War & Empire Sassanid cataphracts

As well as picking up some Numidians at Britcon from West Wind's war & Empire range I also added a set of 12 of their Sassanid cataphracts to my collection.

OK, I do have lots of cataphracts already, but none which were overtly Sassanid - so a blister pack of a dozen seemed like a good chance to add 3 units to my mostly Legio Heroica ADLG army, and to get some size comparison photos of the W&E cavalry as well.

Here are the full dozen from the blister pack. The pack has (well, mine did have) more riders than horses, with a few officers and standard bearers to include if you want - which of course I chose to do.

Cataphracts are a decent host for a Sub General in ADLG, so the standard and sword-waving chaps in the middle may well be an embedded Sub General with some regularity.

Here are 8 of the W&E guys, with a textbook Essex cataphract unit in the middle of the line.

The proportions are a tad different, with the Essex ones looking bulkier and having stumpier horses but bigger bodies for the men, but they are basically the same height at the end of the day.

This shot has the Legio Heroica Sassanid Asarvan cavalry in the line. Again, not a great match in terms of stature but a decent one in terms of overall height.

The W&E Cataphracts are from their first range of releases, which seem to have fairly slight and short cavalry riders so perhaps later ranges will be a bit chunkier.

Here's the General and standard bearer. I wanted a fairly colourful mix of figures with different types of barding to match the look and feel of my existing Asarvan.

From the rear you can also see they have a fair selection of cloaks, allowing a more irregular look as well.

The size comparison shots for the Numidian foot can be seen here

15mm Teutons for sale on eBay

On eBay this week is another "downsizing of a DBM/FoG army" ADLG army sale, this time a nicely presented 200+ point 15mm Teutonic army including a wide range of options to form several different variations of this legendarily punchy force.

All the figures have been based and magnabased for storage and transit, and have been double-varnished (Army Painter + Testors Dullcote) for tabletop handling.

Here's the link to the auction which ends on Sunday 14th October, around 5pm UK time

They are based with a snow effect, which on a bigger DBx army can seem a bit limiting by making it harder to do possible morphs into other forces - but with ADLG armies being smaller it's entirely feasible to have a dedicated Teutonic winter-war themed army like this as a stand-alone force.

These guys were originally part of a much bigger DBM/FoG army now being downsized to ADLG, and the sharp-eyed amongst you may have even spotted some of them appearing on the Madaxeman website in several battle reports as part of the legendary DBM Lithuanians a few years back  ...

There's a total of 60-odd foot + 50-odd mounted (so almost 170 "things" in total, if you're working out a fair price).

The army comprises:

• 18 Teutonic Brother Knight figures (Mirliton & Toullier)
• 6 Vassal Knight figures (Mixed - some Museum?)
• 4 LH Crossbow figures (Mirliton)
• 4 Hungarian LH figures (Mirliton)
• 4 Balts with javelin figures (Essex)
• 6 Prussian Medium Cavalry figures (Mirliton)
• 4 LF Bow Balt skirmisher figures (Essex)
• 2 LF Handgunner figures (Essex)
• 16 Teutonic Brother Spearmen (Gladiator) 
• 16 German Militia Spearmen (Essex)
• 8 English Mercenary Longbow (Essex)
• 3 Commanders bases (Mirliton and others)
• 15 Levy figures (mixed)

If you want to expand the army I am happy to either point you at the exact figure codes or have a dig around in the rest of my collection as well to see if I can help out.  I can also add some of the "snow" in the parcel too if you'd like to base up a few more extra figures yourself.

I can also arrange for collection at Warfare, or on a clubnight at CLWC in London so if you are a UK-based player those may be options to save on postage. If you're in Spain or Southern France, I'll also be at the Estella event in late October. 

Part of all bids will go to support SSAFA, the UK armed forces charity.

Here's the link to the auction

It ends on Sunday 14th October, around 5pm UK time - happy bidding!

Improving Some (rather) Old Pikemen

My Classical pikemen date back many years, and are some speed-painted Minifigs figures designed to be shoved together in multiple ranks and viewed from a distance..

Rebasing them from DBx to 40x40mm ADLG bases has given me a chance to tart some of them up a little however.

This has seen some given more colourful uniforms and boldly-painted shields - and others given Veni Vidi Vici shield transfers.

They can all be seen in more detail here

War & Empire Numidians (15mm)

I recently bought some Numidians from War & Empire (Forged in Battle) , which have managed to get painted extremely quickly - probably due to their simplicity!

They are led by some Baueda Generals working in tandem with W&E infantry officers on 40mm round bases for ADLG.

I've also posted some comparison shots to show how they scale with other ranges of Romans and Carthaginians (who they will be fighting with or against I suspect).

All these photos and many more are online now on my site, where I also explain the painting techniques as well (for what they are worth). The figures can also be seen in the 15mm directory

International Vandalism - 28mm ADLG from Devizes 2018

The pleasant west country town of Devizes is home to the Wadworth 6X brewery, a collection of over-filled bed & breakfast pub type establishments and the DDWG annual "Attack!" competition and show - and with a set of propositions as enticing as that, how can anyone resist?

The army of choice this time are the African Vandals, as a combination of a simple list with impetuous charging cavalry and my ownership of some brand new Gripping Beast plastic lancers working in tandem with some slightly older Footsore cavalry made the grade.

The Vandals take on Arabs and Byzantines in 4 spectacularly large-scale reports featuring 12th century religious iconography, big-hair-metal music videos and an opportunistic homage to Jeremy Corbyn.

There are also some fantastically painted troops on display as well - plus a video/audio commentary on the first game too.

Don't waste time - dive into some serious Vandalism with these 4 reports!

Flagging in Georgia ...?

After the success of adding Religious Icon banners and standards to my refurbished Nikephorian Byzantines, I've been casting around for similar ways of tarting up a few more of my lesser-used figures - a process which has recently seen the Georgians make a rare outing under ADLG.

The foundation of the army are some Legio Heroica figures I got ages ago, and which I think are listed here on their website as Armenian Cavalry. Basically they are a nice range of ever so slightly arab-ized C12 Knights and changing cavalry. 

The Georgians were a pretty chunky empire that sat (and fought) between the Turks and the Byzantines for a good few hundred years, including the Byzantine-Georgian Wars. The county adopted Christianity in 327AD, so by the early middle ages would have been well ensconced in the icon-waving era I reckon.

The ADLG list has 2 incarnations, one with bow-armed Heavy Cavalry and an earlier and more exuberant charging lancer type army - which is the one I'm most tempted towards of course.

This is the list I've used:

Competent CinC
3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous Elite
3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous ----------
3 Horse Archers Light cavalry bow ----------

Brilliant Sub

3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous Elite

2 Russians Heavy spearmen missile support ----------

3 Horse Archers Light cavalry bow ----------

Ordinary Sub

3 Heavy Spearmen Heavy spearmen Mediocre

2 Bowmen Bowmen

2 Light infantry javelin Light infantry javelin ----------

1 Light infantry bow Light infantry bow --------

If you want to try tweaking it, it's also on Little Army Builder - 205.1 Georgian

Getting to 25 units with an army in this era is quite impressive, and the tactics are fairly self-evident in trying to rush and overwhelm one flank whilst hoping that the rather pedestrian and poor quality 3rd infantry-rich command doesn't get into combat too early, and also doesn't get totally run over by the time your other 2 commands have hopefully won the game.  

Anyways, I had the figures already, and I had the idea for the flags - so here is the combination of the two:

The Georgian flag I found available for download on this site. I'm sure being shrunk down to 15mm size isn't  quite what the author expected, but hey, I think it works really well for having the texture already added in a wargaming style.

The other Icon flags are downloads from a Google Search for "Georgian Icon"- if you want to see how that works, here's a link

Most of the images are shrunk down to around 1cm high, and doubled up to make one flag.

Painting round the edges is really important - especially running paint along the edge of the flag.

They did achieve success in their first game on table, but they probably need a non-knight, or certainly a Medium Knight Only theme to do well.

ADLG-ready Patrician Romans on eBay

Now is your chance to own some "as seen on madaxeman.ccom" Late Roman /  Dominate / Patrician Romans, as I'm selling on eBay this 250-odd point 15mm army which includes a full range of options to form several different variations of this popular and flexible force.

The eBay link is here

 

All the figures have been based and magnabased for storage and transit, and have been double-varnished (Army Painter + Testors Dullcote) for tabletop handling.

These guys were originally part of a much bigger DBM/FoG army now being downsized to split into 2-3 ADLG armies, as I've finally decided to bite the bullet and admit to myself that the trend towards smaller army size games is irreversible, and that I can't see how I'll be using this many figures again in the future.

So, the eBay route it is

There's a total of 141 foot + 48 mounted (so almost 250 "things" in total) - which means anything less that £250 is a bargain in my book.

The army comprises:

• 2 Impact Cv  (Essex)
• 2 Cataphracts  (Essex)
• 2 LH Bow (Essex)
• 2 Huns LH (Minifigs?)
• 6 Mounted Foederate Cavalry  (Khurasan's Gothic & Sarmatian ranges)
• 4 Foederate foot (Peter Pig)
• 4 Legionaries (Donnington)
• 4 Auxilia (Donnington)
• 1 Auxilia Bowman (Donnington)
• 8 LI bow (can be used as support for the Legions/Auxilia) (Donnington)
• 1 Artillery (Essex)
• 3 Commanders (Mixed manufacturers)
• 1 Camp base

If you want to expand the army I am happy to either help point you at the exact figure codes or have a dig around in the rest of my collection as well to see if I can spare a few more bases to help you.

I can also arrange for collection at the BHGS Doubles or Warfare, or on a clubnight at CLWC in London so if you are a UK-based player those may be options to save on postage. If you're in Spain or Southern France, I'll also be at the Estella event in October. 

Part of all bids will go to support SSAFA, the UK armed forces charity (Help for Heroes passes a chunk of the cash they raise onto SSAFA).