28mm Lombards in action

The much-trailed Gothic/Germanic/Viking/Barbarian army that has been on the painting table for the last year got a near-full outing tonight against some old-school Hinchcliffe Byzantines.

Playing 25mm L'Art de la Guerre, my 200AP Lombard list was:

• 5 Elite & 1 Ordinary Impetuous HC, Competent General 
• 6 Saxon Impetuous HF Swordsmen, 4 LF Bw, 1 Slavic MF Swordsman, Brilliant General
• 4 Bowmen & 4 Slav MF Swordsmen, Ordinary General

25 Units

Here are the guys in action...

 Heavy Foot advance in the centre (a part-unfinished general with no flag urging them on...)

Bowmen and Swordsmen in action

The Shieldwall advances

Spare bowmen slide into the centre - semi-fictional Pictish crossbowman figure on one of the bases

Slave hiding in a Plantation

It's a casualty!

The Heavy Foot struggle to hold back the enemy mounted force - red markers = 3 hits

But while they do, the rest of the Saxons close in on the exposed Skoutatoi

The Slavs look set to overrun the Byzantine bowmen too

Old School Hinchliffe Kavalllaroi with impressive banner skills

Everything is engaged on a broad front - the Lombard cavalry are being eroded, but the Lombard foot is deep into the soft infantry underbelly of the smaller Byzantine force

Not much shooting taking place now - everyone is in combat!

The last Byzantine archer unit falls - an inaugural victory for the Lombards!

With a spare 28mm figure or two....

.. from my Gripping Beast Plastic Late Romans still lying around, I decided it was a good time to add a 25mm "Heroic" Commander to my Late Roman 15mm armies... and here's the evidence.

This is the in-box Gripping Beast plastic commander figure, together with a standard bearer on a 40mm round base to act as an L'Art de la Guerre General

The standard bearer looks especially glum today for some reason...

He is clearly somewhat lacking the exuberance of his boss.. but he does have an LBMS transfer for his flag, so it's not all bad.

Usual Army Painter technique with matt varnish to finish and a very light pale drybrush.

Here they are with some Later Roman/Byzantine infantry from Strategia et Tactica

Leading from the back in textbook style

Or from the front, making the standard bearer even more unhappy... and showing off the LBMS transfer on his bosses shield as well.

(unusually, these pictures are all clickable and give you a much bigger version)

Medieval Scots for L'Art de la Guerre - an army in 15mm

Medieval Scots is not a subtle army - lots of poor quality pikemen, but one had successfully caused me a lot of problems in The Worlds in Belgium in 2016 so I had then quite fancied creating one myself.

I had also rebased a lot of Museum Miniatures Medieval pikemen to FoGR basing (40x20mm) a year earlier, cramming more than the regulation number of figures on a base for a mass effect, and this had also inspired me to see what a whole army of them might look like.

So, with a rather interesting order last thing in the day up at Derby last year which surprised the chap at Museum no end, the army started to take shape... and here is the finished result.

See the wee beasties in action with loads more photos here 

These Romans Are Not Far Away!

Posts to Madaxeman.com have been on a bit of a hiatus recently, but that's not to say that wargaming has been taking a back seat.

No, I've actually been painting and basing some serious quantities of figures, including some new 28mm Patrician Romans built on the core of a couple of boxes of the new-ish Gripping Beast plastic figures.

Of course, the project expanded and soon included some Foundry and Footsore metals, and a huge number of Old Glory not-quite-historical hairy barbarian foederate foot and mounted to pad out the army.

But, they are here, and have even had at least one game so far too - where they beat the Huns at L'Art de la Guerre. All of the figures are based for ADLG, on 60mm wide basing with 2 ranks for all of the non-skirmishing infantry. 

The Auxilia in particular who are on 60x60's really suit this basing, with some even being based in a dangerous-looking wedge formation.

There's as a result now a huge page of pictures of these excellent figures for you to browse and enjoy!

25mm Late Romans still underway...

With Christmas just around the corner, here's some not particularly festive WIP shots of my Patrician Romans for ADLG in 25 (8?) mm.

