Madaxeman's Wargames Blog

28mm Victrix Numidian Infantry

With a mostly-Foundry Republican/Camillan Roman army at the head of the painting queue right now I've already done the Velites and next up I have made a start on, erm, not the actual "Romans" but instead a small Numidian allied force made up from Victrix figures.

This is the Allied contingent's Commander on a 40mm round base. I used two of the crew from the Victrix elephant set (more of that later..), drilling and pinning a leg each to the base (as these crew don't have puddle bases) and adding arms from the infantry sprues.

All of these figures were done with a white undercoat, Warlord Holy White "Contrast" paints on the clothing then layered with actual Vallejo white on top of that.

These are the actual infantrymen - the skin tone is done with a couple of layers of Contrast Darkoath Flesh, with some having an extra layer of ArmyPainter Dark Tone wash on top.

The round shields all have LBMS transfers of animal skins, whereas the scutum-type shields are hand painted (as you can no doubt see), partly to save money and partly because I felt the LBMS scutum ones were actually a bit too intense in design and colour.

One thing to check with the Victrix / LBMS shields and transfers is that the round shields seemingly come in 3 different (OK, slightly different) sizes, and so it probably makes sense to keep the smaller shields for the cavalrymen and any Light Foot javelin skirmishers.

The three types of round shield are very, very similar in size so if you don't realise they are different sizes it's easy to only discover this when they are glued and basecoat painted ready to take the transfers!

I kept a fairly dull dusty pallete for these, mixing up some tan and beige colour for the shields in particular on my wet pallette and doing blending and shadows on the edges of the shields with a think coat of Contrast Aggaros Dunes or other brownish colours.

As usual, a bit of drybrushing really picks out the hair

I did start to wonder if the Holy White "new formula" Speedpaint was still bleeding a little into the white paint I layered on top (as this wasa big issue with the initial batch) but if it is, it's actually just about perfect for creating more subtle layering than a flat grey would have been.

The aforementioned Light Foot skirmishers, with possibly overly large shields.

Again using the wet pallette to do some mixing of various browns and tans I think managed to do a fairly credible job of blending in the edges of the LBMS transfers up to to, and in some cases just around the actual edges of the shields.

This is a bit of a faff, but is really worth the effort IMO as you are paying good money for a great product from LBMS, but if you leave it so you can see the edges of the design and the plastic film on the shield it's sort of all wasted IMO

And, from "ground level", here are the guys ready to hurl javelins or attack with swords!

More to come soon!

First posted on 12 October 2024 | 10:06 am

Devizes 2024 - the Battle Reports !

In a truly surprising development, 4 "traditional format" read-along battle reports are now available for anyone who wishes to follow the varied exploits of a deeply smelly and unwashed Ilkhanid Mongol army in stunning hyper-colour and (mostly) 28mm plastic, as they take on the Samurai, the Ghaznavids, the Burmese and finally the Mongols of Timur the Lame down in the heart of the West Country at Attack! 2024's ADLG competition.

Thrill as the Armenian-supported Ilkhanids send waves of fragrant dancing cavalry, eager unwashed knights and reluctant yet deeply sweaty spearmen out to fight a variety of almost equally colourful foes, including Mighty Shrew Elephants dressed in patchwork duvets ...

..bare-chested Burmese jungle dwelling tribesmen who can wiggle all of their toes independently, and...

.. the "I can't believe it's not Seleucid" Elephant Corps of Tamerland the Great and his horde of partly undead warriors and cannon fodder.

Yes, this is a possibly welcome (YVMV) return to the old-school of battle report blogging, with rubbish captions, a probably unhealthy focus on the Mongol's poor personal hygenine, ridiculously OTT descriptive sentence structures, and the musings of both the Ilkhanid Khan and (of course) Nasty Hannibal himself to reconsider all of the action at the end of each game.

These battle reports are accompanied by the "Melksham, Don't Mind if I do!" edition of the Madaxeman (Video) Podcast.

First posted on 4 October 2024 | 9:05 pm

Ten Kingdoms 3D printed Sung Chinese

In my ongoing dabbling with 3D printed figures the latest test batch is a sample set of cavalry and a few infantry from Ten Kingdoms, as produced under license in the UK by eBay seller Micks Bits.

These chaps are - as printed - slightly large for 15mm, but Mick seems to have found a very good quality resin, robust but with just enough flex not to be as snap-liable as some of the earlier 3D prints I've tested the waters (or resins..) with in the past.

They are really, really crisp figures, seemingly with more detail emerging the more time you spend trying to paint them properly (!) - another sign that 3D printing even for small scale miniatures continues to come on in leaps and bounds.

The cavalry even come with pre-printed 3D shields (only one design I think) which you can ink wash and add a bit of paint to and come up with a classic Chinese dragon-face thingy fairly easily.

There is a hard-to-pin-down difference between these CAD-designed sculpts and "normal" sculptor-carved figures, which is perhaps best articulated as these being somehow "cleaner" - but this range at least seems to have managed to get in quite a bit of the artistic elements of "character", with even facial expressions being visibly different on the individual figures.

Here are the archer and crossbowman stood next to some Lurkio metal castings I bought and painted up at the same time.

At tabletop distances they are not noticably different in height, but the 3D prints are more well-fed and the difference in amount and sharpness of detail is very noticable.

I'm working through a fairly major pile of "undercoat these figures outside before the weather turns" at the moment, so quite when I will get around to turning this sample-sized initial purchase into a full army is anyone's guess, but the more time I spend looking at these guys the more convinced I am that I will end up with a Song / Ming / Khitan army using Ten Kingdoms sculpts (designs?) at some point in the near future,.

First posted on 23 September 2024 | 9:55 pm

2024 Kegworth Codgers Midweek Challenge: Runners & Riders

We now have a near-full list of Runers & Riders for the upcoming Kegworth Codgers Midweek Challenge ADLG competition, with a rather astounding 32 players finding time from their busy retirement and part-time work schedules to attend plus - I believe - one chap who was so desparate not to miss out on a couple of days in an unbranded Premier Inn-equivalent motel just off the M1 that he's booked 2 days holiday to play too.

The event is themed for Kegworth's great transport links and proximity to the Fosse Way, inspiring a Roman Roads theme of "armies valid in the period when the Romans were building roads across the Britain, 43-407AD" and that has resulted in a pretty decent spread of options, with 21 different lists represented including 7 Roman armies and a further 7 hailing from outside the Roman sphere of influence.

In a week and a bit therefore the mighty halls of the Kegworth Hotel & Conference Centre will echo to the sounds of warfare, as the battle is joined to see who is the Codger of the Year 2024.

First posted on 22 September 2024 | 4:10 pm

Future Islands ?

Having a strong Guernsey connection has made me rather enamoured of Martello Towers, and so when I saw that Brigade Models did Black Seas-sized Martello Towers it was inevitable I would have to buy some.

And here they are in all their teeny tiny glory!

The islands are irregular MDF bases I picked up at the Attack! show from Products for Wargamers, and will soon be providing challenging obstacles for my two navies to try and avoid running aground on!

First posted on 13 September 2024 | 1:54 pm

28mm Velites

I've got a Foundry early Roman army in the lead pile at the moment, but in the interests of getting rid of some left over sprues of the mostly-Victrix Hellenistics I decided to repurpose some of the Victrix skirmishers as Velites - as after all, it's just some dudes with a javelin in a skirt, right?

And here they are - the vanguard of a 28mm Roman army!

I have a suspicion these shields are from some Dark Age viking types that have languished in the plastic bits box for a while. They may stay transfer-free as well.