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!