WW2 Germans - the full set

 More than a year after picking up some new 10mm tanks from Red3 at the PAW show in Plymouth, I've finally finished the daunting project of re-doing my WW2 10mm German forces, all with a coherent, hand-painted 3-tone cammo scheme.  

I've also uploaded all of these to the 10mm Gallery on my website: 

Puma, from Arrowhead - a stunningly detailed multi-part metal kit

Dragon King Tiger, with Arrowhead tank riders. I left their faces un-inked to make them pop a little more at this small scale. 

Arrowhead Tiger 1's - another stunning model

Pendraken Wirbelwind

Pendraken (I think?) Quad AA 

Pithead Diana. I know they were only used in the desert, but I ordered this one by accident and hey, one 'might' have been cobbled together and saved for later...? 

Nashorn from Minifigs. 

Arrowhead StuG with tank riders

Front view. 

Theree StuGs. From left to right, Arrowhead new kit, Pendraken old casting with Arrowhead barrel, Arrowhead now-discontinued one-piece model 

Old & new Arrowhead StuGs

Red3 PzIV  Really clean two piece casting (turret and "the rest")

Arrowhead PzIV with no Shurzen

Butlers Printed Models Steyr truck. A lot of printing lines on these which the cammo just about hides at wargaming distances.

Dragon pre-paint JagdTiger. The barrel melted when I was stripping the old paint job, so I bodged together a rather unappealing substitute.

Arrowhead 88. Something like 2.3 million pieces in this kit - but worth it!

Arrowhead and Pendraken 88's side by side

Pendraken Pak40. Crew could be anyones - I  mixed them up 

Pithead (I think?) 105mm infantry support gun

Slightly enhanced Dragon pre-paint Panther

Spinning StuG

The rest of the Germans are on this blog already

And, finally, a video of these and more photos and turntable clips as well:

Full Thracian Jacket

I've posted the individual units before, but here's a few pictures of the complete Thracian army all together.

They are almost all Xyston for the foot and generals, and Museum for the mounted troops. The only exceptions are that a few of the LF javelinmen are Corvis Belli gallic youths. 

Xyston can sometimes be really distinctive in style, but I think the Museum mounted look absolutely find set against them here.

EBay Incoming!

 With Spring very much in the air, I've realised that I need to free up a few Bisley drawers for some of the stuff I've painted during Lockdown, and so I will be doing a bit of a mini-flurry of eBay sales in the next week or so. 

All my eBay listings can be seen on the listings page for "the_lithuanian" 

On sale this week are: 

15mm Chinese Handgunners / arquebusiers (actually Boxer Rebellion figures!)

15mm Essex Chinese handgunners

15mm Arab musketeers / arquebusiers

More 15mm Arab / Afghan musketeers or riflemen 

15mm Byzantine Crossbowmen

Unpainted but undercoated 15mm Arab Musketeers

Blue Moon American Indians 15/18mm undercoated only

And.. last but not least a large 15mm True North Miniatures WW2 Belgian Army, perfect for playing O Group, the new WW2 ruleset from TFL, or Peter Pig's PBI WW2 rules.

All my eBay listings can be seen on the listings page for "the_lithuanian"  and all end on Tuesday 27th April around 7pm BST.

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!