A Little Fort

At the recent ADLG Worlds in Rome I picked up a little fort from Rafa's stall, to use as a fortified baggage camp for some of my ADLG armies.

I should have had one of these already, as they are made by a guy in Alicante, and were given to all competitors at the event I attended there in January, but somehow I lost mine on the way home and so, given the opportunity, decided that I just had to actually buy one instead!

It is a resin print that fits (just about...) on a standard 80mm x 40mm camp base, so is probably scaled more to 10mm - or perhaps even a smidge smaller - rather than 15mm. 

It is an incredibly simple paint job - I undercoated mine in black, then did successive layers of increasingly "dry" dry-brushed, ever-lighter browns on it. 

I started with Army Painter Oak, then Vallejo Beige Brown (which I use instead of Army Painter Leather if I run out of the Leather), then a bit of Vallejo Ochre Brown for more warmth.

The inside floor was - as usual for my current basing style - builders sand glued in with PVA, stained to a more dark and even colour with Rustins Dark Oak, then drybrushed with Skeleton Bone and then a pale grey

Highlights (especially the pointy bits / tops of the cut trees of the fence) were also the traditional Army Painter Skeleton Bone.

I then finished the whole thing with a very light highlight of Coat d'Arms Horse Tone Grey - my lightest grey paint. 

It now only needs me to start taking well-orgainsed armies with fortified camps to competitions !

 

Somewhat Old Cold War Commander

 With the new edition of CWC coming put from Pendraken recently, I remembered I hadn't posted a load of photos I took of a CWC Big Game (OK, 9x4 table with 1/300th scale models) that we played last autumn in Brixham after the Brixham Classic.

So, with a bit of time on my hands, here they all are shufled together into a single page 'lite' battle report (the ones here are just a taster)

 See the full set here

Italia '22 - The Worlds in Rome

 Yes, competitive international ADLG yet again, this time with a flight rather than a drive (and so a shorter set of reports) as the Khurasanians take another tilt at the World Championships!

See the Persio-Afghani soldiery revel in 6 games of 15mm L'Art de la Guerre, against two sets of Almughavars, a pair of Indians, a Byzantino and the army of Wallander, sorry, Henry V (a lame Kenneth Brannagh joke in case you missed it) with the usual captions, analysis and in-game hints and commentary.

And, of course, being Italy, there are pictures of prosecco instead of beer!

Drive to the Rhine - An ADLG Beer n'Castles German mini break

With ADLG taking vigorous root in Germany's Ancients competition scene, Two Daves and a Madaxeman took a road (and rail) trip across France, Belgium and Germany and on the way ended up in a variety of castles, museums, cathedrals and of course schitzel-serving bierkellers - all of which you can now share in too! 

Sandwiched inbetween two epic travelogues are 5 Madaxeman Match reports as the Palmyran army of the ever-feisty Zenobia takes on Arabs, Byzantines (twice), the Might of Imperial China, and the Xia Xia Nomad Empire in a series of battles

The reports also feature a band new educational component, in the shape of a suite of painstakingly accurate and fully researched German exclamations and a number of entirely plausible German compound words as well. 

To top it all off there is also an accompanying podcast to listen to as well. 

Click through and enjoy the road trip !

Charlemagne - The Emperor has Arrived!

 A Carolingian army has been sat on the to-do shelf for a couple of years now -  I bought it partly to see what Baueda figures looked like in the metal, and partly as I had already bought 1 dozen of their mounted Carolingian archers with a vague thought of adding them to some generic Gothic cavalry and cobbling together a morph army at some stage. 

Digging into it a bit more I had soon realised that the whole army needed to be, well, "Carolingian-looking" though, hence the purchase. 

Over the past year I'd added some more Forged in Battle cavalry through a few eBay purchases, and that had both bulked out the army and made it harder to begin to paint as well.

However after a road trip to Aachen, seat of the Carolingans and interment place of Charlemagne himself I became inspired enough to pick up the spray can, and to give them a quick and colourful (mostly Contrast) paint job to get them table-ready, in part as I had to paint something to get away from rigging more little ships, and in part as Aachen Cathedral is so fabulous that I convinced myself I didn't need to paint the soldiers all in Middle Ages style duns and tans, as this dude had some style, and also some money to splash around. 

