han Chinese in a series of battles fitted carefully in between bouts of extreme eating and drinking across a swathe of the Patrene nightlife's top venues.

Watch as the the newly minted chariots and infantry, supported by archer cavalry do their very best on a number of different playing surfaces to dodge between the cakes, biscuits and pieces of lamb which attempt to prove more problematic than their enemies

 Even goats occasionally get a look in.

Its all there in glorious sunshine, so roll up your Gyros, sizzle up some Spanakopita and chuck a halloumi slice on the bbq to enjoy these 5 consecutive reports !

There Be Gunnes!

As is always the case, despite having far too many figures I managed to pick a list for Roll Call last weekend which meant I needed to buy and paint up some more figures.

This time it was a 25mm artillery piece for my WOTR Lancastrian army, which with all my 25mm artillery being decidedly TYW was just too much of a stretch to morph across from stuff I already had.

A quick peruse of the various manufacturers threw up Front Rank Figurines, who I haven't actually bought anything from before (that I can remember...). They have a very nice set of 100YW and WOTR ranges, and a special-buy pack of gunners and crew with both a heavy and lighter gun included.

This ended up being what I bought, and I'm pleased to say both that it arrived quickly and the figures looked as good in the metal as they did in the professionally painted photos from their website.

This chap in the foreground has ended up with more of a casting line that I'd have ideally liked. It would have been easy enough to scrape off with the edge of a craft knife, but it appears that I missed it in my hurry to get them painted.

So, this team were ready in double-quick time to take to the table for the first time last weekend.

How did they do? You'll find out soon enough once the reports are posted I guess...!

I Sea People!

After being somewhat impressed with a Sea People army last year at a competition in Ireland I've added a few more of the excellent ex-Gladiator Black Hat figures now sold by Fighting 15's  to my New Kingdom Egyptian army such that I can now also field a full Sea People force.

For the Medium Foot I've kept all of the similarly-hatted guys together to give some vague impression of different tribal sub-groupings fighting as pseudo "units"

I didn't really buy enough figures though to make that work for the close formation units, especially as I added in a load of random spare Egyptians and other biblical and loincloth-clad waifs and strays from the parts box to make up the numbers, so the Heavy Foot are a bit more of a mysterious rabble.

Having originally bought the first half of this lot many years ago I'm actually quite pleased that I still had the same flesh wash (GW) to make the new figures look consistent with the old ones as well.

I even picked up some tribes that I didn't have any of first time around.

The colours are entirely speculative - but these are really well animated and easy to paint figures so they may well be sweeping across a table at you sooner than you think!