Projects You Probably Shouldn't Start...

Cheap Gripping Beast plastic Arabs are really cool - I have a load for a Saga army that I painted up a couple of years ago.

So... it's then only a short step from there to "Wouldn't it be easy - and cheap - to make a 28mm L'Art de la Guerre generic Arab army mainly out of plastic figures?"

The maths is actually not too bad..

• 2 boxes of cavalry = 24 figures, which is 6 bases of HC/MC and 3 bases of LH

Add in a box of Foreforge Mongol Cavalry for variety and you're at 10 Cavalry + 6 LH for the mounted, which is more than enough for most 200 point armies.

So, the foot...

• 1 box of infantry = 44 figures, which is 4 LI and 6 more Medium Foot sword/spear/bowmen

That brings you to about £80 (if you get a good price on eBay for the Gripping Beast Arab boxes) for 26 units.

Add in a few Generals from GB, Footsore and others and it's the core of a solid 28mm Generic Arab army for just under £100.

But... then you realise that the GB boxes (foot and mounted) both have more heads than figures, so you then think about using these spare heads to add to...

• 2-3 more sprues of GB Vikings and Fireforge Byzantine & Russian infantry bought separately off eBay = another 20-odd armoured figures that could be kit-bashed into more elite Arab warriors, or mixed in with the others anyway for more variety.
• And then, why not buy some metal foot for even more variety in the BTD sale ?   

So... a project is born.

Of course, the starting point is not the simple stuff. You pick up a Fireforge Byzantine warrior, add in a GB Arab head and shield, and fashion a longer skirt out of Ronseal wood filler.

Here's what that guy looks like right now...

And again, after a lick of paint

It's the point at which you start thinking about adding in a couple of Victrix elephants, and replacing the howdah and crew with Essex Arab elephant crew that it starts to get silly...

28mm Late Roman Casualty Markers

In a sporadic burst of painting, I've finally gotten round to adding some colours to a pack of resin Late Roman casualties from 1st Corps that I picked up at "Derby" last year.

They are still needing a coat of Army Painter to tone them down a little, but anyways, here they are, all ready to sit behind the near-identical Gripping Beast Late Roman infantry that I finished some time ago.

It's a rather extravagant use of LBMS shield transfers I admit, but lets face it you always buy too many of them and it's and even bigger shame to let them go to waste.

I'll use the varnish rather than the wash version of Army Painter on these, as it will harden them up for being chucked in a box with the other casualty markers I have.

I've colour coded these chaps, into "Green", "Yellow" and "Red", mostly based on their shields. This makes them compatible with my usual ADLG hit marker scheme, with Red as 3 hits, Yellow as 2 hits and anything else as the first hit.

Three dead guys all in red - 3 hits!

15mm Samurai - and Samurai Terrain as well

A near-unique event today, as I post pictures of an army that I haven't painted myself... but don't worry, the usual bog-standard finishing is then in evidence with some bodged-together and over ambitious terrain !

The army is a 15mm Samurai force for L'Art de la Guerre. Mostly composed of Old Glory figures from Timecast, they are supplemented with a handful of Baueda Emeshi cavalry and a Dixon 28mm Great Commander.

All of them have been painted by Lurkio

The Samurai Village has already been posted online but this time there is also a self-made "ADLG Waterway" Samurai Castle wall to marvel at the amount of spare time I have to do stuff other than paint figures !

 The Walls come with a walk-through construction guide as well.

Godedingdangdag 2018 - The Romans Return!

It's time yet again for Kenneth Williams to don his toga and avoid being stabbed in the back as he takes command of a Patrician Roman army against enemies from all edges of the Roman empire - Franks, Palmyrans, Spaniards and the eastern extremities of the Warring States Chinese in four separate 300 point L'Art de la Guerre doubles battle reports.

Thrill to the thunder of hooves, marvel at the download time of the often inappropriate and shoehorned-into-the-narrative comedy animated GIF's, hold your breath in fear as the two lines of mighty warriors clash together and roll dice to see who comes out on top in almost 10,000 words of irrelevant and semi-educational nonsense

Reports contain all the usual mutterings and puns, as well as some truly incredible feats of bravery and military success (not all of which are from the Roman troops - as you may well already have guessed..).

See for yourself if they truly do have it Infamy..

Who's playing what - Part II

Thanks to Denis Grey, I now have comprehensive stats for player numbers in the UK DBA circuit to add to those for other rulesets.

Looking at attendance across the 15 or so annual tournaments in the UK, participation in DBA has been steadily rising over the past 3 years and looks set to carry on that upward trend into 2018 (if numbers at the first 2 events of the year are anything to go by).

Numbers of players have been:

• 2016:  48 players
• 2017:  56 players
• 2018:  64 players 

86 people in total have played at least one DBA event in the last 3 years. 

Adding these more accurate numbers into the mix gives the following popularity table for numbers of people entering at least one UK ancients competitions during 2017.

1. L'Art de la Guerre : 163
2. FoG AM : 89  
3. DBMM : 84
4. DBA : 64
5. MeG : 52
6. DBM : 40
7. Swordpoint : around 40

One interesting thing to consider from these numbers is the popularity of "DBx"-based, "one base = one unit" format games - almost exactly 2/3 of all UK competition ancients players are playing systems in which one stand = a unit. Barkers legacy is still going strong! 

I'm sure there must be some 6th and 7th edition numbers out there too, and maybe also Armati or War & Conquest ?

 

A Samurai Town for L'Art de la Guerre

With my first-ever "I paid someone to paint it for me" army of Samurai currently on the basing table with Simon from Lurkio, I've been preparing some suitable terrain to go with the army for use at Badcon in a few weeks time.

First up is a small town, which has an extension to it;s base to make it a maximum sized piece for a 300 point game as well as the core 200 point version.

