Museum Hoplites Part II

The hoplites are now ready for battle! 

Yes, with a smidge more painting and a decision on basing driven largely by the UK government's decision to close all DIY shops and impose a total lockdown on all non-essential travel (thus denying me the opportunity to buy some wood filler) the Museum Z-crew are now ready to take the table. 

Or, more likely, they are now ready to stay in a drawer until playing soldiers again is no longer something that would contribute in any way to the potential collapse of the NHS. 

The figures - and especially their shields - as pretty big, probably at the 16-17mm end of the scale without quite reaching "giant Xyston ranges" levels. That allows a 40x30 base to be pretty well filled with 7 figures (4+3), so I eked out 5 bases-worth from 4 packs, adding in this ex-Warmodelling brand mounted officer picked up at the PAW show in January to one of the bases to represent a unit with an embedded general.

With sand and woodstain basing and a bit of static grass they are now basing-compatible with my Biblical armies, which gives them a handful of opportunities in some of the more obscure later ADLG lists to appear alongside Egyptians and (occasionally) Asssyrian-style chariots.

There is a mix of armoured, linen cuirass, skirt and nude figures, but I just mixed them all up together for variety.

This view more clearly shows the different armour (or not!) styles

The transfers are great, but still do leave a big lip around the edge of the shield which for some of the designs (with detail right up to the edge of the transfer) is rather tricky to blend in with matching paint out to the shield rim. 

The base on the right shows this - the guy at the front ended up with a contrasting shield rim, whereas the guy behind I just about managed to blend in the rim with a similar red to the transfer itself.

The "white" shields are a bit easier, and I went with a simple bronze rim for most of them anyway

As well as packs of mixed poses, there are separate packs of just the standing guys - my view is that you probably need a number of these standing pose packs to make up the bulk of the rear ranks in your army or units, otherwise if you just go fo rmixed packs you could end up with a few too many kneeling and, erm, lurching men in the front rank

I kept the crests all black - there's probably more than enough colour in the shields and their rims already and I didn't fancy drifting itno rainbow territory onn the crests too

Ta-dah! 

New Museum Miniatures Hoplites

With most of the world in lockdown, everyone's minds turn away from gaming and towards... painting and mail order!

For these chaps the mail order bit had been done during January in the Museum sale, making these figures pretty much the cheapest metal (or plastic - yes, I did the maths!) on the market right now, which is remarkable given they are the new digitally sculpted Museum Hoplites from their new "Z" range. 

The paint job is definitively incomplete, but rather than wait until they are finished I thought some WiP shots might be good to get out into the internet-verse right now, partly as everyone is sat staring at a computer trying not to OD on (usually depressing) news, and partly to try and inspire you to support some of the gaming hobby retailers who will be missing out on trade show impules purchases for the next few months or so.

The Museum figures can be bought with LBMS shield transfers - which you can only buy from Museum themselves.

There are only 3 basic poses, but you can get (I think) 4 different states of undress for the men as well, which means there is more variety apparent from the back than the front.

Museum also do a range of helmet crests - all of the helmets are the same across the figures (at the moment..) but you do hardly notice that - at least with my painting !

I have given some of the shields a coloured edge to add a little bit more variety to the figures - once they are finished I might do a few more with bands of alternating light and dark for more interest too.

LBMS do a special range of 11mm diameter transfers for these guys because the Museum Z-range shields have been designed to be bigger, and flatter than most other manufacturers hoplite shields, specifically to take LBMS transfers more easily. I have a suspicion this might even have been something I actually suggested to Dave at Museum when he posted some WiP shots of the sculpts on Facebook... but that may just be me making stuff up to make myself feel more important!

The hoplites feet have really well-cast sandals - these have no more complex paint job that flesh paint with a diluted coat of army painter wash to create the detail in the sandals.

Likewise this guy is just wash over matt flash

Here they are next to some Chariot Miniatures and Essex hoplites. Apart from making my 20 year old attempts at painting shields look suddenly pathetic you can clearly see the difference in shield sizes, and in figure height  - I suspect this is enough to make these Museum guys a little difficult to mix with other manufacturers for most wargamers.

The Museum guys "might" be on slightly taller basing, but probably only 1mm, as they are on 2mm MDF with no magnabase, whereas the other older chaps are on hardback envelope card + magnabase

This is a shot of the Museum guys with some Xyston - I think these are Theban - Hoplites. A better fit, but the shields are still noticably bigger

Here they go toe to toe

And with Xyston Paphlagonians - a relatively new figure for Xyston I think?  These seem a better match.

