Improving Some (rather) Old Pikemen

My Classical pikemen date back many years, and are some speed-painted Minifigs figures designed to be shoved together in multiple ranks and viewed from a distance..

Rebasing them from DBx to 40x40mm ADLG bases has given me a chance to tart some of them up a little however.

This has seen some given more colourful uniforms and boldly-painted shields - and others given Veni Vidi Vici shield transfers.

They can all be seen in more detail here

War & Empire Numidians (15mm)

I recently bought some Numidians from War & Empire (Forged in Battle) , which have managed to get painted extremely quickly - probably due to their simplicity!

They are led by some Baueda Generals working in tandem with W&E infantry officers on 40mm round bases for ADLG.

I've also posted some comparison shots to show how they scale with other ranges of Romans and Carthaginians (who they will be fighting with or against I suspect).

All these photos and many more are online now on my site, where I also explain the painting techniques as well (for what they are worth). The figures can also be seen in the 15mm directory

International Vandalism - 28mm ADLG from Devizes 2018

The pleasant west country town of Devizes is home to the Wadworth 6X brewery, a collection of over-filled bed & breakfast pub type establishments and the DDWG annual "Attack!" competition and show - and with a set of propositions as enticing as that, how can anyone resist?

The army of choice this time are the African Vandals, as a combination of a simple list with impetuous charging cavalry and my ownership of some brand new Gripping Beast plastic lancers working in tandem with some slightly older Footsore cavalry made the grade.

The Vandals take on Arabs and Byzantines in 4 spectacularly large-scale reports featuring 12th century religious iconography, big-hair-metal music videos and an opportunistic homage to Jeremy Corbyn.

There are also some fantastically painted troops on display as well - plus a video/audio commentary on the first game too.

Don't waste time - dive into some serious Vandalism with these 4 reports!

Flagging in Georgia ...?

After the success of adding Religious Icon banners and standards to my refurbished Nikephorian Byzantines, I've been casting around for similar ways of tarting up a few more of my lesser-used figures - a process which has recently seen the Georgians make a rare outing under ADLG.

The foundation of the army are some Legio Heroica figures I got ages ago, and which I think are listed here on their website as Armenian Cavalry. Basically they are a nice range of ever so slightly arab-ized C12 Knights and changing cavalry. 

The Georgians were a pretty chunky empire that sat (and fought) between the Turks and the Byzantines for a good few hundred years, including the Byzantine-Georgian Wars. The county adopted Christianity in 327AD, so by the early middle ages would have been well ensconced in the icon-waving era I reckon.

The ADLG list has 2 incarnations, one with bow-armed Heavy Cavalry and an earlier and more exuberant charging lancer type army - which is the one I'm most tempted towards of course.

This is the list I've used:

Competent CinC
3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous Elite
3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous ----------
3 Horse Archers Light cavalry bow ----------

Brilliant Sub

3 Nobles Heavy cavalry impetuous Elite

2 Russians Heavy spearmen missile support ----------

3 Horse Archers Light cavalry bow ----------

Ordinary Sub

3 Heavy Spearmen Heavy spearmen Mediocre

2 Bowmen Bowmen

2 Light infantry javelin Light infantry javelin ----------

1 Light infantry bow Light infantry bow --------

If you want to try tweaking it, it's also on Little Army Builder - 205.1 Georgian

Getting to 25 units with an army in this era is quite impressive, and the tactics are fairly self-evident in trying to rush and overwhelm one flank whilst hoping that the rather pedestrian and poor quality 3rd infantry-rich command doesn't get into combat too early, and also doesn't get totally run over by the time your other 2 commands have hopefully won the game.  

Anyways, I had the figures already, and I had the idea for the flags - so here is the combination of the two:

The Georgian flag I found available for download on this site. I'm sure being shrunk down to 15mm size isn't  quite what the author expected, but hey, I think it works really well for having the texture already added in a wargaming style.

The other Icon flags are downloads from a Google Search for "Georgian Icon"- if you want to see how that works, here's a link

Most of the images are shrunk down to around 1cm high, and doubled up to make one flag.

