Madaxeman's Wargames Blog

25 Jan 2021

10mm WW2 - the refurbishment project begins

Almost exactly a year ago, at the PAW show in Plymouth I picked up a handful of 10mm WW2 AFV's from a company I'd not seen before - Red 3 Miniatures - kicking off a long-thought-about plan to replace my eclectic and randomly painted collection of WW2 10mm stuff for BKC.

A year later, some more purchases from a variety of companies and some eBay sales to clear out the old stuff and the new toys are finally starting to make it onto the table, and also to appear in the rather neglected 10mm Photo Gallery on Madaxeman.com as well.

Here's a Red 3 Hanomag - a really crisp casting with well designed separate crew who are cast in 2 strips and just slot into the back of the cab. The gunner is cast as a 3rd drop-in piece tother with his gun and mantlet making this a very robust bit of kit

Top down view

I now have a half-dozen of these, and some Engineering variants are no doubt going to be ordered soon too - but I'm waiting to see if any more variants get released so I can put in a bigger order.

The numbers are from Pendraken. I know they may well not make sense as s system, but they are all different and they look cool to me so that's basically OK I reckon!

250's for Recce, one is a 250/11 with 28mm gun, but could easily be the 250/9 with 37mm I think.

The crew and gun drops in as one pre-cast unit, but I've added an extra perching Arrowhead Minis tank rider crewman for more variety

This is an old Pendraken StuG, originally an infantry support version with a short barrel gun but I managed to mislay the barrel when I stripped the old model down for a repaint so ended up adding in a rather large Arrowhead Minis long barrel gun, as their StuG's come with two barrels with different mantlets.

The guys on the back are Arrowhead tank riders. Huge variety, really detailed castings

Here you can see the variety of poses and weapons.

Butlers Printed Models resin print Opel Blitz.

Opel Blitz Command from Red 3, and Butlers standard Opel Blitz

Repainted Takara kit of a Marder.

StuG and a Takara pre-painted Panther. I might end up repainting it to better match the cammo on the rest of the force, but it's pleasingly close to what I've managed to do myself.

There will be more of these to come in the next few months and weeks !

23 Jan 2021

Cruel Seas?

In another strange diversion from the armies I'm really supposed to be painting, this week a pair of 'Free with Miniature Wargames" (or the other one?) sprues of Warlord Games Cruel Seas ships have elbowed their way onto the painting table.

The actual reason is probably because I did some grey undercoat spraying of 10mm WW2 tanks last week, and it gave me a chance to quickly make up and spray these two as well - but either way, for a very simple paint job I'm reasonably happy with how they have turned out.

The long thin ones are German S-Boats, and the others are American PT boats. I ducked the opportunity to try some dazzle cammo on them both as I'm currently wrestling with some WW2 German cammo and that's proving hard enough already!

This week has also seen the return of the Lockdown Podcasts, so if you are missing hearing 7 wargamers chat about stuff they've bought and painted recently make sure to download or stream the latest episode, which also features our first ever in-depth discussion about Yorkshire Puddings.

15 Jan 2021

Random 15mm January Work in Progress

With the Lockdown Podcasts due to start again next week and the UK in what feels like it will be a hard-lockdown lasting at least into March, I've been chewing away at some bits and pieces before embarking onto an actual major project.

Here's a few photos of the WiP figures (all pre-matt varnishing, as it's too cold to do) - there are loads more photos on the Madaxeman Website

These are a mix of Essex and Magister Militum/Chariot hoplites, with a lone New Museum commander in the front rank.

The white leather armour itself was white undercoat, then a wash of ArmyPainter Dark tone to pick out the details, then it was painted white leaving the recesses clear of paint so the shading was left only in the recesses.

These are mostly the "boring" Essex Arab spearmen, again stripped in Biostrip, undercoated in white and then with GW contrast paints applied to mirror the 28mm figures I did a few months ago.

These are Donnington New Era arabs, based up as Saririyah Pikemen from the Fatimid Egyptian army list and painted in Contrast paints

The Donnington New Era arabs fit well next to Essex infantry size-wise

I've also been thinking about upgrading my Roman Carroballistas for a while, and Tamsins painting of these Donnington figures flagged up in the podcast spurred me on to finally get around to it

The ballista and cart on the left is from Donnington, on the right its from Essex - but all the crew are Donnington, sold as singles.