They are a mix of the Gripping Beast plastics, some Old Glory mixed barbarians (that I think might be mostly Scots from a slightly later era, but seem to do OK as generic Gothic foot types) with a few Foundry and Footsore figures sprinkled in to make the variety greater.

 Romans prepare to take on the (as yet un-Army-Paintered) barbarian hordes

12 units of barbarians.... let;s hope the Romans are Elite!

Auxilia, with obligatory LBMS shield transfers

The man holding up the shield is one of the "far too many in the pack" Gripping Beast archers, but converted to hold his shield up to cover his colleague from archery

Some of the "far too many" archers acting as, well, archers. I went away from the textbook red colour scheme to make them more exotic.

Still awaiting Testors Dullcote varnish on this lot

A Degenerate Legionary unit with an old-school standard

I think the officer may be a Footsore Miniatures Romano-British figure

Cloaks at the ready...

Foundry armoured cavalry. Probably able to play as Cataphracts as well at a pinch. I used some spare GB plastic spears as their lances, as they are pretty robust and the Foundry metal ones are far too bendy. They don't yet have Army Painter on them

More LBMS shield transfers....

Warlord Games 'Unleash Hell' General and Dog

Again, needing a coat of Dullcote. His skintone is just a wash with Peat Brown ink.

Hopefully I will find time to put a big dent in getting them all table-ready over the festive break...

Modern Army Uniforms

It's inevitable that somewhere out there in wargaming land there is someone, right now, trying to work out the best possible colour match for their ultra-modern infantry cammo patterns.

Well, fear not as Madaxeman.com has the solution - a series of photos, all taken in quick succession, in identical conditions with even lighting and the same camera, comparing many of the worlds sets of current battledress. 

Covering armies across both Europe and Asia these photos will be invaluable if you actually care about this sort of thing, otherwise they will be at best a bemusing sideshow to your main area of gaming. 

Visit the Uniforms of the World gallery to find out more.  

Gripping Beast Plastic Romans

I'm gradually working my way through 2 boxes of Gripping Beast plastic Roman infantry, and in the process adding some LBMS shield transfers which cost almost as much as the figures.

Here's a unit of armoured Legionaries based for L'Art de la Guerre, with one added Foundry dart-throwing chap sneaking into the front line for added variety.

 

All of the images are clickable for larger pictures.

The Sassanids are Coming!

For what might well be the first time in almost a decade I've just ordered myself a whole "new" 15mm Ancients army - Sassanid Persian - for ADLG.

To be honest I thought for a short while about just getting some Levy Spearmen, as I have plenty of "Arab" cavalry who could do service as Clibanarii at a pinch, as well as generic Light Horse and Light Infantry, and even some elephants who could be re-crewed easily enough... but a combination of really, really wanting some figures in those a-historical lightbulb hats, and the fact you can cook up an ADLG army in far fewer figures than it takes for FoG made me decide that now was the time to add one of the few truly distinctive armies to the collection. Having said that, I'll be recycling my Greek/Makedonian Cataphracts, or possible the Tibetans ones and also some of the other LF with javelins from other armies. Why go too crazy...?

The shopping list I was working to was based on being able to copy the lists currently in the ADLG Wiki (plus a bit more), which came out as about 8 bases of Clibanarii, 3 Elephants, 4 bases of Levy (going with 7 figures to a base so they can be 2 ranks of spears or 1 of Mob),  a couple of bases each of LH with Bows and Javelins and 3 Generals. So, a whole new army in about 20 bases!

After a bit of searching I have decided to go with 3 main manufacturers:

• Legio Heroica for most of the Clibanarii, Generals, and some LH and LF
• Irregular Miniatures for the Levy, the LH with Javelins and some different Generals
• Donnington, for the Elephants

I did also toy with the idea of Lurkio and Eureka as well but that would have involved splitting the order into too many small chunks - and also there is a finite amount I'm prepared to pay for Levy Spearmen figures, which Eureka, nice as they are, somewhat exceeded!

The orders are now all in, and hopefully the figures will be back and ready for priming in early October (after Derby when I pick up the Elephants from Donnington).

Painting progress will be reported here...