Rebasing 15mm figures for use with ADLG Renaissance

I've just uploaded a new video to the Madaxeman YouTube Channel, showing the process of rebasing some 15mm Renaissance wargames figures from "DBx" bases (40mmx20mm) and rebasing them into (the really cute!) integrated Pike & Shot units that are used for L'Art de la Guerre Renaissance.  

The video is pretty straightforward (OK, "basic") and takes you stepwise through a set of simple techniques for quickly and effectively rebasing 15mm (or any scale really) figures that would work for any change from one ruleset to another.

Rebasing can often seem such a huge PITA that any ruleset that requires rebasing is instantly discarded, but I've now come to accept that it can be necessary, isn't that painful to do, and does actually leave me with better looking bases than the ones I was making 20-odd (or more!) years ago.

If you are baulking at the thought of rebasing troops for ADLG-R then hopefully this video will give you some confidence that it's not a life-threatening operation, and instead can be done quickly and easily to generate good end results. 

And let's face it, these single units on 80mm x 40mm bases look really cool, and if you are honest with yourself you already have far too many 15mm Renaissance Pike and Shot based for other systems, so changing just a handful of 'other system' units will give you the half-dozen or so Pike & Shotte units you will need to play pretty much any nationality in ADLG-R (if you slot different flags onto the pikes)

ADLG-R is a semi-official mod of ADLG written by Simon LeRay-Meyer and can be downloaded from the "files" section of the L'Art de la Guerre Renaissance Facebook Group.

Beachhead 2024: The Seleukids ride forth!

 In a vain attempt to avoid repeatedly misspelling "Seleucid" I've just created a set of 5 video battle reports from the recent Beachhead competition in Bournemouth earlier this year. 

These feature a mostly-Victrix 28mm Seleusid army taking on the Indians, Camillan Romans, Galatians, Dacians and finally the Early Imperial Romans in 5 pretty brutal and full-impact battle play-through videos.

At this event neither me nor any of my opponents seemed keen to muck about, so the end result is a lot of closeups of 28mm troops in push-and-shove close quarters combat - what's not to like eh?!

You can see the first video by following this link - the others all follow on in sequence.

 

Cordoba, Granada & Alicante - the CLWC tourism video

 I've cobbled together a short-ish video of the photos from the CLWC trip to Cordoba, Granada and (eventually) Alicante in January 2023, and uploaded them to YouTube.

They cover the Mesquite Mosque/Cathedral in Cordoba, as well as some of the other museums and a decent amount of tapas, a castle we stumbled across on the road between Cordoba & Alicante (that has a working trebuchet!) and then the Alhambra in Granada. 

Combining Cordoba and Granada makes for a great trip - although getting from Granada to Alicante is a bit of a schlep, so if you don't plan on going to play in the ADLG tournament there (that we were all going to that weekend) adding Seville as the third leg instead of Alicante would be much more sensible.

There are also some incidental "on the road" photos too - let's just say that you can find the most surprising things in Spanish motorway service station vending machines !   

The video is online on YouTube here, and can also be watched on this site too:

Who's Playing What - the 2023 (slightly delayed..) edition

Various real life things, and a ridiculous amount of actual gaming have rather gotten in the way of usual programming here on Madaxeman, however I have finally managed to run a quick update on my now-traditional full-year snapshot of the UK Ancients competition scene in 2023.

As usual I'll start with (an abridged) version of the ground rules and caveats. 

• These "2023" stats cover competitions held in the UK during 2023 for which attendance information is the public domain. In practice this means "results that appear in the rankings" plus a few more unranked events that I've picked up from keeping a weather eye on various forums and FB pages - or in some cases where I've been sent results by the people who organise events for each set.
• It only covers "competitions" - that essentially means 5+ people from multiple clubs gathering together to play over a day or two at a single venue, at the end someone gets a prize for winning, and the then the world gets to hear about it afterwards on a forum or FB group. If it's a "gathering", an "organised play" weekend, a "boot camp", a "club ladder tournament"  or a "This isn't a competition, no scores will be recorded or published"-type event it's not included, a criteria which is applied consistently across all sets.
• I've adopted a totally arbitrary cut-off of "about 30 players and half a dozen events-ish" in the calendar year for any set to be included. Of the other sets being played Swordpoint may be closest to meeting this criteria, but is still a little short at the moment.
• I'm largely guessing who is "overseas" and who is "UK". C'est la vie huh..?
• Some players appear in the stats twice because they played two rulesets over the course of 2023. This is still (just about) too low a number for me to worry about, but it does seem to be on the rise so I have noted it in a couple of places. Maybe one for next year? 