The end result is a fairly over-enthusiastic and colourful army with all of the possible options;

These are Baueda - their horsemen don't mix with FiB's very well as the Baueda ones have very narrow horses and V-shaped riders legs to fit on them, and the FiB ones are chubby beasts with suitably arch-shaped riders legs - so the two manufacturers provide (mostly) separate parts of the army

This is the same unit from the back. There seemed a lot of red and blue in some of the contemporary depictions of the Carolingain military I found, so I felt comfortable giving these "better quality" guys a bold uniform red cloak look. 

FiB horsemen in leather armour, as Medium cavalry. Of course, LBMS shields.

The Horse Archers - a Baueda special, painted ages ago and now rebased to the same scheme as the rest of the army

Armoured cavalry from FiB (maybe a couple of Baueda boys sneaking in there too)

Baueda infantry, apart from the unit in the centre front, who are FiB with the more distinctive Carolingian helmets. Because the Baueda chaps are fairly non-specific they may appear as Saxons or something at some point in future too.

From the back the Contrast Paint style really shows up well. 

FiB Light Horse. I only needed 2 bases, so mixed in a few of the other riders with the Medium cavalry

Javelin skirmishers. Fairly weedy dudes, not sure how long their ankles will survive in-game handling TBH

And, the whole set - 38 bases including Generals. I suspect some Vikings will also freelance as mercenaries at some point when they finally get on the table too.

There are even more photos in the 15mm photo gallery of these dudes. 

 

Victrix Fireflies... at last...

 What with Victrix selling their 1/144th scale tanks in rather unruly packs of 6, and already having some of their "standard" Shermans the OCD Wargamer in me has been dithering for quite some time about whether I should replace my perfectly servicable (..yet not quite the same as the Victrix ones) Fireflies, I think from PIthead, with some from Victrix to match the rest of the fleet. 

Having been unable to find any on eBay at a sensible price, this had been going on for some time until finally a mate suddenly decided he wanted some too, so the possibility of a pack-split became the solution to my tight-fisted dilemma

And this is the result:

Yes, three rather spiffy British Firefly Shermans, with 17pdr long barrel guns painted in Vallejo Tank Colour Bronze Green. 

The guns were so long - and also so thin - that I managed to break one in half while putting the transfers onto the front of the tank hull, and then a second one also snapped whilst showing it to my webcam when recording the latest Madaxeman Podcast. 

So, I replaced the barrels by snipping them off flush with the mantlet, drilling a hole (very easy with this plastic) and glueing in place a length of broom bristle. They were pretty much exactly as thick as the barrel supplied with the tanks, and are flexible enough to never break. 

The final touch was to add a smoke extractor at the end of each barrel. 

This I cheatingly got away with by just dabbing a blob of extra paint on the end of the bristle, which at this scale gives a bit extra thickness that does actually look close enough for government work to being a muzzle brake smoke extractor thingy.  

Job done!

3D printed miniatures - the future has arrived (in the post..)

 So... first off I'm nowhere near even thinking about getting a 3D printer. I have far too many armies already, and I have no inclination to pick up what I suspect would be an entirely new additional geeky OCD-generating hobby to complement those I already have! 

Having said that, I have bought a handful of printed 10mm vehicles in the past, some of decidedly "mixed" quality and I have also been watching with interest various discussions online (and even in our own Madaxeman Podcast) about when 3D printing will, seemingly inevitably, start to impact the traditional world of metal (and plastic) production casting of wargames figures.

It was with that investigative mindset that I recently bought a set of 3D printed figures from a seller on Etsy (Small Scale Prints), from the Hannibal vs Rome range designed by Warprinter from Germany. paying a rather remarkable £12 + P&P for some 60 figures.

The range was originally designed for printing at 10mm scale, but the helpful chap at Small Scale Prints was happy to scale them up and print them for me at 15mm size

And these are the models that arrived in the post - printed on strips of 5 in a grey plasticy and rigid material

.  

