Legio Heroica Javelinmen

Lockdown painting has been a bit all over the shop recently, with complete armies getting finished in all sorts of scales as well as some odds and sods being tidied up.

The focus has been 25mm and 10mm, with a bit of 6mm as well however I have still been sneaking in the odd pack of 15mm Ancients into the queue - including these Legio Heroica Arab Javelinmen (packs MUS19 and MUS37) that I picked up at the mini bring and buy at the Avignon ADLG event before Christmas.

They are lovely little figures, true 15mm like all of the Legio Heroica stuff and nicely animated as well.

I painted this lot with mostly Contrast paints and inks, to try and give them a slightly washed out look whilst keeping them colourful, as some of my Arabs are a bit, well, desert-ey in their colour schemes

They also came with separate shields and metal, pointed mini spears - unusual these days for 15mm. The shields are mostly flat-backed so I used a 2-part epoxy glue to stick them firmly on.

For the javelins I had a bit of a go at something I've seen online, giving them some texture by adding bands of brown, with a wider band of dark brown with a narrower band of lighter brown inside them - a bit "bamboo-ey" and slightly more interesting than just a plain brown spear. 

If you look closely you'll see some bubbling of the matt varnish that I brushed on - I was in too much of a hurry to get these finished to wait and spray them with the next large batch of figures and dissapointingly the varnish hasn't calmed down after I applied it.

At tabletop distances this is pretty much impossible to see, but I guess that's the beauty - and downside - of these sorts of extreme close-up macro photos!

The banded spears are more visible in this shot.

They'll be playing as Javelinmen (hence 5 to a base, which I use to differentiate them from Swordsmen and Spearmen) in ADLG once we are all allowed out to play again!

(As of the 22nd April it sounds like Legio Heroica will be on a bit of a hiatus, partly due to lockdown and partly due to a pre-scheduled medical procedure - he'll be back once lockdown ends.)

Lockdown Podcast IV

The Lockdown Specials - Part 4

Another week, another load of old rubbish as the regulars chat on about their glacial rate of painting, wheel out another obscure quiz and this time attempt also to demostrate just how hard unscripted radio comedy can be in a tribute to non-wargaming legend and all round Goodie Tim Brooke-Taylor.

If you want to listen it's on Podbean and will soon appear on iTunes as well - just search for "madaxeman.com" from within iTunes to find it. 

And, finally, here's the gratuitous and disconcerting photo referred to in the 'pod: 

10mm WW2 on eBay

I've been using the lockdown to do a bit of clearing out of the gaming room cupboards, so if anyone is sat there thinking that their 10mm WW2 solo-gaming collection needs some reinforcements I've just lobbed some Eearly War French, Germans and British, some Mid/Late War Brits and a set of US Paras onto eBay as part of my own domestic rationalization process : 

 https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/the_lithuanian for all my current listings. The 10mm stuff is:

• A huge Early War French army
• An equally huge Early War German army
• Some early War British armour
• A decent sized mid/late War British force
• A unit of US paratroopers

It's a space-making sale, so everything starts at a quid, and a share of the proceeds will go to SSAFA (the UK armed forces charity) as well.

I've only put UK postage as I'm not fully confident about international mail right now, however I do have a post box that can take parcels on the route of my daily legally-permitted walk as well, so no worries there either.. 

Here's a load of pictures as well:

 https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/the_lithuanian for all my current listings.

Teeny-tiny lazy soldiers... 6mm ultra-moderns

Before the Lockdown there were these things called "Wargaming trade shows", where you could see stuff, talk to the people selling it and then give them actual cash to buy it - imagine that? And all of it was much more friendly that this internet + delivery malarkey we're all playing at now. 

At the penultimate show I went to, PAW back in January, I picked up some modern British Mainforce infantry from Colonel Bills second hand figures display, which I've been meaning to paint up to go with the refurbished middle eastern ultra-moderns that I've been gradually working through over the past few months - and as they are dead easy to do, here they are:

The paler-cammo-painted troops here are half of a British Modern Mechanised Infantry set. If you don't know Mainforce's range, each individual base is a single piece of metal with the men moulded onto it in a prone position.

This concept is one I find is really great, as they don't break or bend like standing soldiers, they are easier to store, and anyway most modern infantry probably spend a lot of time lying down already!

The painting is as easy as you can imagine - spray the whole lot with Bleached Bone first, then ink the lot with a dark wash, let it dry and then 'damp-brush' the infantrymen's bodies.

To finish them off from there I do flesh coloured blobs for hands and faces, and pick out the weapons and boots in fairly bold colours (this time I used dark brown for boots, black guns, and green for the support weapons) and away you go

I painted up the other half of the pack as "enemy", with a darker brown for uniforms and black boots as well - giving them all green helmets too for that ex-soviet militia army look.

A spot of static grass completes the lot.

I glued all of the metal pieces onto magnabase before spraying them - this means they can be magnetized onto a ferrous sheet for safer storage, and adds more depth to each base making them a bit easier to pick up off the table as well

The pack I bought has eighteen infantry bases, five Command, eight Milan anti-tank missiles, seven light mortars, nine GPMGs and two Javelins.

But at this scale they do all kinda just look like blokes lying down with guns and stuff to be honest, so for my purposes splitting the pack in half and creating two sets of troops for opposing sides is absoluely fine.

Splitting the pack gives each side 10+ infantry bases and a load of support weapons

My previous experienmce with these was a few years ago when I probably used the same set to create Brits in DPM cammo for the European theatre. They are also still all online here

Lockdown Special Podcast #3

Lockdown Podcast #3 

In that "3rd difficult week"  for many podcasts, when good intentions come smashing up against the hard reality of running out of things to actually say, the Madaxeman.com Lockdown Special crew amazingly dodge that particular subject-matter bullet by yet again chuntering on about literally nothing in particular, and also by throwing in a new guest paticipant in the shape of fellow CLWC club-member Tamsin from the Wargaming Girl blog.

As well as the usual chunter, dross and fluff this week there is even more coverage of buying and painting Vikings, whether it's acceptable to cheat with WW2 German cammo patterns, just how much effort is too much when it comes to 15mm Samurai, rescue techniques for those all-too-common gold spray paint accidents, the challenges of insuring wargaming figures, whether the film Highlander would work if it was remade to cover the life of an immortal ACW General living in modern day Hoxton, Venexia's rebirth in North West England, if buying a whole 28mm army is justified if in the process you can then avoid wasting a £3 sheet of waterslide decals, and - of course - Andy Finkelkelkelkel's Quiz of the Week, which this time around dares to venture into thematic territory so obscure it would surely frighten even the most battle-hardened Osprey Publishing commissioning editor.

And we drink some beer. Which is nice.

 The podcast is online here