A few more Tlaxcalan Warriors

 Running alongside the "red flower on the base" Tlaxcalan Warriors are these sets of "purple flower" and "yellow flower" chaps:

On these it's really easy to see how I have made the shields ping a little by blacklining the bands and areas of bold colour on them. I did this with a fibre tip fine marker, which thankfully didn't then bleed into the paint underneath even when varnished (rather scary moment doing the varnishing though...)

The Army Painter Fanatic paints have such great coverage, and that is absolutely what is needed for making Meso-American armies really look vibrant and bold. 

There are quite a few guys in all-over onsies, but I have saved those with headgear as well for the Suit Wearers - coming soon !

 

 

The Tlaxcalans are here !

A somewhat epic painting project has now finally reached the "lets spray varnish outside before it gets too cold and damp" phase of completion, much to the delight of vendors of multicoloured grass tufts, as my first Meso-American army finally gets finished off. 

All of the figures (apart from a handful on the baggage element) are from the rather wonderful and characterful range sold by Fighting 15's - who sadly are kinda winding down their business, potentially selling off the moulds and rights at some point in future (we hope!). 

These guys are from the same family as the Egyptians I own, and have bundles of personality baked into the sculpts. They are the sort of figures that really do make you wonder whether 3D modelling and printing, with its ability to make and print out anatomically accurate poses even at 15mm without the constraints of traditional sculpting or even the need to design figures that can be cast in, and removed from, rubber moulds, will ever quite capture the magic of what is very much a work of art rather than a  3D product develped by the technical application of science.

Anyways, I'll be posting pictures of the various troops in batches over the coming weeks, starting with the main body of Warriors.

These guys are a mishmash of different figure codes and are equipped with all sorts of weapons - as you'll see later on, there are some specific, names units who soak up most of the figures I bought with particular or specific weaponry, so these "standard" warriors are a bit of everything that was left.

The painting on these is a mix of contrasts and normal paints, with some of the new Warlord Fanatic  normal paint "triads" of 6 (erm..?) slightly different tones as well. 

The padded armour is white base coat with Aggaros Dunes GW Contrast, with the skin being a couple of applications of GW Contrasct Darkoath Flesh on a white undercoat.

 

The new fanatic paints give great coverage, and choosing some new, bold colours has allowed me to paint these chaps in the bright and vibrant colours you really do want to see on Meso Americans.

The two main sets I bought were a Green one, which ranged from Guardian Green to Ferocious Green, and a Red which ran through from Basilisk Red to Raging Rose - to which I added a few blues and a couple of even lighter colours too to use as highlights.  

These sets of 6 paints are available on Amazon in the UK for a very reasonable £18 each set, with free postage (if you have Prime) - if you buy them through these links (6-part Triads on Amazon) I may even get a small kickback from Amazon's affiliate programme to! 

This set of 6 units all have a big blob of red flowers on their bases to allow me to keep up to 3 commands woth of troops easily identified - or perhaps to say that some of the generic warriors are armed with atl-atl annd others (with different flowers) are not? 

 I didn't use any static grass on these, instead going entirely for grass tufts and flowers to try and create a more unique, jungle sort of vibe to the basing - after all, they will only ever fight alongside a handful of bases of Conquistadores, so they don't need to be all that compatible with my other armies. 

Rebasing the 15mm Scots for ADLG-R

 I've been systematically rebasing all of my Renaissance figures over the past could of years to play them under ADLG-Renaissance rules, and this Scottish Contingent represents the end of that process, with all of my Renaissance armies now re-done.

This is the full set - less than half a "FoGR" army (which means I managed to sell the other half to fund some more purchases of other stuff!) but still a chunky force with 25 units to choose from when making up a list. 

One of my three commanders is this Highland Gnome, bought from the edition of Cold Wars just before Covid. 

There is also a rather more Jacobite-esque 28mm leader in there too

A good chunk of the figures are these very old Minifigs castings which I picked up in a Bring & Buy back when Roll Call was held in Dunstable - and they are still going strong even now!

There are also a few Peter Pig Highland Rebel warriors in there too - just the one base, as I used many of the rest of the Highlanders I had to pad out the Pike & Shot formations.

Two Peter pig Frame Guns provide the "non-generic" artillery for the Scots , with crews from all sorts of places. 

The bulk of the Pike & Shot units are Peter Pig figures, painted quite simply with a grey base coat, some bits of colour added and then a wash to dirty them up for campaigning in the Highlands and Lowlands. 