I'd ordered a mix of the Etruscans and Samnites, planning to use them to bulk out some of my existing Early Roman armies into other Latin states of that era - armies that I was unlikely to use all that often, but which the completist in me fancied trying anyway a couple of times. 

For that sort of thing I wasn't ever going to spend a fortune on, say, Mirliton minis just to leave them in a drawer after a couple of outings, but the idea of having an excuse to take a look at what 3D printing could offer at the moment, and picking up a load of simple to paint minis to bang out quickly was exactly what I was needed to prompt me to buy on in there.    

I went for a white (Halfords spray) undercoat, which took really well - I didn't clean the minis before spraying at all, and then started blocking in the flesh areas, and also putting a black undercoat on the  spots which would end up as metallic.

The material (resin?) used really impressed me - it's light, but very robust, and has just a little flex in it without actually being bendy, and it seems to take paint really well as well.    

The "quick and easy" plan meant that my limited stock of Contrast Paints got the majority vote, so most of the chaps ended up in pastel colours from the GW range. 

The exceptions are the "grey" ones (2nd from right in the row nearest the camera and a fe win the 2nd row too) who are done in a Warlord Games Speedpaint called Holy White, that I quite like the effect of.

From the front they still look pretty chubby and cartoonish at this stage - sort of like Lamming figures of old, but scaled down to 15mm from 25's.

Adding a few more colours - and the inevitable shield transfers of course - has however really made a big difference, and they are really starting to develop some character at this stage. 

The close-up shows a little more shading is still needed

Here they are next to some 15mm Hoplites from Essex and Magister Militum, which I had swapped out the spears from and replaced by broom bristles. The contrast makes the 3D printed spears look huge (and to be fair they are over-sized), but the original Essex metal spears woudl have been much closer visually to the 3D ones. 

From the back they are still "different", but not as much as they looked when they started off. 

 

Here's the almost-finished guys next to some Old Glory Romans - their most likely allies and opponets on the tabletop. I still needed to do a few more think washes on the feathers and faces at this stage

And ta-dah - the finished article, fully based and painted up ready to go to war in ancient Italy! 

Yes, they do still have an air of “Lego” men about them for sure, but I think in some ways that also makes them kinda cute and gives them a real likability factor too (reminscent in some ways of the Lamming 25mm range from back in the day). Stood next to Old Glory 15mm Romans, and at wargaming distances they don't - to me - look all that out of place at all. 

Maybe the best summary is to say that "They are what they are" - simply-designed, low cost figures sculpted for 10mm and scaled up to 15mm, and on that basis I think they succeed admirably. 

I'm really happy with how they have come out, however almost the more interesting thing for me is that having these guys in-hand, I've begun to see just how easy it is soon going to be for gamers - even using fairly basic 3D design skills - to begin to start playing around in 3D, mixing and matching even simplistic "lego-style" body parts to suddenly cook up entirely new, bespoke, limited run armies and figures to add to their collections. 

And, I wil stress again, these guys are not trying or claiming to be anatomically accurate works of art - they are just cheap and cheerful "get em on the table" figures. Other 3D printed options out there, such as the March to Hell armies from 3D Breed , and the 28mm Caballero figures too (of which I have a few in the painting queue as well bought from Fenland Miniatures..) look to be a whole different kettle of fish 

Interesting times indeed!

Roll Call Reports - in Video Format

 After the success (over 600 views!) of the Beachhead video reports, and also with a rather extensive writeup of the 4-day trip to the Braubach tournament in the pipeline I've decided to put my 5 games at Roll Call out as a video as well.

You can therefore see in rather over-saturated detail the Mighty Assyrians take on some Galatians, Romans, Classical Indians, Warring States Chinese and finally the Seleucid Empire in 5 HD-quality badly-narrated reports which are available now on the Madaxeman YouTube Channel.

 Yes, you can now spend just under an hour waiting for the theme tune to crop up and interrupt my inane ramblings as I try and graft some semblance of tactical nous onto the generally shambolic shufflings of the 28mm army of Assyria (which has also featured heavily on this blog after being painted during lockdown).   

As usual, the army lists are all in the Wiki, and in case you're wondering, the figures are from the excellent but oft-overlooked Newline Designs range, with dismounted generals from Foundry