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:

The Lockdown Specials - Part 14

The Lockdown Specials - Part 14 is now out as we reach 99 days into the UK Lockdown and our tsunami of mixed-quality painting continues to roll on and on across seven different desks spread far and wide across the Southern half of England, and yet again this is your chance to share that experience in full stereophonic audio quality.

In this week's episode there is a vague attempt made to answer the questions posed in this exact same block of text last week but which last week's podcast failed to even mention, the many questions that the subject of badgers always throws up are debated in probably the most thorough way ever seen on any wargaming-specific podcast, the Later Ottoman army gets picked apart in both it's Serbian and non-Serbian incarnations, and Andy's Quiz returns yet again.

Other topics given a 99-day airing include what the best paint schemes are for burger bars, whether Napoleon ever got irritated with the Austrians always suing for peace after he beat them, which blue is best for painting denim, what is the correct way to pronounce your own name in a Swiss bowling alley, is there a way out of existential Janissary angst, what's the correct payment-in-kind for a 3 hour truck ride across Alabama, just how big is Steve from LBMS' house, and whether Ancient British baggage now needs to include an underground bypass for your own personal 15mm A303.

A kinda, sorta, virtual match report ...

Before you ask, I am slowly working through the match reports from March this year from Cold Wars. Unfortunately the lighting in the venue on the first day was rather poor so the pictures are taking a while to fix up which has been slowing me down - but in the meantime I have managed to record a game of ADLG online played with Tabletop Simulator software, and cobble it together into a sort of video match report.

I've sped up the game and posted it online in this video on the Madaxeman Youtube Channel so you don't have to sit through the whole thing - the end result is compressed into a smidge over 10 minutes. I also then dubbed in my own commentary on what I was hoping to achieve, and what actually happened.

The battle featured me using Alexanders army (rather rustily it must be said) vs an Achaemenid Persian force commanded from Barcelona. Somewhat irritatingly the software I was using to record the game had a setting which stopped the recording at the 2-hour mark, just short of the (really exciting!) last couple of bounds, but you still get most of the whole game in around 10 minutes.

Tabletop Simulator is a "physics engine" (so, no rules, just moveable pieces) that you can buy in Steam. The armies and tables are (sort of) downloadable content that you can get in the Steam Workshop from Helveticus and Massimo, and then use to build and import an army list and tabletop into the game.  

Podcats #12 and #13

If you're already a subscriber via iTunes, Podbean, RSS, or on Spotify or (now) Youtube you'll know tha there have now been 13 episodes of the Lockdown Podcast series, but if you just read the front page of Madaxeman.com (and never glance at the sidebar) you may accidentally have missed the news that episodes #12 and #13 are already out there in the wild. 

At the moment the Podcast is consistently drawing something like 150 listeners per week, which is kinda staggering, so why not give it a go and listen in as background banter for your weekend of lockdown painting.

Ottoman-Balcan Yaya in 15mm

The Ottoman-Balcan Yaya from Baueda are some of the oddest figures out there, armed with un;it incendiary javelins - so with the imminent closure of Vexillia I of course needed to help Martin out by buying a packet of them from him to help fund his retirement! 

.I made these up as a 6-figure Spear unit and a 2-figure LF javelinmen unit. You can still get them from Baueda directly if you so wish. 

Hungarian infantry & Archers

Having finished the Hungarian cavalry (and some of the foot) a week or so ago, the rest of the army pack has crept to the top of the painting pile. 

These are the two types of spearmen, as well as some bowmen:

This is EMED41 Hungarian 1300-1450: Heavy Spearmen. They have a squared-off shield that is slightly V-shaped in profile, making it very easy to print off a rectangular image and use it as a shield design. I based these in a defensive block as a visual counterpoint to the other spear figures. 

These are EMED40 Hungarian 1300-1450: Heavy Spearman, with an odd-looking notch out of the bottom corner of the shield. This meant picking a design where that bit of the shield could be missing!

All of these are printed out on normal paper, glued on with PVA, cut down to size with a new scalpel blade (very important when trimming these as otherwise the paper can fray), gloss varnished then matt varnished. 

Here's the two formations next to each other 

And all three units of the 'bastion' deployed spearmen

EMED42 Hungarian 1300-1450: Archers - rather an eclectic mix of figures in this pack, and I ended up painting the padded jackets in brown with sandy stripes to give an impression of the banded padding. 

The rest of the uniforms are mostly in classic Hungarian Green and Red. 

The rest of the army is online at https://www.madaxeman.com/main/15mm_Hungarians.php 

Medieval Hungarians - an army from Essex !

After finishing the 10mm French and the 28mm Assyrians, the next Lockdown project has been a 15mm Essex Ready Made Medieval Hungarian army. 

It was sold as a FoGAM army, but with a bit of a squint has more than enough troops to give me all the options and more for both a Feudal and Medieval Hungarian ADLG list. 

With extra time in Lockdown I also took this as an opportunity to take more time than I usually do in painting the army, and especially to try and do the horses properly, in a process which is fully explained on the website (and is very simple). 

I also experimented with a new, higher resolution printer we now have at home, and found a load of images for shields on the web, printed them out onto normal paper and glued them onto the shields of the figures to make them a lot better than I could ever hope to paint.

I also upcycled some old figures and added new shield graphics to them as well. In the absence of LBMS transfers for this army it seemed to go OK. I've posted the WiP and lots of photos of the finished figures on a couple of pages on Madaxeman.com, including a link to download a PDF of some of the shield graphics I used

There's still a few more spearmen to come, but the bulk of the army is now online.

Lockdown Podcast #11

In another surprisingly lengthy podcast the full team celebrate being back together with a conversation that covers all bases, as well as a few associated basing materials.   

Topics addressed in almost painstaking detail include;

• whether ink is just watered down paint with a better PR, 
• if starting a new period by painting the terrain before the figures is a crime against nature, 
• whether if ArmyPainter is good enough for goblins does that mean it's also good enough for the legions of Rome, 
• how long can anyone talk about an army who's uniforms are all white, 
• definitive proof that Eddy Izzard is actually talented at that comedy malarkey, 
• is the choice to paint horses or riders first the wargamers equivalent of the age-old "clotted cream / jam" debate, 
• how invading Egypt might be the ideal way to take a war to the British, 

...and - of course, a timely reminder of the poetic genius of Eric Morcecambe. 

There is also a discussion about that perennial under-achieving arab army, the Fatimid Egyptians in ADLG, another set of questions in Andy's Quiz, and the second triumphant week of Teaching Timmy about Napoleon.

As usual the Podcast is published on Podbean, and is syndicated to all of your favourite Podcast platforms