Museum Z-Sculpt Persian Sparabara and Immortals

 With the Cyrus' Mobile Tower having languished in the drawer since before Xmas last year, and with plenty of cavalry and ancilliary troops all done, finally the Early Persian army gets the core of it's troops - the Immortals and Sparabara:

For these guys I have managed to fit between 12-14 figures on each 40x40mm ADLG infantry unit base, leaving a gap at the front as well so the rear ranks are really crowded with archers 

I also followed up on my numerous "wallpaper" experiments with wallpapering the pavises of the Sparabara to make them more colourful and personalised - as usual just ssearching for "Persian Patterns" on Pinterest and Google 

My theory was that no-one really knows what they looked like, so why wouldn't they go personalised on the designs?

From the rear you can really see how they have been crammed in, using a variety of the Museum poses and equipment sets

There are cuirasses, petruges, no armour at all, helmets, hoods, all sorts really... 

I needed two bases to act as Immortals, and dithered about with how to represent them, finally chooing a unique, pointed-top spara and a common, 'posh-looking' design - after I stumbled on the design online.

I also added the standard bearers and musicians to the bases to make them even more obvious from the back as well

Each of the units has someone poking through the wall of pavises - these have a kneeling archer and a officer bloke with a small axe checking that the coast is clear

From the back you can see the real mix of Contrast and normal paints I used, as well as some of the very basic "spots and lines" patterns - with the figures this densely packed it is all about the mass effect, even though many of the patterns are not ones that would stand up to independent scrutiny! 

 

The cuirass-wearers were done with white undercoat, a wash with Skeleton Contrast, then the blocks of armour and petruges painted in Ivory.  

It's all about the figure density

The second tranche of 'normal' Sparabara

Another spotty mass of humanity. 

Hopefully this is the view I will see most often! 

Here are some of them with Cyrus' 10mm Pendraken Siege Tower 

And all in a row

And, all the colours from the back!

WiP stuff, and a podcast full of (cheap) Aztecs

 This week has been another eclectic one for painting - and podcasting. 

The only stuff to get finished has been this unit of Arab Clubmen ("Lutyat Macemen") from one of the Arab armies - I forget which one, sadly!

They are pretty niche, but are such nice figures from Legio Heroica I sort of had to add them to my last order!

The padded armour is Skeleton Horde Contrast paint on a white base coat 

The orange turbans and red and blue cloth bits are also contrast paints.

Contrasts also feature in this 10mm WiP of the infantry from the Apocalypse Minis kickstarter 

And more Skeleton Horde on these Mirliton and Essex Medievals - part of a whole army I dipped in Biostrip and am repainting, as the original paint job didn't really do these excellent figures due justice.

Another experimental paint job mixing contrasts and normal paints are these Museum Mini's Persian archers - I have done the linothorax armour in Skeleton Horde, then painted the "white" bits of it with Vallejo Ivory - a tip from Tamsin on the podcast to never paint anything in actual white!

Finally, another Fighting 15's tie-in on the List Building Podcast this week with a MesoAmerican Special in which some of the lists we discuss are not only available to view on the Madaxeman Wiki, they are also available to buy in the form of ready-made, discounted army packs from Fighting 15's!  

Yes, hear the discussion then - if you like what you hear - there's now a simple one-click way for you to pick up 4 of the lists we cover all for under £40 a pop for 128 figures (thats just 31p each for those of you who don't like taking off your socks this early in the year)

The list we cover are:  

• Aztec x2
• Texcallan x2
• Zapotec/Mixtec
• Chinantec
• Mayan x2

You can see the Fighting 15's ADLG Army Packs featuring lists from this Podcast right here on their website, or just browse Fighting 15's Aztecs & Enemies ranges 

Cooking up ADLG lists for... Fighting 15's

As regular listeners to the Madaxeman.com Podcast will know, Andy of "Podcast Quiz" fame is a longtime friend of Ian at UK manufacturer and retailer Fighting 15's 

(Late Roman Light Horse Bowmen from the Gladiator range)

Through that connection I recently had a request from Ian to see if I could help him in drawing up some ADLG army lists for some of the Gladiator Games range of 15mm ancients figures he now produces, so he could then use those lists as the basis for discounted, ready-made army packs.