Painting round the edges is really important - especially running paint along the edge of the flag.

They did achieve success in their first game on table, but they probably need a non-knight, or certainly a Medium Knight Only theme to do well.

ADLG-ready Patrician Romans on eBay

Now is your chance to own some "as seen on madaxeman.ccom" Late Roman /  Dominate / Patrician Romans, as I'm selling on eBay this 250-odd point 15mm army which includes a full range of options to form several different variations of this popular and flexible force.

The eBay link is here

 

All the figures have been based and magnabased for storage and transit, and have been double-varnished (Army Painter + Testors Dullcote) for tabletop handling.

These guys were originally part of a much bigger DBM/FoG army now being downsized to split into 2-3 ADLG armies, as I've finally decided to bite the bullet and admit to myself that the trend towards smaller army size games is irreversible, and that I can't see how I'll be using this many figures again in the future.

So, the eBay route it is

There's a total of 141 foot + 48 mounted (so almost 250 "things" in total) - which means anything less that £250 is a bargain in my book.

The army comprises:

• 2 Impact Cv  (Essex)
• 2 Cataphracts  (Essex)
• 2 LH Bow (Essex)
• 2 Huns LH (Minifigs?)
• 6 Mounted Foederate Cavalry  (Khurasan's Gothic & Sarmatian ranges)
• 4 Foederate foot (Peter Pig)
• 4 Legionaries (Donnington)
• 4 Auxilia (Donnington)
• 1 Auxilia Bowman (Donnington)
• 8 LI bow (can be used as support for the Legions/Auxilia) (Donnington)
• 1 Artillery (Essex)
• 3 Commanders (Mixed manufacturers)
• 1 Camp base

If you want to expand the army I am happy to either help point you at the exact figure codes or have a dig around in the rest of my collection as well to see if I can spare a few more bases to help you.

I can also arrange for collection at the BHGS Doubles or Warfare, or on a clubnight at CLWC in London so if you are a UK-based player those may be options to save on postage. If you're in Spain or Southern France, I'll also be at the Estella event in October. 

Part of all bids will go to support SSAFA, the UK armed forces charity (Help for Heroes passes a chunk of the cash they raise onto SSAFA).

Britcon 2018 ADLG - the winning lists

The ADLG Wiki now contains both lists from the top 4 placed players at the recent Britcon event, including:

1st : Julian Lopez

• Blemmye  (Won 2 Lost 1 Drawn 1)
• Medieval Spanish  (Won 4 Lost 0 Drawn 0)

2nd Mike Bennett

• Han Chinese  (Won 3 Lost 0 Drawn 1)
• Anglo-Irish  (Won 2 Lost 0 Drawn 2)

3rd Paul Dawson

• Nikephorian Byzantine  (Won 3 Lost 1 Drawn 0)
• Medieval Hungarian  (Won 2 Lost 1 Drawn 1)

4th Mick Hood

• Later Aechemenid  (Won 3 Lost 1 Drawn 0)
• Feudal Russian  (Won 2 Lost 0 Drawn 2)

There's also a host of other lists from other players at Britcon as well. 

Rounding out (literally) the Myceneans

After a quiet few weeks on the website here's a couple of bits and pieces to round out the Mycenean army that appeared a few months ago

First up is the near-obligatory 25/8mm Genius Commander on a 40mm round ADLG commander base.

He is from Redoubt Enterprises Trojan Wars range, selected as much for his big cowhide double-bass shield as any other reason.

The figure is code TX4, representing Achilles, hero and leader of the Myrmidons on foot in bronze armour with bronze helmet, figure of eight shield

He comes accompanied by shield bearer (who didn't make it onto the base).

Next up are some "Barker Marker" 40x40 bases, featuring 'shrunken' photos of my own chariots taken from directly overhead together with a push-pin handle.  Very simple do to - an overhead photo of a chariot, cropped and resized to fit on a 40x40 MDF base.
 

They function primarily as a ZOC marker, but also as you can see here my Chariots are deeper than the regulation 40x40 and so there may be times when it could be useful to have a 40x40 substitute base to drop in, perhaps when they are turning or in a congested part of the table where the extra 10mm on their bases would get in the way. These markers fulfil that role - and also act as Ambush Markers too for 3 uses from one base.

Finally, some Mycenean-specific hit markers using - again - the textbook cowhide shields.

There are from Magister Militum - £2 for 8.  They also have other shields, and my upcoming Assyrian army will probably feature a similar idea. 

Mounted on 18mm round bases, with the edges colour-coded for the number of hits they are small enough to fit in behind each unit without being too distracting.   Since doing these it's been suggested to me that possibly doing a similar thing with single archer figures could be a neat way of identifying the units with integral archer support.

Limerick 2018 - The Emerald Isle's first ever ADLG competition!

There once was a man with an axe,
Who played ADLG to relax.
A comp in Limerick Town,
Would see much Guinness go down,
On the plane was a Chinese army he'd packed.

That Keith Duffy bloke was nowhere to be seen,
But the chap from the Hobbit - yes, he'd been!
The Emerald Isle suits this game,
You can drink as yer' playin',
Which in Limerick makes everyone keen!

There were five games that went down in two days,
Although hangovers made most just a haze,
Many dice they were rolled,
And when the final bell tolled,
Well.. you must read on to see what Hannibal says!

(if that all makes no sense, there are 5 new ADLG battle reports now on Madaxeman.com featuring Han Chinese in action in Ireland!)

Dogs of War 2018 - Game 5

It's now the end of the epic movie series, with Game 5 from Dogs of War 2018. 

In this episode the Nikephorians take on a massive Arab Conquest army.

Will this be a great sequel, or is there a Jar-Jar Binks lurking in the background? 

Watch the video to see how there two armies get on!

Dogs of War 2018 Game 4

The 4th Dogs of War video walkthrough has now been posted, in which the Nikephorians attempt to take on the Ghaznavid Empire in its most elephant-packed incarnation.

Rather than watch a tiny embedded version here, you are much better flipping over to fullscreen or viewing it in YouTube directly 

Dogs of War 2018 Game 3 Video Podcast

It's Game 3 of this 5-part video podcast series from the recent Dogs of War event in Bristol.

This time the Nikephorian Byzantines take on a Hindu Indian army in full cinematic action



Lists for the Indians also included.

Dogs of War 2018 Game 2

And, in quick succession, here's the video of the second game in which the small but imperfectly formed Byzantines attempt a double envelopment against the Southern Dynasties Chinese

Dogs of War 2018 - Video walk-through of round 1

Here's an experimental "new format" battle report from the recent Dogs of War ADLG event held in Bristol, with a video walk-through of top-down photos of the game.

It's not going to replace the usual pile of old guff and poor quality puns by any means, but always good to have a bit of variety every now and then!

The next 4 reports will follow ...

Gripping Beast (& others) Dark Age Horse

To round out two armies (don't ask...) for the upcoming event in Devizes I picked up a box of Gripping Beast plastic Dark Age cavalry recently, and added a few more figures to them as well. Here are the results:

Three Gripping Beast cavalry. They go together well, but you can't help feeling they have missed an opportunity to really load up the sprue with different weapons and arm poses - a bit like the Roman Infantry set I did a couple of years ago.

A mix of round and oval shields. Some of the arm poses are a bit ungainly, and I had t cut the base of one arm to get it to work at a reasonable angle. 

This base has a Warlord Games Romano-British cavalryman added in the middle. Its not a great figure to be honest, but gives another guy with armour on the base to make them more obviously Heavy Cavalry, as all of the GB ones are in tunics. 

The horses have that slightly weird "seahorse" neck of the GB horses in this set, but once they are charging straight at you it's not so obvious.

 Another Warlord figure. They are all mounted on metal horses, as they didn't mix and match at all with the saddle shapes on the GB figures.

They do take an ink wash extremely well.

I also picked up these Alans/Huns unpainted in a bring and buy.

I think they may be Foundry, but could also be Old glory due to the variety. They are split at the waist. 

If you look carefully you can see some heads attached to the bridles...

And finally a fortified camp made with kebab skewers

A bit of baggage from Ainsty Castings 

And a General - I think this one may have been from Warlord.