All of the buildings are from Oshiro Model Terrain, painted by me with a black undercoat and then drybrushed Army Painter Leather Brown for the wood, and white for the panels. The trees come from Model Tree Shop - a little more expensive than usual, but they do need to be as good as the houses.

Look carefully and you may see that the pond has some Koi carp painted in it.

 The terrain cloth is from Tiny Wargames

All of the buildings are just placed on the mdf baseplate, which has had some sand glued to it, a spray coat of ArmyPainter Desert Yellow followed by a dusting coat of Skeleton Bone.

 And, of course, the trees are also held in place with rare earth magnets. Because, well, why not go the whole hog eh?

The smaller section turns the main 200 point baseplate into a 300 point sized terrain piece, and with all of the pieces able to be taken off, it now works for the game as well as aesthetically.

I did need to drybrush the cherry blossom tree as it was a bit violently pink when I got it originally.

And, here are the men who will defend it...

Who's Playing What Right Now?

I'm planning on repeating my now-regular 12-monthly roundup of the state of UK Ancients 'big battle' competition play in it's usual April slot for consistency, however with the new year just about starting (with ADLG, DBM, MeG and FoG 3 at Godendag and the well-attended Milton Keynes 1-dayer for DBMM) I thought a snapshot of the 2017 calendar year in competitions might be interesting:

Numbers of players who entered at least one UK event for the following rulesets during 2017 were:

• L'Art de la Guerre : 163 (up 27 since April 2017)
• FoG AM : 89  (down 13)  
• DBMM : 84  (unchanged)
• MeG : 52 (up up 21)
• DBM : 40 (down 8)
• Swordpoint : at least 39 (up 10) - I'm missing the numbers from Derby

Tournament numbers and sizes

• L'Art de la Guerre : 27 events held, average entry 18
• FoG AM : 15 events held, average entry 18  
• DBMM : 18 events held, average entry 15
• MeG : 10 events held, average entry 16
• DBM : 7 events held, average entry 13 (the majority of events are doubles)
• Swordpoint : 4 events held that I have results for, average field 17

(ADLG and DBMM include 2 events where 15mm and 25mm were offered in parallel, with FoG numbers including 1 such event. This tends to depress the average entry size a tad).

And, here's a graph...

This shows the last few years and illustrates how player numbers have changed - each line represents a different ruleset, and each point on the graph represents the total number of players who've taken part in at least 1 event for that ruleset in the previous 12 months.

The data is a little "gappy" for some of the sets, but for both ADLG and MeG I believe every event held in the UK since June 2015 has been captured.

Interesting times!

Festive (ish) painting...

In the absence of any competitions to report on over the festive period, I've managed to fit in a little painting and photographing (is that a word?) time.

If you follow Madaxeman.com on Facebook you may well already have seen some of this rather unusual mix of stuff, but if not - here you go!

 Malifaux's Union Steamfitter - one of three in the pack, the other two of which I sold as I can't see myself using more than one in any single crew. J

She joins my MS&U-themed set of models, which is why I have used a WW2 Battlefront Russian tank star to symbolise her support for the international proletariat in their quest to avoid oppression at the hands of evil undead magic using fascists.  And painting a Billy Bragg T-shirt on a 32mm figure was beyond me.

 A Dawn Serpent - after all, who doesn't need a flying japanese-inspired dragon that is on fire and spreads poison in their lives?

This is a "wave 1" Malifaux model so has been out for several years. It's been on my "buy if it is cheap enough on eBay" list for the same length of time, and finally one came up at a sensible price.

The January 2018 errata has literally just yesterday reduced the in-game cost of the model, making it even better value on-table. Many of these you can see online have been "floated" by attaching the model to terrain on the base, but I wanted to try for a "it's just floating anyway" look, so I pinned it with a think black-painted piece of brass wire by the tail and half-hid it with grass tufts.

 Kandara - another must-have cool new henchperson for the already overpowered Sandeep.

Painting her was something of an exercise in doing single-model painting over a number of days, rather than my more usual "only seen in a unit at tabletop distances" style.

The on-fire hair seems to have been worth the effort though.

On the ancients front it's been more about refurbishing and rounding out some armies.

These are some genric Essex Miniatures arab foot who have been based and painted as Medium Swordsmen/Spearmen/Javelinmen for L'Art de le Guerre

This is my first use of the Armypainter acrylic washes in a squeezy bottle - previously I have always used the big tins of varnish-based tint, which do tend to dry up and so I'l always reluctant to use them for small batch work. The squeeze paint bottle sized washes can also be easily diluted - these are a done with a diluted version of the soft tone.

I also refurbished another old Essex Ghaznavid elephant

Not as bright as the first one, but I tried to use different colours.

And finally, a very lazy "rearrange the riders" bit of work on some Essex Byzantine cavalry to get a mix of Bow and Lance armed figures on the same base.

I'm planning on putting all of the ADLG Byzantine armies on table at some point this year, so you will see plenty of these guys online.

The Madaxeman Christmas Bonus - a one-off, festive ADLG Match Report

In a rare festive treat, your post-lunch turkey-digesting can now be undertaken in the company of a one-off Madaxeman.com L'Art de la Guerre Battle Report, featuring a matchup between the Sassanid Persians and Attila's Huns!

Santa's sack is positively bulging as it seeks to contain the excitement in this report , which is as comprehensively stuffed with goodies as a classic Christmas pudding is stuffed with health-and-safety-challenging sixpences.

There are maps, comments from both of the generals involved as well as Hannibal's usual pithy analysis, a host of animations and videos and all of the usual captions and comments too.

So, grab yourself an egg-nogg, pull up a comfy sweater and dive into the Sassanid vs Hunnic Christmas Match Report!