This is a rebasing project, separating my rather vast (mostly) Two Dragons Rus/Viking DBM army into separate ADLG Rus and Viking forces (and possibly creating a Viking army I can sell on eBay too)

I'm also taking the rebasing moment as an excuse to repaint the spears as well. Spears do tend to get chipped and bent, so repainting them all makes a big difference to how new the army looks.

Getting distracted by a variety of projects is sometimes a good thing, as it does mean you can get a sense of achievement from making a noticable difference to some figures - and at the moment we all need some achievements to mark down!

Equally, taking advantage of the extra time we've all been gifted at the moment does allow some experimentation, and the hoplites certainly fall into that category as I tried a very different painting style, taking almost a week to do these handful of figures

Either way, a break from launching into the next major project is great, and when it throws up some interesting figures, paint styles and creates some reason to use new(ly rebased) armies in future that otherwise might have languished in a drawer thats great too.

There are loads more photos of these on the Madaxeman Website

2 Jan 2021

About those new Warlord Games ACW figures....

After breaking the internet in the last couple of weeks, the debate about how big the new Warlord Games ACW figures actually are shows no signs of abating, even now they are in many peoples sweaty post-festive hands as part of the cover-mounted sprue on the latest WI edition.

I've actually got no dog in this particular race at all, as I already have a somewhat oversized collection of mostly original-Pendraken 10mm ACW forces for both sides which are based for Fire & Fury and are compatible with the armies of my mates with whom I hope to be playing large games at some point in the future...

..but the legend that is @Petetentacles from Bangor has got hold of some of thenew Warlord Games figures, painted them up and photographed them next to Peter Pig and 10mm 'new' Pendraken - and here they are:

From left to right these are : Peter Pig 15mm / WG "Epic Scale 13.5mm foot-to-eye but somehow also claiming to be 15mm too" strips / Pendraken 10mm / WG Epic Mounted Officer / Peter Pig Mounted Officer.

I am reliably informed that all of the infantry are based on the same Peter Pig plastic 40mm x 30mm bases. The WG cavalry are on a on base supplied for the figure, the Peter Pig one on a 2p piece of similar depth.

Ta-dah!

(Enterprising folks are already selling the WG sprues on eBay. Here's an Affiliate Link to the UK listings, from which I might earn a few pence commission if you buy anything after clicking it).

24 Dec 2020

Festive Persian Siege Towers...? OK, it's a stretch, but...

OK, maybe not - but if you are prepared to stretch to a bit of Old Testament nonsense and have an Early Achaemenid Persian army you'll probably have wondered what to use for 15mm scale "Cyrus Mobile Towers" at some point in the past... and now, I may have found the answer!

Very recently Pendraken announced an MDF Siege Tower in 10mm scale, which a quick email to Leon revealed was less than 40mm wide, and so would fit on a standard DBx basing frontage - the key challenge for other towers I'd looked at in the past.

At only a fiver a pop, I quickly ordered a couple and then set to with the wood glue to assemble the two of them.

With Museum Miniatures releasing some new Persian Sparabara, my own Essex Persian infantry were already slated to be replaced in the new year anyway, but this project meant that some of them won a last-minute reprieve from eBay as I instead upcycled a few bases of mixed bow / pavise infantry for tower crew.

I then added on some re-purposed Essex War Wagon horses to pull the towers (because I had them lying around with ADLG needing less wagons than previous rulesets), otherwise Museum's Draught Oxen might have been the ideal choice (although it looks like Essex "might" sell the wagon horses separately if you ask nicely too), and with the application of some printed-off "wallpaper" patterns (repeating the idea from my Assyrian Chariots of a few years ago) to give the towers a more detailed look than I could ever hope to paint and, well, Cyrus is your uncle!

There's about a dozen crew inside each tower, and a couple on the base as well to keep the enemy away from the horses!

You can fit 2 standing Essex infantry on each of the three internal levels. I used the wallpaper on the pavises as well.

This pattern is one of a number I've made available to download as a pdf from my site, but there are loads of images on Pinterest if you search for Persian or Assyrian Graphics.

The tower is painted in Citadel Magragge Blue - not sure if its still available but it is a nice strong dense dark blue.

I glued the drop-down "bridge" in the open position to fit more crew in. I may add one of the Museum kneeling archers here too once I get round to buying them.