Terrain time !

With Roll Call and Patras both coming up in the next couple of weeks, a man's mind turns to what things are possible to do on a wet Bank Holiday Monday with 2mm mdf, some builders sand, glue and a tin of Rustin's Wood Dye (sometimes known as "Wood Stain" .. presumably if the marketing department don't get to it first).

And.... the answer is a 25mm ADLG area of brushy ground, and a 15mm ADLG marsh.

Very simple construction indeed - the base is simply 2mm MDF sheet, cut square and then the corners trimmed off to make it a tad irregular.   The whole thing is then sprayed dark green (a cammo green spray from Halfords wouldyabelieveit!)

Wood glue is then smeared on where you want the "land" to be, spread about with a knackered brush and then builders sand is poured on top. Leave it to dry for a little while, and then stain the sand areas by roughly painting on Rustins Wood Stain (or similar).

Once that had dried thoroughly (and in a well ventilated place as it kinda stinks), gloss varnish the "green" bits of murky water, and add some grass and grass tufts to the thing to set it all off.

I'm sure there are cleverer ways of doing this, but I'm quite happy with this as the fruits of my own rather half-hearted labours...

A larger area of "brushy ground" is basically the same idea but the base colour here is just the natural colour of the 2mm MDF (no spray), and the whole thing has been painted in Wood Stain, left to dry and then gently drybrushed. 

If you paint it, the wood stain doesn't really sink in - I have however done "lighter" spray version of these in the past, such as for the baseplate to the Samurai Village.

While I was in a terrain-making mood, I also rebased some of my collection of palm trees onto larger, multiple bases.

This has become my go-to technique for trees, having given up on single-based ones as hey fall over  - although I may be over-egging it a little to describe putting 2-3 trees on one base as a "technique"(?).

These are palm tree cake decorations - they have the twin advantages of being cheap, and very flexible so they won't break if you drop them or squish them in a tin for transit.

The rest of the Chinese Crossbowmen

With 48 figures to play with, the Chinese Crossbow Painting Marathon has created lots of opportunities to pad out a number of armies (of course that does mean working on the old "WRG 6th" principle that there is kinda only one Chinese army, and that clothing styles changes little in over a thousand years, but hey...) and here are the full results to follow up on the previous blog post:

Two ADLG units with Pavise on the left, and then a handful of single-based crossbows painted up to match the uniforms of existing single-based halberd and spear armed infantry I already had, allowing them to be deployed together as mixed units, or for these chaps to be used in pairs as crossbow-only units that are colour coded to match the swordsmen-only units in the same army.

Yes, that  lurid dayglow green is a colour scheme on some of my troops - it's donkey's years old, and has even been on table before in some match reports. If I were painting the halberdiers these chaps go with now I probably wouldn't go with it again though...

I've had a load of these pavises lying around in the bits box for years, so finally they get some use. The designs are not wildly inspiring, but after toying with the idea of trying to go for a dragons face for all of, oh, half a second I opted for something easy.

With 48 men to paint, there were spares for a couple of Light Infantry units

Here's the full lineup of double-based Warring States and Han infantry, with Essex in front and Museum behind.

And, finally, from the rear... 

All of these pictures and more are to be found amongst the 3,273 photos of 15mm troops which are currently to be found in the fully-searchable 15mm Figure gallery on my website

15mm Han Mixed Units for L'Art de la Guerre

With Han Chinese coming out as the most popular army for the 15mm L'Art de la Guerre competition at the upcoming Roll Call event, and with a bag of 48 Museum Miniatures Chinese crossbowmen bought second hand from a clubmate burning a hole in the lead pile I decided to have a go at cooking up some double-based  crossbow/swordsman units for a variety of my Chinese armies.

Here are the Warring States/Han versions:

What I've done here is glue together 2 bases worth of Essex Medium Foot Warring States halberdiers, originally on 40x20's but now on a single 40x40 base.

I've then "dug out" the halberdiers from the base at the back, and replaced them by dropping Museum crossbowmen into the "pits" in the rear base that the Essex halberdiers have been dug out of. 

The Essex halberdiers have exceptionally tiny bases, so it's not that tricky to dig out new "pits" in amongst the existing 3 halberdiers on the front base and drop in (well, glue in) the other 3 guys into a new, denser front rank. 

These halberdiers were painted some years ago now, so I had to mix up a paint to sort of match them as I couldn't find (or remember) the originals.

The newly settled-in figures are then bedded in with a few more dabs of the woodfiller I use for basing, as well as doing the same for the join between the 2 original bases.

Wood Glue on cardboard and wood filler if very, very strong, but for added insurance to make sure the 2 bases stick together I shave off the magnabase from the bottom of each one, spin it through 90 degrees and then glue it back onto the base. This poor unit has some particularly skanky offcuts of magnabase for some reason, but at least you can see that it is at right angles to the bases.

 And Voila (if that's what they say in China) - a tidy little mixed unit, with a wall of spearmen at the front and some rear rank crossbows as well.

The basing isn't as perfect as doing it from scratch I freely admit - but it does save time and work and basing material in totally rebasing everything.

These are WiP shots showing the unpainted guys being dropped in the back rank. 

Sometimes you need to tidy up the extra basing material - see the feet of the chap at thee front 

The Museum Miniatures guys are a little taller, but you can't see it unless you are looking for it. Their bases are also a lot bigger than the Essex guys, so I did cut them down a bit with pliers to fit them in. 

 And this is what the Halberdiers look like on their own.

Slice n' Dice - The Samurai are in Action!

Only quite literally moments after taking delivery of a 15mm painted Samurai army from Lurkio (which you have already probably seen on this site) himself, the brave guys (and their probably less enthusiastic cattle) were placed immediately onto the table and pitched straight into a series of brutal battles at Burton Doubles 2018.

This resulted in a fiercely contested Samurai Civil War, two invasions of Europe which saw the Japanese warriors pit their katanas against the historically contemporary bearded axes and knightly lances of the English & Irish, and a return to South Asia for a final showdown with the Elephant Kingdom of the Tamils.

All 4 battles have their own unique write-ups, and this time also come with dedicated Podcasts (available in both Video and Audio formats), either of which will provide you with a running commentary on what approximated for the "thinking" of the two joint Samurai commanders.

The full Samurai spectrum of photos, captions and Hannibal analysis is also - as usual - provided for your delight and despair!

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 ?