More adventures in Contrast Paints

 Now the Arabs are starting to come together I've test-done a few infantry figures to see what difference undercoat makes to the GW Contrast Paints that I'm looking to use for this army.

These are WiP figures - undercoated either in matt white (Halfords car undercoat) or Army Painter Skeleton Bone, and then painted with the same GW Contrast colour.

This is Magos Purple

The guy on the right has a Sudanese head from the Perry sprue

Talassar Blue

Iyanden yellow

I'm pretty sure these are Perry metal figures

Space Marine Red

This is perhaps the most "solid" colour of the lot that I've tried

Warp Lightning Green

Iyanden yellow trousers

Aethermatic Blue

This is perhaps my favourite of the colours so far - but I have a fair few more to try! 

28mm Plastic Arab Kitbashing - continued

Just before I rush outside to spray undercoat I thought I'd take a few snaps of the kitbashed Arab riders and infantry to highlight where the various arms, legs, hands and weapons had ended up. 

These have been glued together and then you'll see some white and yellow patches where I've used polyfiller and wood filler in an effort to make the joins between glued components disappear. After it dries I sand it off with a small round hobby file. 

These are all Gripping Beast plastic Arab bodies with a range of different heads, and the odd different arm added. The armoured heads are from (I believe..) the Fireforge Russian infantry sprue which I think look quite "Arabian Nights" when added to a dishsash-wearing body, and the bald head is a Mongol horseman one from Fireforge's  Mongols cavalry set. 

These are more of the added-skirt armoured Medieval Russian and Viking bodies with a mix of mostly "arabized" heads from the GB Arab infantry and cavalry ranges, and metal shields from Footsore. 

Same guys from the back

These mounted figures are based on torsos from the Gripping Beast Gothic Elite Cavalry set, which has three rather nice fully armoured (or barded) horses and a rather paltry 3 different poses of  riders, all of whom are thrusting with lances or actively charging with swords. 

This pose does however just about work for mounted archers if you snip off the left hand and replace it with a snipped-off hand holding a bow. Luckily there are plenty of these hands spare in the GB infantry and cavalry boxes!

There are loads of bowcases in the GB Arab cavalry and Fireforge Mongol sets so I've also been able to do a load of the Lance/Bow cavalry holding lances and with bows stowed, as well as leaving some just as lancers.

Simply replacing the heads makes a massive difference, but this set of Gothic torsos really does need quite some kitbashing as otherwise the limited number of poses would be, well, quite limiting. 

More of the "Arabian Knights" style bowmen. The GB plastic bowmen are pretty bland so mixing them up with some extra heads and even arms from the mounted boxes (and these Medieval Russian armoured heads too)  really helps make them more interesting as a set.

Here are some "Turkic" - style bowmen using Mongol heads. The one on the left looks to have acquired a Fireforge Mongol arm too, as these are exceedingly (weirdly!) long..

More Mongol and turkic heads on GB Arab bodies. 

Back into (figure painting) gear...

After a month of sporadic holiday (and interior decorating-type painting) I'm finally now starting to think about getting back into gear for some proper painting with the start of my long-promised 28mm 'genric' Arab army for ADLG.

Its a real mix of metals and plastics, with a bit of half-assed conversion going on as well. Here are some of the figures in WiP:

These figures are I think a mix of the Fireforge Byzantine Infantry sprue, with some Gripping Beast Vikings as well to give me a load of armoured bodies to which I add Arab heads from the GB Arab infantry and cavalry packs. 

Here I'm using the trusty favourite of wood filler to create longer robes for them, building up over most of their legs and leggings and then adding in metal Dailami shields from Footsore so I can use the amazing Dailami shield transfers from LBMS for the couple of bases of "elite" Dailami infantry in a number of Arab armies in ADLG 

I will also be making a whole pack of GB plastic arabs, but like many of the recent GB plastic packs (Late Romans.. looking at you here..) they don't have all that much variety so I have added metal figures from North Star, Gripping Beast (I think) and Perry (in order of left to right after the plastic figures) to mix it up a bit. 

I'm also going to make a load of cavalry - these are the GB Gothic Elite Cavalry horses, which are the same as their Roman cataphract pack as well with three poses. Instead of metal armour I've used GW Contrast Paints as a base (with extra detail from normal paints) to create colourful horse barding for the elite horsemen. 

These are some of the GB Gothic riders with "arab" heads and bowcases added 

And from the other angle.. very much WiP, much of the detail isn't added yet.

More riders - one of these at least is I think a Fireforge Mongol body and arms.

Elite mounted bow cavalry!

Here are the Fireforge and GB horses from the Arab Light and Heavy Cavalry boxes which most of the rest of the cavalry will be mounted on. As with the 15mm Hungarians I did the horses all first. 

These have all been undercoated white, painted with a bit of a watered down semi-wash Coat d'Arms horse colour then inked with various layers of ArmyPainter browns and dark tones. 

More to come now I've restarted painting again post-summer!

