15mm Welsh Army Completed

The recent completion of Viking allies means the Welsh army is now complete. I thought therefore I'd assemble them together as a group and take a few pictures:

The entire army took just over three months and totals 505 figures excluding the 78 Vikings, comprised of 36 horses and 469 foot and medium and heavy cavalry:

The core of the base army are the warband figures but the South Welsh option allows these to be substituted in favour of superior bow, which is what first attracted me to the army:

They have actually had their first game against some Feudal English which ended up being quite a balanced affair with the Welsh prevailing. Unfortunately I again forgot to take any photos:

I have included the Vikings allies here although I have since decided to commence work on their own army as a separate project:

All the figures are from Forged in Battle with shield transfers by Little Big Men Studios:

Next up however I am planning to complete the three English Civil War armies I have had on hold. I have essentially finished nearly all of the foot and artillery but still have twenty-five or so regiments of Royalist, Parliamentarian and Scottish Covenanter cavalry to complete. I'm hoping to get through them all before Christmas, by which time I'm sure I'll be keen to get stuck into some Vikings.

Dark Ages Vikings 15mm

The Welsh army list allows up to twenty elements of Viking allies which are classified as blade. A useful addition to stiffen the resolve of the Welsh fast warband and bow:

The figures are again Forged in Battle and are lovely sculpts with lots of variety. I was originally planning on doing the full twenty elements of four figures each, using seventy-eight Vikings from the three packs I had ordered with two spare Welshmen to complete the required complement of eighty. However I enjoyed painting these so much I have decided to go the whole way and order the rest of a full Viking army, so completed the first nineteen elements using only Vikings:

These are Viking Bondi figures, the Bondi being farmers and settlers. Given the Welsh Viking allies are from Ireland I thought these would be best to use:

The shields are a mixture of Little Big Men studio transfers, while the quartered shields have simply been hand-painted:

Some quite dynamic poses in among this lot:

That is the Welsh army now finished. The rest of the Vikings are currently en route so it might be a few months before I get back to them. In the meantime the plan is to get cracking on some English Civil War cavalry regiments so I can finally complete the three armies for that project.

15mm Welsh Cavalry and Light Infantry

The last couple of weeks saw the completion of twelve elements of Welsh cavalry including two command elements:

This is a mixture of heavy cavalry, seen here in the front rank, which can also double as 'knights' as per the Northern Welsh option in the DBMM army lists:

The lighter or ordinary cavalry are arranged here in the second rank:

These included some quite characterful figures with a fair bit of variety:

I again used Little Big Man Studio decals on those figures carrying shields:

The only minor quibble is that some of the figures sit awkwardly on their mounts, an issue I have found before with the otherwise excellent Forged in Battle figures. This therefore requires a bit of manipulation to get them to sit straight and with enough of a contact point for the glue:

I also completed fifteen elements of auxiliary troops and a dozen elements of light skirmish infantry:

The Welsh light infantry is classified as inferior. This usually means they aren't carrying shields so I primarily used those sculpted without to represent skirmishers, albeit with a couple carrying shields mixed in for variety:

The remainder have been based as auxiliary infantry:

This is all the actual Welsh figures for the army now finished. All that remains is to complete another twenty elements or eighty figures of Viking allies to complete the army.

15mm Welsh Warband

The next major tranche of my early medieval Welsh project was to complete sixty elements of fast warband which, as they are based the same, will also double as the Northern Welsh fast pike option:

The figures are again Forged in Battle. If I'm totally honest these are not my favourite of their figures as there was a bit of flash to tidy up, but once done and painted up I think they are more than passable:

As with most in the Forged in Battle range the packs contain a variety of poses which always helps to keep the motivation going:

I have again stuck to mainly neutral colours with lots of greens, browns and greys:

I was originally going to keep the shields neutral as well, but in the end decided they needed a bit of a lift so purchased some Little Big Man Studios transfers to add a bit of interest. They don't make any for Forged in Battle Welsh so I took a chance on some Carolingian transfers which, because they were made for the FiB Carolingian figures, weren't a perfect fit and required a fair bit of trimming and/or painting to blend them in:

The other thing I have noticed is that LBMS shields used to come ready-punched with the central area for the steel shield boss removed. I never realised this but I believe that Stephen Hales, the talented designer, used to manually punch the holes himself. 

Since the collaboration with Victrix, who now distribute his range, they have decided to distribute them unpunched. No matter as I ended up purchasing a set of plier hole punches and it was quite fun, although I am still finding small sticky dots that I have inadvertently deposited around the house:

These figures took me a lot longer than I had originally planned, mainly because I headed off to New Zealand for five days in late June and also because I had to commit a week to grandfather duties. Nevertheless, this does mean another 180 figures (well, 182 actually as I have two spares I am planning to use elsewhere) toward the project and I feel like I am now on the home straight. Next up, some light and auxiliary Welsh infantry.

15mm Daylami Army Completed

There is a fair bit of overlap between the DBMM Ghaznavid and Daylami army lists so I decided to purchase another half dozen or so packs of Forged in Battle Daylami foot and archers to field a Daylami army in its own right:

The Daylami were from the mountainous areas in northern Iran and emerged as a dynasty in the 900's until they succumbed to the Seljuk Turks in the 11th Century. Initially resisting the Arab conquest of Iran, they came to progressively adopt Islam. 

The core DBMM army list itself is quite simple with only three main types of infantry, being bow, auxiliary troops with spears and axes, and skirmishers. This is why I thought I'd present the army in one post rather than a series of posts of essentially the same thing as I worked my way through the project:

The Daylami infantry are described as having painted or leather-covered shields and wielding two pointed spears and battle axes. Unfortunately none of the two-pointed spears or axes are represented in the Forged in Battle Daylami foot, but they look sufficiently tribal enough to do the job:

One interesting variation is the option to field up to six elements of Indian 'fast blade' mercenaries which may be useful against some opponents (I did eight plus an element of skirmishers to use up all the figures in the pack):

This is the fourth army completed in 2025 and I'm quite pleased I managed to finish it this side of Christmas. All up it is comprised of 316 infantry and command figures and 6 horses:

They are off for their first outing this morning against some Carolingian Franks. I'm not overly hopeful as the Carolingians are a knight-based army and in DBMM all they have to do is score higher on a D6 (after adding and deducting factors) to 'quick kill' the Daylami infantry, whereas the Daylami need to double the knights' score to kill them. I do plan to annoy my opponents however with constant chants of 'Daylami Army, Daylami Army', styled after the 'Barmy Army' English cricket supporters who are following the English cricket team on their current Ashes tour of Australia.

Next up, an Arab Conquest army which will complete my Arab spring, or summer as it is now.

Ghaznavid Army Completed

After having completed the Ghaznavids a couple of weeks ago I thought it time to take a few pictures of the assembled army:

As DBMM armies go, it packs quite a punch. Even though it is ostensibly cavalry-based, the limited infantry options are quite effective and the ability to field up to eight elephants can be very handy, albeit expensive:

Some of these figures, such as the horse archers, Daylami infantry and four elements of  allied Arab cavalry will find their way into other armies now that I have decided to press on with Daylami dynasty and Arab Conquest projects:

This is my first complete Forged in Battle army. I have done a few of their lovely buildings in the past and various camp and baggage figures, but never a whole army. They have a great range and the figures are well-proportioned with a nice amount of detail:

A couple of minor quibbles in that some of the mounted figures don't have a large contact point to affix them to horses and the sculpts require a little but of cleanup, although nothing too onerous:

The army consists of 283 foot and cavalry figures, 110 horses and eight elephants, making 401 figures completed in total, and took just over two months:

They have already lost their first outing against some Nikephorean Byzantines, primarily due to an appalling run of bad dice throwing rather than anything I would have done differently. When you field a line of six elephants against skutatoi and essentially all you have to do is beat them on a D6 to kill them, but fail to do any damage for two rounds of combat, you know it's not going to be your day. Hopefully that means I have got all the bad luck for them out of the way in a single game though.

I'm nearly halfway through the Daylami so will probably save any posts on them until they are completed. In the meantime I'll try to post a quick AAR of a recent Napoleonic battle, if I can remember what actually happened.