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 !

Beachhead 2024: The Seleukids ride forth!

 In a vain attempt to avoid repeatedly misspelling "Seleucid" I've just created a set of 5 video battle reports from the recent Beachhead competition in Bournemouth earlier this year. 

These feature a mostly-Victrix 28mm Seleusid army taking on the Indians, Camillan Romans, Galatians, Dacians and finally the Early Imperial Romans in 5 pretty brutal and full-impact battle play-through videos.

At this event neither me nor any of my opponents seemed keen to muck about, so the end result is a lot of closeups of 28mm troops in push-and-shove close quarters combat - what's not to like eh?!

You can see the first video by following this link - the others all follow on in sequence.

 

Painting 28mm Successors from Victrix: The Light Troops

I've finally managed to get some of the 28mm Victrix Successors I previewed in a half-painted state a few weeks ago finished, and into the light box for some professional-grade (ahem) photos. 

The context to this is that I'm building my first ever Successor/Alexandrian 28mm army, and so with a huge range of troops to choose from in Successor armies I didn't want to do my usual "try and make and spray the whole army in one go" thing, but instead break the task down into manageable chunks that I could stay motivated to complete - hence deciding to start with the "light" troops

That ended up meaning that my first (OK second - I have completed and taken photos of some test bases before now) batch of figures for this army ended up being Light Infantry, Javelinmen, Peltasts and a couple of bases of Galatian crazy heavy infantry (because, well, they are really cool figures.)

And, the results are now in, with this smattering of photos plus a whole lot more on the website :

The Successor painting page on the website has all of these and more, as well as some commentary on how I approached painting them in a "Contrast-plus" style.

Dismounted Companions - or Hypaspists? Figures too nice not to use..

A rather lightweight painting session to share this time, as a set of the rather lovely Xyston Theban Generals and Leaders pack finally makes it onto the internet, based up here as some close formation infantry for various non-Theban armies.

These figures are really animated nicely, and having swapped them with Dave from The Podcast some time ago I'd been trying to work out what to do with them as I was reluctant to lose them in a wall of hoplites.  Eventually I settled on basing them as close formation infantry to act both as dismounted Companions, or as Alexanders Hypaspists (both in their Heavy Spearmen incarnation in ADLG).

This did also allow me to justify using a couple of Xyston mounted officer figures I had kicking around too, and, more importantly, to have yet another go at a multi-layer, grey base + white top layer "triad" type paint scheme to see if I could make white look, well, "interesting".   

And here they are, replete in their white cloaks and petruges.

I've yet to matt varnish the shields, which are gloss to take the VVV waterslide transfers, as it's been too cold to spray outside and anyway spraying 2 bases is a bit of a waste!

Here's the back view that shows the white layering. It's sort of there, but a bit less distinct than I had hoped. Somehow the lighter layers seem to blend into the base layers when I paint them, as if the darker paint bleeds into the lighter ones as I apply them - maybe I need to matt varnish between coats?

Anyway, they do look like boss-level dudes, so I'm happy with them!

Museum Z-range Camel Baggage Guards

As a mark of how much my pace of painting has slowed, here's a couple of bases (or packs) of Museum Z-range camel archers I must have bought in the Museum sale back in January! 

These guys are the type who appear as baggage guards for a number of Hellenistic and other Roman-era desert dwelling armies, which I picked up as the Essex camels I had are a little uninspiring (to say the least). 

These were undercoated in white and painted mostly in GW Contrast paints with some other colours added for the details.

This shot shows a Light Camel unit using Essex figures alongside the Museum camels. 

The Essex camels are a little smaller, but viewed from wargaming distances and angles the difference is barely noticable 

This shot shows the "old" Museum double-crewed Biblical Bedouin Giant Camel - still a monster casting, towering over the new Museum figures

 

And here are all three in a procession! 

This pair of Mediocre Medium and Light Camels will be guarding the baggage and frightening enemy Light Horse on a table near you in the near future !

The Seleucids in Beery ADLG Doubles Action at Burton 2020

Burton upon Trent, that double-barrelled city of beer barrels recently played host to a 24-team  ADLG Doubles tournament, which was an opportunity to use a recycled army list and a refurbished Seleucid army (with Maccabean allies) in 4 Classical era battles.

The rather unusual points total of 325 in force at BADCON 2020 saw the Successors take on Romans, Palmyrans, Vandals and Sassanids in 4 reports only briefly interrupted for discursive coverage of various beers, yet more pastry-covered meat products deplyed at lunchtimes, a hearty curry and some cockney rhyming slang.

Read on for these 4 full-flavoured and decidedly hoppy battle reports, and raise a toast to the King of Beers!

This is not the Pasty you were looking for.. Gepids in ADLG action at PAW 2020

For the first set of battle reports from events held in the roaring 20's the Gepid army assembles in glorious 28mm and then travels down the A30 all the way to the edge of Cornwall in order to assault the pasty-crust foothills and mountains of success at the 2020 PAW competition in Plymouth.

Will this complex and clever army of maniacally charging one-dimensional horse warriors manage to discover the meaty taste of success, or will they find that they have they bitten off more stewed vegetables of indeterminate provenance than they are able to chew?

One game against Trimverate Roman, two battles against the Seleucids and a final round playing the Sassanian Empire will show the answer in these  4 full-scale West Country reports.

May the Pasty be With You!