After doing this analysis annually since 2016 I think I have a pretty good handle on whats occurring and where to look to pick up the data - and the idea that in this day an age a competition could be promoted, organised, played and concluded without leaving any sort of online footprint of any kind on any of the mainstream forums used by the players of the rulesets concerned, and not be picked up in the rankings system either is rather far fetched to say the least ! So, while I would not want to promise 110% accuracy, especially where nicknames are used, or where players may have dropped out midway through an event for example, all in all it's still a pretty good bet that every UK-based "competition" that has happened for the rulesets I'm looking at here has been included. 

The other thing to bear in mind is that for all bar one of the rulesets in this analysis the total number of players falls between 30-90, so the absence (or presence) of a car-full of players turning out for a single event staged at their local club can swing almost all of these figures by as much as 5-10%. 

So, please don't read too much into any single year-on-year variation - this is all about capturing moments in time and adding them together to form a broad-brush picture over the longer term - which is why I have been collating similar stats since 2017. 

So with those qualifications out of the way, onto the 2023 data.

Total Player Numbers 

(Numbers are UK based players / UK+Overseas players): 

• ADLG    178/186  (2022: 172/185)     (L'Art de la Guerre)
• MeG       78/89 (2022: 71/76)      (Mortem et Gloriam)
• DBA       64/64        (2022: 57/58)         (De Bellis Antiquarius)
• DBMM   60/73       (2022: 69/78)         (De Bellis Magister Militum)
• TTS!       43/43        (2022: 32/33)        (To The Strongest!)
• DBM      41/42        (2022: 39/40)         (De Bellis Militarium)
• FoGAM  34/38 (2022: 34/35)        (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)

In "League Tables" terms therefore ADLG continues to lead the pack by some margin, with over 1 in 3 of all players in this survey taking part in at least one ADLG event in 2023, more than the next two biggest sets combined.

MeG has consolidated it's grip on 2nd place through a combination of solid growth through 2023 and a continued tailing off of the numbers playing DBMM. 

This in turn leaves DBA very much now neck and neck with DBMM in 3rd place, recording higher UK-based player numbers but unable to match DBMM's international pulling power which sees total DBMM attendances just outstrip those of DBA. 

At the other end of the table (as John Motson would say..) both FoGAM and DBM have been overtaken this year by TTS! despite small upticks for both sets, as what appears to have been a concerted effort by the TTS! community to stage more events has started to pay off with greater overall attendance figures.

%age Change 2022 vs 2023  

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

• TTS!        +34% / +30%
• DBA        +12% / +10%
• MeG       +10% / +17%    
• DBM       +5% / +5%
• ADLG     +3% / -%
• FoGAM   -% / +9%
• DBMM    -13% / -9%

Unsurprisingly TTS! saw the biggest %age increase in overall player numbers, with MeG and DBA both recording double-digit increases too in UK-based players. 

DBMM saw the biggest fall in player numbers, somewhat masked by an increase in overseas players heading to these shores. 

Total number of competition entries made 

• ADLG      727    (2022: 703)
• MEG        379    (2022: 338)
• DBMM    263    (2022: 291)
• DBA         220    (2022: 204)
• FOG         185    (2022: 185)
• DBM        167    (2022: 123)
• TTS          101    (2022: 57)

These figures aggregate the attendance figures for every event in the calendar for each ruleset, and so give a combined flavour of the number of events held and average attendances at each event. 

Both MeG and TTS! saw significant increases in aggregate turnout, both coming off the back of increased numbers of events in their respective calendars. 

The star performer in this bunch is however undoubtably DBM, with a 36% increase in overall number of entries across its' 11 events last year compared to the aggregate attendance across the same number of competitions in 2022. DBMM was the only set to see a decline in the total number of entries made across the year. 