And a set of two bases.

The shields are big enough that I have managed to base these in 7's, using afront rank of 4 and then 3 behind for an ADLG Heavy Infantry base - fitting two ranks of 4 might well have been a bit of a crush.

There's still plenty of tidying up of these to do, and I also need to decide if I base them with sandy-coloured wood filler or use the sand + woodstain + drybrush technique that my newer Biblical armies now are mounted with.

Once they are done they'll appear here again!   

The Seleucids in Beery ADLG Doubles Action at Burton 2020

Burton upon Trent, that double-barrelled city of beer barrels recently played host to a 24-team  ADLG Doubles tournament, which was an opportunity to use a recycled army list and a refurbished Seleucid army (with Maccabean allies) in 4 Classical era battles.

The rather unusual points total of 325 in force at BADCON 2020 saw the Successors take on Romans, Palmyrans, Vandals and Sassanids in 4 reports only briefly interrupted for discursive coverage of various beers, yet more pastry-covered meat products deplyed at lunchtimes, a hearty curry and some cockney rhyming slang.

Read on for these 4 full-flavoured and decidedly hoppy battle reports, and raise a toast to the King of Beers!

This is not the Pasty you were looking for.. Gepids in ADLG action at PAW 2020

For the first set of battle reports from events held in the roaring 20's the Gepid army assembles in glorious 28mm and then travels down the A30 all the way to the edge of Cornwall in order to assault the pasty-crust foothills and mountains of success at the 2020 PAW competition in Plymouth.

Will this complex and clever army of maniacally charging one-dimensional horse warriors manage to discover the meaty taste of success, or will they find that they have they bitten off more stewed vegetables of indeterminate provenance than they are able to chew?

One game against Trimverate Roman, two battles against the Seleucids and a final round playing the Sassanian Empire will show the answer in these  4 full-scale West Country reports.

May the Pasty be With You!

1/300th US Moderns on eBay

The seemingly interminable modern 1/300th recycling/refurbishing project grinds on, this installment being a rather low-tech announcement of the sale of about half of the US armour collection which I've been working through.

They are on eBay now via this link

The set is suitable for Team Yankee (assuming you're playing in a proper scale for moderns!), Cold War Commander, Oil Wars, Modern Spearhead or other similar division/company/batallion level Modern or ultra-modern rules.

The models are all (I believe) Heroics & Ros, and are painted in a rather fetching Gulf War era MERDC 4-colour cammo scheme.

The set includes:

• 16 M1's
• 17 M60A3's 
• 2 M901 ITV TOW
• 27 LAV with 25mm turret
• 10 LAV with 90mm turret
• 1 LAV ITV TOW 
• 1 LAV Command
• 10 LTVP/AAV 
• 6 M2 Bradley 
• 6 Jeeps with TOW 
• 4 Hummers
• 1 M577 command
• 2 Chapparall AA missile
• 1 DIVADS M113-mounted 25mm AA 
• 1 Apache helos
• 2 Cobra helos  

Both helos come with plastic rotor disks - the disks are fairly old and have gone rather grimy and opaque but hey, they are still rotor disks and they're a little hard to find these days.

This lot would set you back around £80 in unpainted lead from Heroics and Ros if you wanted to buy them today (tanks are 75p, other vehicles are 65p each and helos are £3-£3.50 each according to their website), but these guys are good to go right now straight out of the packet - or with a quick wash with something from Army Painter and perhaps a drag over with a drybrush they'll really "pop" even more!

The models are packed and ready to be despatched promptly on receipt of payment. Postage is charged at Royal Mail small parcels cost, no markup for 'packaging' or the like.

10% of the sale fee goes to SSAFA the Forces charity as well.

Heres the link again to the listing 

2020 US Team Tournament ADLG lists published

One the the benefits of being list checker for the USTT is that I get to see all of the lists submitted by players - and here they are, as they have now also been added to the ADLG Wiki:

Folorn Hope

• Sierich 48 Etruscan : 25 Units 
• Shirey 108 Alan : 24 units
• Sikorski 187 Later Crusader : 23 Units
• Kelley 235 Burgundian Ordonnance : 19 Units

Midwest Muppets

• Jeff Herzog 19 Oman & Gulf States : 29 Units
• Richard Woolford 115 African Vandal : 25 Units
• Steve Roper 262 Siamese : 24 Units
• Al Ohtonen 235 Burgundian Ordonnance : 19 Units

Local Villany

• Paul Woolerton 17 Ancient Bedouin : 23 Units
• Jeff Robertson 107 Kushan : 22 Units
• Jeff Wiltrout 216 Jurchen Chin : 20 Units
• Mark Bumala  221 Medieval Scandinavia : 19 Units

Beltway Bandits

• Hazelwood 37 Spring Chinese : 22 Units
• McCampbell 121 Tamil Indian : 24 Units
• Zorick 184 Komenan Byzantine : 22 Units 
• Crotteau 243 Serbian Empire : 22 Units

French Connection

• Al Kaplan 23 Ancient Hebrew : 22 Units
• Nicolas Begue : 55 Carthaginian : 24 Units
• Tom Hazlett : 101 Romano British 25 Units
• Phil Gardocki : 235 Burgundian Ordonnance : 20 Units

Noodlers

• Hilton McManus 54  Early Cartho : 23 Units
• Steve Payne 79 Classical Indian: 24 Units
• Walt Burgoyne 121 Tamil Indian : 26
• Chris Johnston 227 Medieval German : 24 Units

Orphans

• Mark Cribbs - 64 Achaemenid Persian : 22 Units
• David Boor - 43 Ptolemaic Egyptian : 22 Units
• Dennis Shorthouse - 245 Late Byzantine : 24 Units
• Robert Nedwich - 224 Condottieri : 21 Units

Chuckleheads

• Bill Hawkes 8 Neo-Babylonian : 24 Units
• Mark  Kennedy 46 Graeco-Bactrian : 21 Units
• Kevin Swanson 172 Norman : 23 Units
• Walt Leach 238 Medieval Hungarian : 20 Units

A handful of 10mm French Old Guard

I've dropped a few photos of these chaps on Twitter already, but realised that they hadn't yet appeared here as well.

These are Pendraken French in Greatcoats & Bearskins, with only flock and flags to add to finish them off.

The bases are 40mm x 20mm

Here are some earlier WiP shots as well

Building Renovation Project

As part of the "desert modern" restoration project I've slowly been working through recently I came into possession of a large number of 1/300th scale buildings as well as the aforementioned hundreds of tanks and vehicles - in fact, far too many to use sensibly.

A number of these buildings have now been donated to the CLWC storage cupboard for club use, and the remainder I decided to mount onto hardboard to create a series of easily portable and deplyable towns and hamlets for CWC, copying the European buildings I already own (which are much nicer as they were pro-painted and made by Timecast).

In gluing the buildings to each small baseboard I managed (just about) to leave enough space on most of the edges to fit in a handful of my AFV's - all of which are based on 20mm wide and 30-40mm deep bases.

This allows a number of tanks to be placed in each town able to shoot out, but also makes it impossible to deploy a line of tanks in the cover of the BUA in that terrible 'wheel to wheel' style seen far too often on armour-based games.

Or, put another way, anyone using these towns is now forced to be sensible in how they put their AFVs on table !

 The ground is my usual builders sand, stained with woodstain and then drybrushed - given I also did the AFV bases this way they are of course a near-perfect match.

 My final sort-of clever idea here was to cut the bases for the town / village elements out of a single sheet of A4 hardboard, which means that they all now fit perfectly in an A4 Really Useful storage box when they are not in use... as this picture shows.

A Weekend in Provence! The Assyrians Go To France

No ADLG events since the 1/72nd scale whupping for my Vikings at The BIG Abona Festival back in June... by November I was starting to go stir-crazy (and not in a painting sort of way!).

Browsing the UK calendar had failed to cough up any events which coincided with a free weekend, but on the French part of the ADLG forum I spotted one event on a very specific weekend in November, and a last-minute plan suddenly fell into place... Avignon!

Air Miles subsidized the international logistics, Avis loyalty points chipped in with a gallic roller-skate-sized hire car and a list I'd already used saw a very small but relatively freshly painted Assyrian army packed into the world's smallest tin for a hand-luggage-only travel plan involving the smallest rucksack in my collection.

5 games later and there French meta has been well and truly tested to wine, beer, cheese and obscure local spirits type destruction in 5 games of mixed success for the Lions of Assyria.

Read all about the highs, the lows, the food and the drink in these 5 stunning match reports from sur le pont d'Avignon as Madaxeman.com goes all del Boy Trotter in trying to mangle the French language on the way to victory (and defeat).

The Assyrians take on Galatians, Carthaginians, Ugarits, Kushans and finally Alexander The Great in these 5 reports which come complete with an accompanying Podcast available in both Podbean Audio and Youtube Video formats.  

And, most importantly, see if I get away with deploying my French language skills as well !