The one unit of "better quality" Strathbogie (or similar) Scots are the Minifigs musketeers plus some compatible Donnington Pikemen. 

The cavalry are all Peter Pig as well - again easy to paint up, if a little limited in poses. 

They are a little too small to use with other ranges I think.

Plenty of grass tufts in blue-ey purple to represent heather. I could have gone with actual purple, but the purple tufts I had a very vibrant, to the point of being almost a "space alien" intensity, so these seemed a better bet.

And that's the full set all ready for some ADLG-R action! 

(I have a playlist of "how to" videos on my YouTube Channel that show the basics of ADLG-R if you fancy listening to me waffle on for a while about how to play the game). 

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Assyrian Attack!

 With the same lightning-fast speed as an Assyrian chariot racing across the Mespotamian plain, 4 fully-featured, text-based old school battle reports from the recent Attack! competition in Devizes have now made it to this website!

The 4-battle campaign sees my 28mm Assyrian army taking on:

• the Indians of Donesh Mukhu, 
• the hat-obsessed Hittites, 
• my army's own futuristic 3D printed ancestors the Sargonid Assyrians, and.. 
• in another Assyrian Civil War, the Queen Semiramis-inspired "disguised camel" madness of another Assyrian army commanded by King Dickaleth-Hashdod (Cunning Vizier of the Nineveh Left Hook).

As has become all too usual, all reports feature possibly untrue historical facts, poor quality humour, deeply inappropriate comments from the participating soldiers themselves, and extensive post-match analysis from both the Assyrian Commander and Nasty Hannibal. 

So, put on the kettle, open a packet of biscuits, roll out the carpet, pop on your favourite hat and get ready to be mind-boggled by the Tales of Ancient Assyria at War in The West Country!  

More Almughavars

 Having test-done some Lurkio Almughavars a while back, the "test" painting clearly worked as I managed to drum up enough enthusiasm to tackle the full 70+ figures who had been waiting patiently in the "undercoated" box for quite some time. 

The last lot got their photos taken outside, but for this batch the Lightbox got rolled out - so here they all are:

The Lurkio packs contained a couple more than the 72 figures that were supposed to be there, allowing me to make up 11 bases fo infantry and these 4 bases of Light Foot javelinmen.

These guys got some serious love from the box of random tufts !

Knowing they will be used in a 3-command army at some point I took the decision to mostly go with  a variety of monocolour paint schemes to allow units to be easily allocated to different comnmands, but also mixed up the hues, tints and trouser colours to still leave them vaguely "irregular" looking.

The painting was again a mix of Speedpaints, Contrasts and some of the new Warpainter 6-part "Triads" from the Fanatic ranges. 

Reds and Blues as well as Greens. 

And some "Mustardy Yellows" as well. 

Almost all of the shields have a "Barcelona FC" Catalan-esque palette 

There are a few mixed up units who can be added to either the Reds or the Blues to tweak numbers more flexibly. 

I was even sufficiently inspired to repurpose a couple of units of "generic" Essex medieval cavalry as Catalans, rather clumsily cutting down their lances to turn them into javelins and adding some "Catalan" paint schemes too. 

Here's the guys being painted as well - just to show I did actually do it myself..

Just need to find an excuse to get them on the table now !

The Northern Crusades - with added Tanks!

 Earlier this year (OK, June) I headed up to Helsinki to take part in a "Northern Crusades" ADLG competition.

Admittedly the competition aspect was somewhat secondary to just grabbding the chance to go to somewhere new in the far north in Summertime, so as to find out how late it would stay light, and exactly how expensive a pint actually would be in a place like Finland.

Even so, I did manage to squeeze in some gaming, using (of course) a Feudal Scandinavian army in a medieval-themed 5-game event. 

And now, with the magic of YouTube, here are all 5 battle reports from the games I played in the event, taking on 2 Later Byzantines (nope, no idea how they fit in a "Northern Crusades" theme either..), the Hungarians (erm..), some Medieval Germans (yep, that probably works) and the Teutonic Knights (back of the net!).

All of the videos are also on YouTube in a playlist you can save and watch in fullscreen (if you so wish).

I then took advantage of having a Monday evening return flight to pop up the road to the Parola Armour Museum, one of the more unusual tank museums in the world, to see a load of really unusual Finno-Russian WW2 and post war kit they have tucked away in a forest near to a lake (OK, that's most of Finland to be fair).

 So, in a "metal-on-metal" kind of synergistic development, there is also a video of all of the photos I took at Parola which you can also access either at the end of the battle report page, or directly on  my YouTube Channel too.