The parameters were simple, yet intriguing - construct a viable ADLG list using some of the Gladiator Games ranges using at most 128 "figures" (as in, mounted count as 2 figures, foot count as as 1 each), ... and also make sure that the army featured the right multiples of figures so that they could also work reasonably well as starter packs for unit-based rulesets other than ADLG.

It was an interesting challenge which piqued my curiosity - and if the end result was going to be that ADLG gamers would have an option to buy some decent figures at lower cost and with less wasteage, what was not to like ?! 

In addition to designing these "128" figure lists, Ian then set me the exra challenge of coming up with "Booster" packs to add more options to the baseline starter lists... of course, these also had their own rules, which in this case was that they needed to be 32 "figures" strong.

Over the last couple of weeks therefore I've been playing around with the Online Army Builder to try and conjure up some credible, viable ADLG starter armies that keep to Ian's "128 figures" and "32 figures" parameters - and I'm glad to report that it is possible, and the lists and boosters I've conjured up actually seem perfectly reasonable to boot. 

Ian liked the work I did for him, and has now reorganised some of the Gladiator moulds and been busily casting up new batches of figures such that the first batch of ADLG Ready Made Army Packs have now started to appear on the Fighting 15's Website.

The initial two lists I looked at were Late Romans and Huns, which are now both on sale at £39.95 for around 128 metal figures - incidentally working out at just 31p per figure, one of the best per-figure prices for any current 15mm range (which listeners to the Podcast will know is a hot-button topic for us).

The first two lists to be finished are Hunnic and Late Imperial Roman 

The Huns:

A straightforward list to build to be honest, especially as the figures are extremely interchangeable - I took the view that the LH and MCv can mix figures and weapons with impunity, and as long as the HCv are visibly different to the lighter-equipped horsemen it all kinda works. This is how it all panned out;

• Hunnic list on Army List Builder  
• Hunnic list on the Madaxeman ADLG Wiki   
• Hunning Army Pack & Booster Pack on Fighting 15's Website

The Booster Pack also worked out well within the "32" limit, as that allowed the Gothic Foot option to be added with 4 units of hairy infantry including command figures, and the same pack works with the Late Roman army as well. There are also Herul and Gepid Cavalry in discounted booster pack that works for both armies too.   

(Hunnic command from the Gladiator range)

The Late Romans:

There are lots of ways to build a LIR list, some more unusual than others, but as a baseline starter army I thought that having a mix of Legions & Auxilia plus a decent mounted wing was probably the way to go. This was what I ended up with;

• Late Roman List on Army List Builder 
• Late Roman list on the Madaxeman ADLG Wiki
• Late Roman Army Pack & Boosters Pack on Fighting 15's Website 

The mounted wing is arguably a smidge over-sized, but is still a legitimate way to build out an army. Ian's requirement to also try and keep to multiples of figure types that wouldn't be too out of place in other unit-based rulesets is what drove the call on this front, however having a Roman list which isn't all Legions and Auxilia does make it a bit more interesting to play with so that's not a bad outcome anyway I suspect. 

The army list is written in a way which makes "32"-strong booster packs really easy however, so there is an option for 32 Gothic Foederate foot, and then another pack with a couple of extra units of Auxilia and Legions too. 

(Late Roman Legionary from the Gladiator range)

Meso-Americans are now also available I understand, and we're planning a podcast on some of the lists as well in the next couple of weeks - so watch out for those too! 

Persians, Thracians and ...10mm Barons War?

The last week has seen a bit of a flurry of activity as a few purchases from the Museum Miniatures sale have made it to the top of the pile, together with some more Xyston Persians to go with the Cyrus' Mobile Towers of last year.

These are sold by Museum as Scythian horse archers, from their recent "Z" range of releases.

I'm using them as Thracians, by painting them in a similar style to some rather venerable Xyston Thracian infantry which were bought as a couple of FoG AM units, but which I have recently worked out could almost make up an entire ADLG army with a bit of extra stuff added to them.

As is usual with these new Museum figures, whilst the 15mm scale castings aren't (of course) quite as sharp as the 3D renders on their website would suggest, they do paint up nicely and have a pleasing amount of variety in the poses and clothing of the figures in each set too. 

 

Here I've mixed in a pack of Greek Light Horse (the javelin-armed figures) with mounted Scythian-style archers to create some Thracian cavalry who could serve both as Getae horse archers or as normal Thracians.

 

I've also complete another 4 units of Persian cavalry, with the eventual aim of making up a "loads of poor quality mounted" Achaemenid Persian list for ADLG.

These are Xyston castings, superbly detailed which I have painted up in a rather irregular paint scheme.

 

Most of these figures have some sort of scale armour, so I've done a few with metal and the rest with leather effect on the scales.

These are Thracian light horse javelinmen gain from Museum - the bear-headed Greek Light Horse from Museum making up much of the unit, with some hand-made shields added cut out from stiff card to "Thracian-ize" them.

Again they come with a good variety of poses even within each pack.

This is a head-on comparison photo showing the Xyston cavalry on the left and the Museum Z range ones on the right. The Xystons are two-piece castings and here it really shows how this allows their figures to be "wider" whereas the one piece casting Museum ones are a little "linear" by comparison, with the rider's pose very much in line with the horse. 

Another comparison shot, this time with the Museum figures on the left.

This weekend I also got a parcel through from Ryan McKnight (admin of the very useful Wargames  Events and Shows page on Facebook) who is producing them through a kickstarter at the moment under the banner of Apocalypse Miniatures 

It's many years since I painted up any 10mm medievals, but these look really sharp (and I'm a sucker for a freebie!) so when I was offered some I couldn't resist! 

This coming week I'll be divvying up the sample pack Ryan sent across and arranging a clandestine meeting (probably at the Hangar Lane Gyratory System) with Dave from the Madaxeman Podcast (Frumentarius23 on Instagram) so I can share them with him, and we will both have a go at painting them and see how they come out in the next few weeks.  

 

Refurbished Teutonics & Medievals

 With a massive stack of bases from Pendraken's Minibits offshoot in my possession I've been taking a short break from painting and instead doing some upgrade and refurbishment work on a whole load of under-loved and slightly tired looking older figures recently. 

It not only makes a change from painting, but upgrading the basing and tidying up long lost figures does mean you can achieve a result really quickly!

The latest batch to into the ankle-deep water bath are some medievals, from Roundway and Fighting 15's Gladiator Games ranges (more of which later!) which I have rebased and added a few extra bits to as well.

These figures are mostly (all?) from the Gladiator Games Crusades ranges, listed as "Frankish" crusading dismounted knights and spearmen. 

Rebasing them allowed me to go over some of their clothing which had gotten a little faded in the last, erm, 20+ years !

These are also Gladiator Games crossbowmen - some are in the Frankish Crusades range, others in their Feudal and Medieval sections. 

The pavises are home made.

 I used 2 glued together business cards to get a pavise of the right thickness, then added a further thin strip of business card, over which I glued printed off pictures of some "real" reneactor pavises I found on Pinterest. 

The central added strip of card gives the finished pavise some depth and 3D-type effect, as a simple flat panel just doesn't really look right somehow.

I added in a few spearmen and officers to make the pavisiers a bit more, well, combatitive-looking too.

The level of detail you can get with a fairly normal modern printer is way beyond what I could manage myself with a brush - these ones did have a few blobs of gold and bronze added to them though, so there is some artistry there on my part!

These are halberdiers from Roundway - originally they were based on 2 DBx bases 4 men across, but in transferring them to ADLG double-ranked bases I've put 7 figures on each base as it still looks like a close formation unit but with a bit more space to see the figures - and swing a halberd around too!

These are my go-to generic "medieval halberdiers" for mamy armies. 

They are also almost colourful enough to play as Swiss if needed.

Basing them as 7's left four spare figures, so adding in a couple of spare Essex halberdiers also gave me an extra Medium Foot halberdier - who almost certanly will be Swiss at some point!

Here's the double-double ranked version of all 28 of them.