New players first seen on each circuit in 2023 

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

• ADLG     23 / 26
• DBA        13 / 13
• TTS!        13 / 13
• MeG        10 / 15
• DBMM     6 / 6
• FoGAM    3 / 5
• DBM        2 / 2

These numbers underline the fact that the strong showings by DBA and TTS! were driven in the main by significant numbers of UK-based players joining each circuit for the first time in 2023.

All of the sets bar DBM saw around 10% of their total player numbers made up of new recruits in 2023, with MeG notably drawing in as many "first time in the UK" overseas players in 2023 than all other sets combined.  

ADLG meanwhile saw 5 of its 26 "first-timers" last year coming from the ranks of players of other rulesets, with MeG also recording 2 inbound recruits as well. These are still tiny numbers in absolute terms however, underlining how few players have been drifting between rulesets in recent years.

7 year trends in UK player numbers (omitting 2020 & 2021) 

• DBM uses July-July figures for 2015 and 2016 as these were more readily available, all other figures are calendar years.  
• 2020 and 2021 have been omitted as all circuits were dramatically curtailed by Covid in these years

The clearest trend in the period since 2015 has been ADLG's rapid replacement of FoGAM as the most widely played rule system in the UK Ancients competition scene, with ADLG first exceeding  the "100 active players in the last 12 months" benchmark in early 2016, a benchmark no other set has managed to reach since then. The last few years (Covid excepted) have seen this position solidify (ossify?) with the UK's ADLG calendar consistently witnessing more players than the next 2-3 biggest sets combined in recent years.

7 years after its' launch MeG has now doubled-down on its position at the head of the "second tier" group alongside DBA & DBMM, all of which draw somewhere between 60-80 UK-based players annually (with DBMM and MeG both adding to this through their material overseas contingents too). 

After a rather erratic start, the TTS! competition circuit is now seemingly coming up on the rails, with both of the "free" rulesets, FoG and DBM both showing stable numbers in the 30-40 range made up of a core of longstanding supporters.

Ruleset-specific commentary

ADLG (L'Art de la Guerre)

Not much has chnaged for ADLG in the last year, with again 38 events across the UK, and player numbers hovering in the 180-200 band throughout the year, as they have done ever since mid 2018.

16 players accounted for 25% of all competition entries in 2022, with 42 making up half of the aggregate annual field. The 38 events held included some competitions some taking place in parallel (in different scales) at the same venue, and with date clashes as well the most events anyone could theoretically have entered in 2022 was 32. 

Unsurprisingly no players managed to make it to even half of this total - a symptom of both ADLG's uniquely wide geographic spread of events across the UK, and the sheer number of ADLG competitions now available to enter each year across the length and breadth of the UK.  

52 players appeared at the 6 ADLG events held across Scotland in 2023, just over a dozen of whom hailed from south of the border (with a good number of the Scottish players making the reverse trip to play in England as well). 60 different players also took part in at least one of the eleven 25mm events staged (with half of these 60 only wheeling out the big toys the once in the calendar year).  Either of these "circuits with a circuit" would sit mid-table in the popularity stakes in their own right, underlining the importance of both in ADLG's UK-wide popularity. 

64 players only took part in one ADLG event in 2023, including all 8 overseas players to grace the UKL circuit last year. At 34% of the total attendance pool this is a fractionally higher "one off" figure than seen with many other sets, with a couple of events staged at extreme opposite ends of the country (Elgin and Brixham) accounting for much of this variance.

MeG  (Mortem et Gloriam)

MeG saw it's third format shift since its launch in 2016, moving from a traditional hard copy rulebook to PDF + Print on Demand formats, and this has coincided with an uptick in player numbers which has seen the UK MeG circuit hit its highest ever rolling 1-year total of unique attendees at the end of 2023. 

The number of events also surged in 2023, up to 22 from 18 in 2022. Half of the 2023 MeG calendar took place in the East Midlands, with Derby and Daventry alone playing host to 9 competitions, and both Nottingham and Burton also chipping in to help deliver more than half of MeG's aggregate attendance to venues that fall within 25 miles of Leicester Forest East Services. Knowing wargamers this may well suggest that one of the M1's better "Full English" breakfasts is on offer in the cafe at this particular motorway service station!

8 MeG players chipped in with more than 25% of the aggregate entries across the year, with 19 players making up half of the total aggregate field. Those same 8 players all managed to enter half or more of the events held in 2023, with the most dedicated MeGGer making a phenomenal 18 appearances in the calendar year, more than anyone playing in any of the other sets in this survey. 28 of the 89 players (31%) only attended one event during 2023, with 9 of these unsurprisingly being overseas players.

2023 also saw the first 28mm events using the reduced-scale MeG Magna format competitions (DBMM's and ADLG's circuits also both feature reduced-scale events) included in the stats and rankings. These two 28mm events attracted 19 different players, only one of whom (an overseas player) did not make an appearance at any of the other 15mm events across the rest of the UK circuit in 2023.

DBMM

The DBMM player universe has dipped below 80 in both of the last two years and now stands almost 25% below its 2012 peak of 97. 

In 2022 the DBMM circuit was more adversely affected by the tail end of Covid than other rulesets, with one of it's traditionally best-attended events taking place in very early in the year. Despite this Milton-Keynes based January behemoth roaring back with 38 roundabout-loving attendees in 2023, overall DBMM numbers continued to slip across the rest of the year, with total player numbers falling for the 4th (Covid excluded) year in a row.

The non-appearance of the Guilford event in 2023 undoubtably affected numbers, however attendances appear to have reduced across a range of events in the MM calendar in 2023, with only 2 events exceeding 20 entries last year. For comparison, 5 events hit this mark pre-Covid in 2019, and 4 achieved it in 2022.

7 players now make up 25% of all entries on the UK DBMM circuit, with 17 making up half of the aggregate field across the year. The maximum number of events it was possible to enter in 2023 would have been 17, and 8 players managed to attend half or more of these with the keenest two players making it to 12/17. The proportion of players who took part in just one event was 34%. 

DBA

2023 saw DBA reverse a post-Covid decline in attendee numbers, with some new events and some returning to the calendar generating the busiest year of events for DBA since 2015, helping generate a notable uptick in overall players numbers as well. 

7 players made up 25% of all entries, with 15 making up half of the aggregate field across the year. The closest anyone came to entering all 15 events was to attend 11, with only 6 players managed to turn up to over half of the full circuit this year. 

TTS! (To The Strongest!)

As has been previously noted, the TTS! community are currently making a concerted effort to promote "organised play", and this seems to have paid off in 2023 with a notable increase in overall attendee numbers - even when discounting attendees at a number of TTS! "events" in the last year held under a decidedly "non-competitive" banner, which were therefore out of scope of this analysis.

With 8 events at present spread across a map which has seen events take place as far afield as Cardiff,  Glasgow and London, the TTS! circuit still clearly has more room to grow, with just 9 people making it to more than half of the 8 competitions staged in 2023 

FOGAM  (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)

FoG adopted a totally free, PDF-only format for it's v4 edition at the end of 2022, and this helped bring in 3 new UK-based players in 2023, seemingly all drawn from the same Wessex club which (with the demise of the Reigate club which saw the remaining players absorbed by the "Surrey Spartans" club) is now the epicentre of the UK's FoGAM community. 

Aside from that Wessex-based influx, the total number of FoG competition players in the UK remains stable at just over 30, with the 12 events drawing an impressive average of 17 players. That equates to over half the total UK community taking part in each event, with an astonishing 31/38 taking part in the biggest competition of the year (held in... you guessed it, Wessex!).    

Just 5 players chipped in with over 25% of the aggregate entries in 2023, with 10 making up just over half of all entrants. 16 players attended more than half of the events on the circuit, with three committed FoGGers managing to take advantage of every opportunity to play offered throughout the year. 

DBM

As is now almost traditional, numbers for DBM wobbled slightly but stayed very much in line with those seen in previous years in a roster of events which continues to be concentrated in two hubs, one in Essex/Norffolk and one in the West Country. 

The 10-event UK DBM circuit had 2 ever-present players last year, with just 5 players making up over 25% of the total field across the year, and 11 making up half of the aggregate field. The calendar features a mix of singles and doubles, with some 25mm events as well. 

All bar one of the events on the circuit are stand-alone DBM-only affairs, with the competition taking place at Attack! in Devizes the only time in the calendar year that DBM players get to rub shoulders with gamers using other Ancients systems. 

The Conclusion (FWIW!)

In 2023 the 7 most popular Ancients rulesets saw 498 UK-based players and a further 34 international visitors taking part in a UK Ancients competition in 2023.

The balance in numbers between all of these rulesets continues to be broadly stable, with very little migration of players between sets happening to upend the existing picture. 

In 2023 68% of all UK competition players were also still getting their Ancients "fix" using one variant or another of Phil Barker's "DBx" paradigm, with DBA, DBM, DBMM and ADLG all very much direct descendents or successors of the original DBA which first hit the shelves some 34 years ago. Who said historical wargamers are creatures of habit eh?!  

Encouragingly however, headline numbers are still creeping ever closer back towards the pre-Covid 2019 full year count of 549 UK-based players, and are already well ahead of the equivalent 2018 year end numbers - all suggesting that ancients competition gaming remains stable, but also very much in rude health across the UK right now, no matter what form or flavour of rules you personally prefer! 

Previous Years

I've been repeating this analysis every year since 2016. 

Previous years are available here:

• 2022 Year End
• 2019 Year End
• 2018 Year End
• 2017 Year End
• 2017 Mid Year (April) 
• 2016 Mid Year (May)

Check it for Yourself!

With almost all of the information used to generate these stats being drawn from a handful of "rankings" websites it's relatively easy to eyeball the original data sources for yourself and sanity-check these stats (should you so wish). 

The main sources I have used are as follows: 

• ADLG - The BHGS Rankings Page (PDF's of year-end rankings can be found by scrolling down the page)
• DBMM - The DBMM Rankings database (select "GB" and "2023")
• MeG - The MeG Rankings at Draco Standard (this is a global ranking system including overseas events, and sometimes seems to run for more than 12 months as well, so you may need to manually exclude attendees at non-UK and non-2023 events to get to the 2023 UK-only numbers) 
• DBM - John Graham Leigh's DBM page (The DBM rankings year runs July-July, so for 2023 numbers you'll need to look at the results from individual events too)
• DBA - The Fanaticus Forum (The DBA rankings year runs November-November, so as with DBM you'll need to do a bit of a manual adjustment using individual event results to get a 2023 full-year set of stats )
• TTS! - The TTS! Forum "Events" section (No "rankings" as such, so  you'll need to comb through the results from individual events)
• FoGAM - The BHGS Rankings Page 

  

Plymouth 2024 : The Battle Reports

 In these four all-new YouTube battle reports a brand spanking new Alexandrian Macedonian army in glorious 28mm takes to the field for the very first time, following possibly the most extensive period of pre-game trailing of their assembly and paint schemes ever seen on this relentlessly self-promoting website. 

Alexander and his band of merry Victrix men take on an array of opponents from across the world, with the Warring States Chinese, Syracusans, Lysimachids and finally Ptolemy all squaring off against the tarmac-laying Irish navvy and his crew in these 4 widescreen battle-reporting videos. 

All of the videos can be viewed on a single page on this website, or can be watched in fullscreen glory in HD on YouTube, allowing you to admire the front of figures that other people have painted far better than I have painted the backs of mine ! 

And, lets face it, where else will you get to see Archimedes Death Lazers in action, interspersed with animated Cornish pasties all arrayed on a 28mm wargames table this week?

Alicante 2024: The Battle Reports

 With far too many competitions in quick succession this January/February I'm going to be dropping a number of YouTube video battle reports over the next few weeks - with 6 reports from Alicante hitting the airwaves first!

These 10-15 minute videos see a Mithraditic army taking on the Warring States Chinese, Hittites, Hebrews, Alans, Kushans and Epirote Pyrrhics in the narrated reports which you can either watch on this website or on YouTube.

Pull up a chair, cast your YouTube to the Big Screen and enjoy my flailing attempts to steer this legendarily "lesser than the sum of its parts" army into battle in sunny sunny Espana !

28mm Imitation Legionaries (aka Aventine Thorakitai)

 A key part of many of the Later Successor armies are the "imitation" Legionaries, where Alexander's marshalls decided to copy Rome's successful pilum+sword+shield formula, and have a tentative go at moving beyond the Greek-originated spear+shield approach. This is pretty neat, and adds variety to a wall of pikes or spears, so adding a couple of units of Imitation Legionaries to my Successor collection has always been a bit of a must. 

Other than knowing that these guys were copying Roman tactics however, there's not a massive amount of evidence for where they sit on the "Look like Romans <-> Look like Greeks" spectrum, giving a reasonable amount of leeway for choosing figures for them. 

And, in the end, I actually didn't even "choose" which figures, instead finding a couple of packs of Aventine guys in the collection of a late clubmate which seemed to fit the bill. 

It turns out on closer examination of the Aventine website that they are techically Thorakitai, but I felt that the spears that they come with were short enough (and chunky enough) to pass for pilum-style heavy throwing spears.

The other consideration (apart from "I had these already") was that having a "Greek" flavour to the figures might actually be better than having "Roman" style armour and helmets - after all, it would surely have been the style of fighting that the Successor generals would have wanted these guys to emulate, not their fashions and haberdashery?   

Adding in some head swaps from the same pack of Aventine heads that I'd used earlier on some of the Phalanx greatly increased their variety.

When combined with gluing the shields on at a variety of heights, and posing them at different angles I ended up creating a couple of units where you really have to look twice to notice that there is only one figure pose for the non-officer infantry.

The shield patterns are simple Roman-style black transfers from Veni Vidi Vici - both sets of shields are done with Contrast paints over a white base, which I have found gives a great gradient of texture on a flat surface like a shield, as the paint pools at one side of the flat surface as it dries. 

For the "Blue" unit I also did a pale blue (normal paint) background patch where the transfer would go before applying the transfer. This was because the Contrast paint was too dark to really work well with a black transfer. I had considered white transfers, but thought they might look a bit bland compared to black.

I also added in a plastic flag - I'm not entirely sure which set it was from, but it's big, and it has an LBMS transfer in the middle of it that I had to blend in by mixing paint to match the small postage-stamp bit of the transfer. 

So, that's pretty much all of the Heavy Infantry for my Successors completed - other than another couple of Phalanxes, which I'm putting off for the time being, as the thought of all that hand-drilling is rather intimidating. 

And, of course, being rather lovely Aventine metal figures, these are the "heaviest" of the Heavy Infantry in the army by quite some margin!

Hopefully these guys will make their debut at Beachhead in the ADLG competition this coming weekend (unless I end up playing in the 15mm pool to help even up numbers!)   

  

Alicante 2024 : The Army Lists Video Podcast Thing

 Disproving the old adage that the best things in life are worth waiting for, the 100th episode of the Madaxeman Podcast thunders onto the airwaves with an epic, 6-handed special all the way from Spain, as myself, Dave From The Podcast & Aussie Simon are joined by Gordon, Revolutionary Dave and Mark to discuss and digest the lists we all used at the recent Alicante competition. 

This whole podcast is also available on the Madaxman YouTube channel where you can see pictures of the lists, some of the games and troops, as well as our tourism and eating exploits too.

The list covered are : Ancient Britons, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Mithradatics, Warring States Chinese and the countless  hordes of Aztecs, and all of this vague insight is shoehorned in among some tourism discussions, culinary observations, and frightning expose's of the contents of Spanish motorway service station vending machines - plus the first ever advert break to ever feature on a Madaxeman Podcast!

The video version allows you to see not only the lists as we discuss them, some of our holiday snaps, and in a Madaxeman first, little video windows of the people on the podcast actually talking (so you may prefer the audio only version...)

The army lists can all be found in the ADLG Wiki on the Madaxeman Website 

28mm Cataphracts for the Successor project

 The Successor army moves on apace, with the latest addition being 3 units of Cataphracts, making the later version of the Seleucids an option to use at a future event. 

I already have some Gripping Beast fully armoured horse troops, which I painted up as Arab Ghilmen cavalry quite some time ago - however those figures were very wide, with the horse armour making it impossible to do the "wargames-standard" 4 figures to a base.  

It was therefore with some trepidation that I picked up a box of GB's new Roman Cataphracts, only to be pleasantly surprised to find that they appear to have thinned-down the horses so it is almost - with caveats - possible to squeeze 4 of them together on a standard DBx-style 60mm wide base. 

This feat of engineering was achieved with a bit of careful arrangement, slightly deeper than usual (50mm) bases, and some judicious use of the sprue clipper to remove any lower legs that were keeping the horses in the middle of each block too far apart.

It's surprisingly hard to notice the missing legs in this solid mass of metal.

Where I had cut the legs too high up the thigh, I also filled in some of the gaps with wood filler, painted it black and then drybrushed it to match the rest of the guys - which made an already hard to spot thing even harder. 

This happy chap is yet to find a suitable shield transfer to go onto his standard. I have a feeling I may end up buying a sheet of white 25mm Successor shield "stars" from Veni Vidi Vici just to drop one on this standard (so if anyone has a spare please let me know!). 

If you look really closely you can see that the standard bearer's demeanour appears not to be adversely impacted by the loss of one of his legs just above the knee, which is rather reminiscent of the legendary Peter Cook & Dudley Moore "Tarzan Audition" sketch!

I also used a lot of head swaps from the bits box for these - leaving the "Roman" heads out and adding in very "Greek" ones from Phalangites, Hoplites and Companion cavalry to emphasise their Greekness. 

The second rate unit will be this one in bronze - the painting is a simple black spray base coat and drybrish with Vallejo Weapon Bronze, with the spears and faces undercoated in white before painting the colurs onto them. 

The spears have a barbership sort of effect which is enhanced considerably IMO by the fairly simple addition of extra "rings" that break up the blocks of colour. 

These are a dark brown initial ring around the lance, with a ring of ochre brown then painted inside it. 

This breaks up the bit between the blocks of colour nicely, and also gives you a bit of leeway to even up the lengths of the blocks of colour when you've painted them by painting the dark brown ring over a bit more of one colour or the other in each case ! 

There is also a barely-visible coloured bit of cloth at the bottom of the horse armour - this too adds some subtle hinits of colour to the units

The final bit was to do some colour on the joiny-bit at the back of the horse armour (which may just be there ot hide the join line in the two halves of the horse !).  

This also adds more subtle colour on what is an otherwise potentially rather one-tone figure.

So, 1 dozen cataphracts, all of which actually fit together in a solid block on 60mm frontages, and all for a very decent price too!

 

Iberian Airport Lounge List Dump

 As I'm currently sat at Valencia Airport waiting for a flight home, the joys of airport free WiFi have allowed me to bring you 7 all-new ADLG army lists from this weekend, with both my army and those of my 6 opponents already in the Wiki on this site.

Those lists are:

• Mithraditic (mine)
• 3 Kingdoms Chinese 
• Hittite
• Hebrew
• Kushan
• Alan
• Pergamene

FWIW, the Mithraditic army lost to the Hittites and Chinese, and then defeated the remaining four armies in this list. 

Before the competition Team CLWC undertook an epic road trip, taking in Cordoba and Granada before arriving in Alicante on Friday evening. 

With a following wind there will be a podcast with everyone in the car chatting about it, but here's some highlights:

Victrix Successor Pikemen in 28mm

 I've already posted a few articles about my (of course over ambitious) project to create a generic Hellenistic/Successor army in 28mm, which started with the lighter troops and peltasts, and then added some Galatians and some cavalry... all of which was really a rather folorn effort to put off tacking the Phalanx for as long as possible!

The dread of the Phalanx is twofold. 

First up, it's a lot of near-identical, uniform figures, which always makes painting a bit of a chore. But more importantly I had decided that the Victrix spears were simply too flimsy to use as-is, and instead that I would drill out the pikemen's hands and add in metal pikes instead.

If this wasn't too easy, I also decided to go a little off-piste on the headswap front, throwing in all sorts of plastic heads from the spares box (which has all sorts in it!) as well as mixing it up with the rather good range of heads that come on the Victrix sprues. 

Oh, and as if that's not enough, I also got a pack of Successor metal heads from Aventine to shake things up even more, as I do really like my troops to look like battle-worn veterans and the whole "I'm not using standad kit!" thing is a big part of that.   

And, to make things even harder I tried to create that "might not be a real thing" joining-type-bit that wraps around the middle of each pike by using tiny strips of normal paper soaked in quite a lot of PVA glue. 

Oh, and did I mention that I then bought two sets of Victrix Argyaspids on the mistaken assumption that they would be pikemen? They are in fact armed with spears, so the decision to drill out their hands and add metal pikes wasn't even one I had anychoice over in the end - I simply had to do it once I started. 

Dodging some rather chilly and wet spells of weather along the way, I eventually ended up with 2/3 of the total number of guys all primed and ready to start painting.  

And here's an intermediate step, with the LBMS shield transfer rushed into place a little earlier than maybe is sensible simply to give me some encouragement that they would actually be worth the effort in the end. 

What you can see here quite clearly is that there are two sizes of shield - something I only spotted in the nick of time - with the Argyaspid shields being slightly bigger. The bodies of the Argyaspids and Macedonian Phalanx sets are pretty similar, only slight cosmetic differences in the straps that I guess support the shield, but near enough identical so I could use them interchangeably on all of my pikemen.

I also - which you can also see here - used some different arms from the bits box to hold the pikes.  This was in part to create even more variety in posees, but was mostly because it's impossible to drill out 48 plastic arms and hands without messing a few of them up, so you need some replacements. 

Some look a bit clunky but will get lost in the Phalanx I'm sure..?

And, eventually here we are, getting somewhere at last with the Veteran Mercenary phalanx set of LBMS transfers in place and the men mostly finished. 

At this stage I have painted the pikes in my standard Ochre Brown, and used a dark brown to paint the joining-bit bits, so I can use a lighter colour to do a bit of a very basic twisted rope effect later. 

And here's a close up so you can see exatly how basic it actually is.  The guy on the right has been a receipient of a donated arm, which does look a bit odd from this angle. Perhaps he needs to be in the  middle of the block of 12 men? 

This is three ADLG units of 12 pikemen all based up and ready to be finished off with some sand and woodstain.  

If you count you'll see that they are based in 4 ranks of 3 files per base, with each base being a standard 60x60mm. I had originally assumed that they would end up as 4 files and 3 ranks but the shields are just a bit too big, and the pikemen's stance is too wide to make that work without staggering the figures in each rank (which would look wierd for a Greek-style well drilled Phalanx), so 3x4 it has to be. 

At least it gives the shields more room to shine. 

This is the finished  article, a Veteran/Mercenary unit with a right rogues gallery of characters and headgear on display. 

The chap front left is a Gallic cavalry head I think, and the chap in the middle is probably a Turk or Mongol cavalryman who looks ready to fight pretty much anyone!

There is even a Persian in the middle with a fetching blue bubble hat!  

I blended the red shield transfer at the back into the full shield with some paint mixing, but for most of the rest I left a black circle around the shield and then did a rim of bronze, which I touched up again after the matt varnishing stage to give them some extra shine and 'ping'. 

Plenty more random heads on display here. 

I did the linen armour by starting with a base coat of Holy White from Warlord Games Speedpaint range, and then blocked in the big flat areas in simple white, as well as picking out the petruges (?) on their armoured skirts in white too. 

I did try a black undercoat initially but found it too harsh, so the grey of Holy White, and the way it pools and darkens around the edges is a good alternative. 

These chaps have ended up as the Argyaspids - that whole "My Boss's face on my shield" thing must indicate some exceptional level of loyalty to the cause! 

 

As they will most likely be the Elite chaps I added in the officer, standard bearer and trumpeter to the base - putting the trumpeter at the back and the standard bearer in the middle so their rather flimsy trumpet and flag would be a lot harder to break in normal handling. 

I think there is also a logic to the trmpteter at least being at the back to sound the commands for the Phalanx to follow?

These are the standard Phalangites - slightly smaller shields than the Argyaspids. It's a little frustrating that the info on the Victrix site doesn't make it explicit which sets of shield transfers fit which set of pikemen, but with a mix of types to choose from I managed to muddle through OK.

You can see a lot of the headswaps here - even a chilled out dude in a Cretan floppy hat, who is of course towards the back of the unit.  

Although there seems to be another more foolhardy Cretan in the front rank too..

This was the officer - some of the packs come with 3 extra figures, and rather strangely the command sprue has two sets of legs wearing trounsers as well. 

This isn't really enough to change a full 24-man Phalanx to "Asiatic Successors" (!!) but I did manage to use them and put them in the front rank so visually it does have a material effect on how they look.

The officers in this army are clearly better fed than the rank and file phalangites! 

All in all, I'm really chuffed wth how they have turned out. Drilling out the hands is a real PITA, and nothing can hide thatfact, but I think it's been worth it in the end. 

Now I only need to steel myself to finish off the final 24 to add to the 48 I've already done!