20 Lockdown Podcasts

 During the Great Covid Lockdown of 2020 the Madaxeman posse (yeuch!) recorded a set of 20 weekly podcasts to keep one another sane, and compare notes on how much painting they had done - and all 20 episodes are now collected here on one single page

Part educational (a very small part), part just some blokes and a girl chatting not at the pub this series developed a cultish following as the series evolved over the 20 week stretch, and now this is your chance to start from the very beginning and hear the concept, the content and the output evolve from it's early Zoom-powered fumblings to the flully-fledged almost a radio show end product by Week 20.

You can listen again to all 20 episodes directly on this page, or by clicking through to your favourite Podcast platform as this Podcast is also available on Podbean, Spotify, iTunes, and Tune In (meaning you can ask for it on Alexa devices) and even Youtube

As a bit of background here's my personal tally of painting in this 20-week lockdown period - all of these get discussed in the Podcast, as well as several thousand other figures, vehicles and terrain pieces from the other cast members;

(All the stuff we talk about we've bought ourselves - there's no product placement, freebies or paid endorsements in here. But if anyone did want to send anything, please get in touch!)

"Pre-Covid Sassanid" Persian Match Reports from Cold Wars 2020

Arriving from the distant depths of pre-lockdown history with less warning than a new Taylor Swift album release, these 3 Madaxeman.com "Doubles" match reports finally emerge into the light of day blinking as furiously as an Amish buggy's indicators with a flat battery.

The mighty forces of Persia ride across the North American plain and engage in wanton warfare in the bowels of the Cold Wars 2020 auditorium at the very dawn of the age of Covid against the Classical Indians, the 100YW French and Alexander the Great.

There are beers, maps, pizza slices and almnost certainly a foot-long hotdog in these American-tastic 3 widescreen 20 Floz match reports with a side of fries and a portion of salsa.

Let's make Wargaming face-to-face Great again with these 3 Madaxeman.com "Doubles" match reports

More War & Empire Sassanid Cataphracts

Painted up at pretty much the same time as the Carolingians are three more units of War & Empire / Forged in Battle Sassanids Cataphracts. 

I'd already got 3 units worth, which isn't quite enough for a proper Sassanid army (you kinda need 4 at least I think) so rather than stick with using Roman-style ones, when I saw a pack on eBay for a tenner for 12 mounted figures I dived in and doubled the force.

These chaps have a lot of variety in the pack, and handily come with 13 riders, one of whom is a standard bearer and one an officer/General type with a mace so you can choose whether to have a standard-bearing officer in one of the units or not. 

They paint up super-easily, with simple cloaks and just enough variety to keep them interesting.

 You can also comfortably get 4 on a 40mm wide base by staggering them slightly front and back

I chose to give just a few of them cloth (or cloth-covered) armour, the rest are in full metal again to get a smidge more colour into the block. What's not to like, especially for just a tenner post-free ?!

 

Baueda Carolingians in 15mm

Another altrusitic purchase to fund Martin at Vexillia's passion for Warrington Town FC, these 4 units of Carolingian mounted archers are from Baueda. 

The ADLG Carolingian list only has 2 units of them, but with 4 figures in a pack and 3 to a base I kinda thought why not just but the extra pack and get 4 units in case...erm.... well, you know how it goes !

They are jolly little fellows, very much "true" 15mm with just two poses in the pack (Code: CRL5) and come with separate horse and rider.

 In the metal the figures are a little underwhelming, and look somewhat oddly proportioned but the detail is - like with most Baueda figures - really clearly defined and takes a wash extremely well. 

They also have a really great "likability" factor (as saying "they are cute" doesn't really sound right for mail-clad medieval warriors on horseback) and I must admit the thought of extending this to a whole army rather than just morphing some of my genric Dark Age horsemen for the rest of the figures is now quite tempting.

The Bauea site says that "These Frankish horse archers are based on the capitularies' insistance that each armoured horsemen should own a bow and on contemporary artistic depictions. Their training, experience, weapons, armour and equipment are the same as the other caballarii, but with the addition of a bow."

They are now in the 15mm photo gallery on Madaxeman.com

The return of the Malifaux Painting Mojo

In a world of lockdown painting in which I'd already done a 28mm Ancients army (the Assyrians), a 10mm French Napoleonic army and also a 15mm Medieval Hungarian, I suddenly found myself in need of some additional variety

This was not because the other three were in any way similar topics, or uniforms - it was more about trying to paint individual figures rather than painting up and finishing a full army, with a 'full army' on table mass effect.

Prompted in the Lockdown Podcast to remember that I did have some Malifaux figures on the painting pile (although rather hidden in a cupboard) I dug them out and was pleasantly surprised to remember that there were more than I thought - I had forgotten buying Envy, from the Crossroads Seven, from eBay to add to the box-completing extras for the new Kaeris crew, Sparks (my first Gremlin) to go with Mei Feng and finally Neil Henry just to do some old fashioned beating

There are loads of pictures on the website, but here are a few tasters: