10mm French Napoleonics - a Lockdown Painting Challenge

Can you believe that I've never owned any Napoleonic figures, played any Napoleonic games or even read any books about the Napoleonic Wars? I mean, I've not even watched a single episode of Sharpe! 

But, finally the inevitable has caught up with me, and with the help of a nudge from the arrival of a set of rules which more than one person at my club might potentially agree to play (in the form of Bataille Empire) I have finally taken the plunge and dipped my toe into Napoleon's wars.

Of course, being respectful of the principles of Napoleonic gaming in which every player must have their own individual approach to rules, scale, basing, terminology history, uniform and painting I had to find a means of doing something unique and (in some way at least partly) incompatible with my clubmates - so with everyone else already having 15-18mm troops based for Blucher, FoGN and various other sets I went my own way and built an army in 10mm with a large investment in Pendraken lead in the form of a French starter army picked up at Warfare 2019. 

I then topped this up with a few more orders from the nice chaps at Pendraken and added in a couple of extra purchases from Old Glory and The Wargaming Company (both made at Cold Wars 2020 just before Lockdown struck) to leave me with the daunting painting challenge of maybe 500+ foot and mounted figures to do under Lockdown conditions, hopefully to leave me with a viable Bataille Empire army that is still utterly different to the stuff owned by the people I'll be (eventually) playing.

I took a load of photos through the painting process, and learnt quite a lot about painting 10mm massed, uniformed figures as well - all of which is is now online on Madaxeman.com on a page with about 70 photos of the WiP and finished army, as well as my thoughts and learnings from the near-industrial process of getting them all done.

  

Special Bonus Podcast - Painbrush Special !

In this special one-off bonus episode released in time for VE Day weekend the regular 6-person crew take a deep and typically discursive dive into the complex world of paintbrush procurement and maintainance, and surprisingly discover that at least some of them* even have valid, educated and informed opinions that are actually worth sharing. 

More importantly they all attempt to come to some sort of conclusion to the two key questions of "how much should I spend on a brush, and how many should I own?"

The Podcast is available via Podbean at https://madaxeman.podbean.com/e/the-painbrush-special-a-bonus-podcast-from-madaxemancom/ 

Brush brands discussed and reviewed in the Podcast include : 

• Kolinksy Raphael 
• Windsor & Newton (Series 7)
• Army Painter 
• Cass Art 
• Royal & Langnickel
• The Masters (Brush Soap)
• Broken Toad (Brush Soap)
• Da Vinci Cosmotop 
• Great Art

 (* That'll be Tamsin then.)

Lockdown Podcast VII now out

The 7th Lockdown Podcast (and 3oth all-time Madaxeman Podcast) has now been published on Podbean and iTunes, and is already picking up a steady stream of listeners and regular subscribers on both platforms. It's ideal bank holiday listening for your weekend painting or legally permitted outdoor exercise session. 

This week the team discuss their latest painting haul, chat at some length about airbrushing, take an in-depth look at the Lydian army in ADLG and endure another week of Andy's Quiz Music wrapped around the far more acceptable Andy's Quiz.

Watch out later this week for a special one-off edition covering Paintbrushes !

 

  

Yet more 1/300th Desert stuff on eBay

In what should be the final couple of batches of an epic downsizing annd refurbishing project, I have two lots of micro-armour on eBay right now, both of which end on Wednesday evening UK time.

One lot is a large Arab battegroup of T55's and T72's with BMP's, trucks, AA, SCUD missile launchers and a couple of Hinds as well.

I also have 28 M60A1's, plus a couple of M113's to tag along behind

 You can see these and all of the other stuff that I'm currently selling on my eBay page 

The Eclectic Painting Weekend

This weekend has seen a bit of a blitz on the to-do pile, with a load of oddments being finished off, all of which have been falling behind far more exciting projects for quite some time.

The end result is probably one of the most random selection of figures and models ever to have been sprayed with the same tin of Testors Dullcote... and here they are, in absolutely no particular order!

This is the full slab, post matt varnishing.   Yes, those are 28mm garden gnomes...

Possibly the least interesting and impressive thing on the board was this pair of Numidian LH, which have been hanging around for almost a year after not quite being finished at the same time as my Numidian ADLG army. I believe these are Baueda one-piece castings.

Another bit of long-forgotten tidying up, casulaty markers for late C17 FoGR armies. The falling guys are decent, but I went a bit wild on the colours for the prone men!

I had a couple of spare bases for my huge 1/300th refurbishment project lying around, so after a bit of help from Twitter I worked out that these odd tanks were French AA variants of an AMX 13. I don't have too many French tanks but now they do have some AA cover (in a few specific years)

I'd also had this robot lying around, as a keyring toy from Japan. He is now based up and ready to fight alongside my 1/300th SF forces

Another 1/300th refurb is this Iranian F5E fighter. 

Super-clean paint job, as the Iranians F5's don't get to see much action so probably don't get dirty!

These 3 huns are I think Old Glory - I have a handful of bases set up as LH that go with my Roman 28mm army so these may have been the three spares to make up a Medium Cavalry base

In 15mm, a fairly generic chariot with Royal archer from Essex. This brings the total of these types of chariot up to 4 in my collection, which means they can be an allied contingent for any of my proper biblical armies, or the not-quite-Egyptian chariots in a Sea Peoples army. I did the "light blue in dark blue stripe" effect on these that I first did on the Egyptian Spearmen as well

 I might even try and get away with them as Assyrian Light Chariots if I try the non-Sargonid verison of that army sometime.

These are 12 plastic Perry medieval infantry kitbashed together with odd arms and spears from the GB Roman set to give me some proper Medieval Spearmen or (perhaps) Javelinmen, as my other Medieval  28mm Medium Infantry are pretty clearly carrying polearms.

I suspect this may be a Footsore or Crusader from North Star Norman general - he's been done for ages, just awaiting basing, so finally he is now complete.
 

These were the mad bit - some military Gnomes from Brigade Games in the US that I picked up at Cold Wars.

They are the Swiss Gnome of Zurich (throwing Swiss CHeese), a Kaiser Gnome (hurling beer steins as hand grenades) and a Russian Czar Gnome. I was very pleased with the painted beer stein effect I achieved with the German guy - its very impressionistic, but it does sort of work I think.

Totally bonkers, but too hard to resist, these comedy chaps will be leading some of my ADLG armies in the near future!

A couple of mounted Greek officers from the Captains Games range picked up in January to accomany the Museum Z Hoplites if they ever need a separate commander

The "other" light gun that came in the pack of 2 guns and crew from Front Rank along with the heavy gun I used at Roll Call last year - showing how long this has hung on in the pile!

The crew have a shield bearer who I set up protecting the powder box from sparks.

4 dark age LH which I think may be Footsore, not quite finished but they were close enough to varnish at the same time as the rest.

 They are a bit too armoured to be LH to my reckoning, but as there are 4 of them and their horses are way too small to mix with the GB plastics in my Gothic army they are now higher quality LH javelinmen!

And here's the lot again - eclectic to say the least!

Lockdown Podcast VI

This week the regular crew mark a double-triple podcast milestone (or, more prosaically, this is the 6th Lockdown Podcast) in their ongoing rambling discussion.

Subjects covered this week in the paint-chat include Chinese Chariotry Umbrellas, whether a reasonably close encounter with a tin of white spray paint counts as "fully painted" when it comes to Austrian Napoleonic infantry, Gnomepoleon's leadership qualities, would Steve McQueen have cleared that fence on a Harley rather than a Triumph, how long the 7 Years War ran for, if double-depth basing has led to the end of monopose units, digital photography techniques for toy soldiers, opportunities for Buddhist monks on tortoises in contemporary tabletop warfare and the vexed question of how many simultaneous painting projects is too many?

There is also a special feature on the Later T'ang Army (ADLG list 169) in which all 6 contributors throw a list on the table for critique and discussion, and the return yet again of Andy's Quiz.

As usual the Podcast is available from Podbean, or by searching for the Madaxeman.com Podcast on iTunes.

(The T'ang lists we discuss are all published on the ADLG Wiki on the Madaxeman.com website).

Newline Assyrian Chariots - the army is complete!

Finally, in this three part 28mm Biblical special, the Chariotry - the strike force of the army weighing in at a very reasonable ₤22/each.

I'd picked up four chariots, as that's the maximum number allowed in the ADLG Assyrian & Sargonid list. As you'll see here I used the near-revolutionary (yet still blindingly obvious when you think of) it technique of printing off some pictures from the internet and wallpapering the designs onto the big slab sides of the chariot boxes.

The four crew have plenty of room to walk around in the cab, so they four chariots could be posed in a variety of different ways - they sure aren't any sort of tight fitting jigsaw puzzle that only goes together in one formation, allowing you to put even more variety into the army by varying the poses.

There are loads more images on the main website of these chariots, together with the Infantry and Cavalry which you can reach via this link 

Newline Assyrian Cavalry - the 28mm Assyrians, Part II

OK, so here are the Cavalry. Not quite as good painting-wise as the foot, as I'm a bit lazy/unskilled on the whole "horse painting" front but the mass effect I think is OK.

The Newline figures themselves are also still great, as even with only one set of cavalry the three different poses in the pack, as well as separate shields and spears still give a decent variety.

These 12 horses are supposed to be pulling chariots - I made a mistake in mixing them all up on the undercoating table, and then compounded that mistake by mis-counting how many of each type of horse I actually had (15 "normal" ones and 16 "chariot pulling" ones).

By the time I'd realised I'd painted them up it was too late to go back and change them. It does mean these guys have some serious armour around the neck of each horse though, which is probably a win for them

(Mercenary Skythians)

The rest of the photos are at: https://www.madaxeman.com/main/28mm_Assyrian_Cavalry.php

(Chariots coming up when I upload the photos... )

Newline Designs 28mm Assyrian Infantry, painted

I almost literally stumbled upon the Newline 28mm Biblical ranges at the Attack! show in Devizes in Summer 2019.

Newline Designs were a company I had mentally pegged as just being a 20mm manufacturer (so I'd almost walked straight past them) but my eye was caught by a show offer on a 28mm Assyrian army, with a range of figures I had no idea existed.

I wanted/needed an Assyrian army for an event that was supposed to have taken place earlier this year, so checking them out the figures turned out to be really nice, and with the at-show discount an army worked out at a lot less than half the price of the same figures from Foundry as well (which I'd been steeling myself to fork out for at some point in time).

I bought them there and then, and of course subsequently bought a shedload more by mail order to give me more options in the army, and less than a year later here are photos of the infantry from this 28mm ADLG-based army:

(This is just a few of the photos - there are loads if you go to this link on the main Madaxeman.com site)

Whats Not In The Bag? Salute Traders Special Edition Lockdown Podcast

With another week of enforced isolation behind them the intrepid band of wargamers astonishingly still appear to have something new to talk about (although Andy is still painting Vikings...).

The usual melange of painting, basing and figure selection chatter is augmented this week by ruminations on the efficacy of the postal service, whether soap is a good idea for things other than combating virus transmission, whether German WW2 Paratroopers actively chose not to use multi-barelled rocket launchers because of the challenges of pronunciation, and just how far can a Chinese army be morphed before it becomes socially unacceptable to do so.

This week also sees the one-off appearance of "What's not in the Bag?" in which we all discuss what we did not buy at Salute! at the weekend due to it being postponed to 2021. This one you can play along with at home - the full trader list for Salute! 2020 is avaiable online on the Warlords website

The end result is an episode that stretches dangerously towards the 90 minute mark, but fortunately for fans of niche French urban slo-tempo techno that does mean Andy's Quiz also returns yet again.

The Podcast is online at Podbean now, or search "Madaxeman Podcast" on iTunes

Legio Heroica Javelinmen

Lockdown painting has been a bit all over the shop recently, with complete armies getting finished in all sorts of scales as well as some odds and sods being tidied up.

The focus has been 25mm and 10mm, with a bit of 6mm as well however I have still been sneaking in the odd pack of 15mm Ancients into the queue - including these Legio Heroica Arab Javelinmen (packs MUS19 and MUS37) that I picked up at the mini bring and buy at the Avignon ADLG event before Christmas.

They are lovely little figures, true 15mm like all of the Legio Heroica stuff and nicely animated as well.

I painted this lot with mostly Contrast paints and inks, to try and give them a slightly washed out look whilst keeping them colourful, as some of my Arabs are a bit, well, desert-ey in their colour schemes

They also came with separate shields and metal, pointed mini spears - unusual these days for 15mm. The shields are mostly flat-backed so I used a 2-part epoxy glue to stick them firmly on.

For the javelins I had a bit of a go at something I've seen online, giving them some texture by adding bands of brown, with a wider band of dark brown with a narrower band of lighter brown inside them - a bit "bamboo-ey" and slightly more interesting than just a plain brown spear. 

If you look closely you'll see some bubbling of the matt varnish that I brushed on - I was in too much of a hurry to get these finished to wait and spray them with the next large batch of figures and dissapointingly the varnish hasn't calmed down after I applied it.

At tabletop distances this is pretty much impossible to see, but I guess that's the beauty - and downside - of these sorts of extreme close-up macro photos!

The banded spears are more visible in this shot.

They'll be playing as Javelinmen (hence 5 to a base, which I use to differentiate them from Swordsmen and Spearmen) in ADLG once we are all allowed out to play again!

(As of the 22nd April it sounds like Legio Heroica will be on a bit of a hiatus, partly due to lockdown and partly due to a pre-scheduled medical procedure - he'll be back once lockdown ends.)

Lockdown Podcast IV

The Lockdown Specials - Part 4

Another week, another load of old rubbish as the regulars chat on about their glacial rate of painting, wheel out another obscure quiz and this time attempt also to demostrate just how hard unscripted radio comedy can be in a tribute to non-wargaming legend and all round Goodie Tim Brooke-Taylor.

If you want to listen it's on Podbean and will soon appear on iTunes as well - just search for "madaxeman.com" from within iTunes to find it. 

And, finally, here's the gratuitous and disconcerting photo referred to in the 'pod: