Pirates!

My Pirate (well, Buccaneer) army is gradually taking shape - keep up with the progress on my Madaxeman.com facebook page, as I add photos to a gallery of "work in progress" Pirates...

Britcon 2013

Full details are now on the BHGS Website for Britcon 2013, and for those of you who want to to just go ahead and book your place you can do here:

I'm on the organising team and we've listened to feedback from last year's survey where many players told us how unwelcome Britcon's two late night games can sometimes be, and so for 2013 there will be an option to drop Friday or Saturday night's game and just play 5 games in the larger gaming periods. This also means that each of the "traditional" 6-game main periods will now be decided by counting player's best 5 scores over the weekend.

What Else To Look Out For in 2013?

• New Periods - including a 10+ game "Epic Saga" competition for the runaway success that is the Saga ruleset, as well as the debut's of two further 28mm rulesets, "War and Conquest" (supported by the author, Rob Broom) and WW2 skirmish game "Bolt Action" (supported by Warlord Games - TBC)
• Prices Frozen - we know there is a recession out there, so through careful negotiation with the venue there will be no increase in entry fees in 2013.
• Accommodation still optional - we've also negotiated some great rates at UMIST for a variety of standards of rooms, starting as low as £33.50 for Bed and Breakfast - all still in stumbling distance of the venue and bar as usual.

15mm Napoleonic Auction pages

Following up on the Supplier Directory I've now added two sets of pages with listings from "live" eBay Auctions of 15mm Napoleonic troops - covering the UK and US versions of eBay.

Both sets of pages cover all the Napoleonic troops currently listed, as well as separate pages for the "Big 5" of France, Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia.

The UK pages can be reached through this link, and the US pages are online here.

Looking for 15mm Napoleonics?

I've just finished pulling together a new Manufacturers Directory, covering the Napoleonic period, and the completed page in all its glory is now up and running on this website via this link.

So, if you are looking for 15mm Napoleonic wargaming figures to use for FoG:N, Lasalle, Shako, Piquet, To the Sound of the Guns, Grand Armee, Volley and Bayonet, Empires and Eagles, General de Brigade, L'Empereur, Napoleonic Principles of War, Black Powder or any other Napoleonic ruleset you've come to the right place, as my new 15mm Napoleonic Manufacturers Directory page has information about all of the ranges carried by ALL the 15mm Napoleonic suppliers.

Each manufacturers individual listing has details of the nationalities they make, taken from the list of nations explicitly mentioned on their websites - these include: French, British, Prussian, Russian, Austrian, Spanish, Polish (including Grand Duchy of Warsaw), Bavarian, other minor German states (Saxony & Rhine Confederation, Wurttenburg, Hannovarian, Hessian, Saxon, etc) Italian/Neapolitan, Dutch/Belgian, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, and Turks. Many also have generic equipment and dead and wounded ranges too.

For each supplier there is also an indication of whether they are making "15mm" 15mm figures or "18mm" 15mm figures, how they package and sell the figures (singles, packs of 8 etc), details on how you can order from them and a link to their site.

There is also a set of new Auction Pages pulling live auction listings from UK eBay for 15mm French, British, Prussian, Russian and Austrian troops if you don't want to paint your own!

I'm not personally an expert on Napoleonic gaming or indeed the figures so I had some assistance from some of our club members who are - but if there are oddities in the way I have classified and categorized each manufacturers range, please let me know and I can correct them and update the page.

The page is live and online here

Who's been visiting Madaxeman.com?

Not sure if this is of interest to anyone other than me, but just as an experiment here are some extracts from the Google Analytics traffic reports for this website over the past month (7th Jan-6th Feb).

All of the images are clickable, and get big enough to actually see once you click them...

This shows the mix of different browsers Google has detected - unsurprisingly IE is still top, which means that a good percentage of visitors to the site don't see curved corners on the coloured comments boxes that litter the match reports that you would see in a proper compliant browser like Chrome! Quite a few mobile devices being used to view the site too though...

Here are the stats for operating system - again Windows wins (Wargamers are geeks, so we don't buy as many Mac's...?) , but a good sprinkling of mobile devices as well

Where is everybody from? Well, UK, USA and then Australia... Italy and NZ get in there too. All classic Wargaming countries.. 

What's the first page everyone lands on? The main front page (index.php) is not so closely followed by the FoGAM wiki - probably because the Wiki picks up a lot of hits from Google searches, as will the Ambush Alley and 15mm Ancients supplier listing pages. The two match reports have both had direct links posted on various forums over the past month, hence their high placing in this month's figures.

The "Bounce rate" in the last column indicates times when only one page is clicked before the visitor leaves the site. This stat always hovers around 40% or more, which isn't actually that bad for a content site apparently, and there are various technical Google-related reasons why it is at this level - google it if you are that interested! 

These are the most popular pages over the past month - no surprise that the front page (index.php) is - as usual - top of the list, but the 15mm Ancient, 15mm Renaissance and Modern 20mm Suppliers indexes all rank very highly (take note if your are a manufacturer!), and the AM Wiki is still incredibly popular too. The FoG Index is a bit of a hangover from before the Wiki was set up, but it generates a lot of traffic from Google searches so I have left it on the site as a sort of gateway that appears to be easy to find. 

The Godendag match report hasn't yet had enough time to make it into the top 10, but the earlier report from Oxford has been there for three weeks so is at No.6 in this ranking, and near the bottom is one of the many pages to list eBay auctions - which is great, as eBay pays me a small commission for any sales that get made after people click through to eBay from something they see on this site. 

This shows screen resolution - again some stats about mobile devices creep in at the end.

Finally, this shows sites that provide a direct link to Madaxeman.com. The two variants of the Blogger site are both the Madaxeman.com Blogger page - which looks exactly like the main site but is in the Blogger network, which many people use for their Wargaming news. 

TMP and Slitherine are the two big traffic sources - again mostly from match reports and other content I post up there, but occasionally when someone else posts a link to Madaxeman.com without me suggesting it  (which is really great - when it happens!).

Not sure if this is interesting or not really, but feel free to leave a comment on either the Madaxeman.com Facebook page, or the Blogger site to ask any questions or suggest anything I'm missing.  

Field of Glory Renaissance Battle Reports From Godendag 2013

After only 2 weeks it's four more match reports !

The C17 Louis XIV French take to the field in four Field of Glory Renaissance Battle Reports From Godendag 2013

See how Louis' boys take on the Austrians, Swedes, Ottomans and Anglo-Dutch in 4 epic battles with some of the wildest swings of fortune ever recorded on this site !

Click here for the reports 

LEGO The Hobbit 79002: Attack of the Wargs: Amazon.co.uk: Toys & Games

Lego Minifigures for LoTR wargaming anyone...?

Lego seem to be on a roll and are releasing ever-more wargaming-friendly sets of figures right now - apparently you can even buy  Urak-Hai army packs - ideal for use with GW's  War of the Ring ruleset I guess?

But the big question must be, Is this the ultimate end-point of the "Will plastic miniatures ever replace metal?" debate?