The "placed" lists from Beachhead 2025's ADLG events

Having just gotten back from plating ADLG at Beachhead (where I somehow ended up 2nd in the 28mm pool with 3 wins and 2 defeats - go figure!), I have managed to quickly upload the "top 3" lists from the 15mm and 28mm competitions to the ADLG Wiki on this site.

They are:

15mm

• Classical Indian
• Sahelian Empire
• Seljuk Turk

28mm

• Burmese
• Early Successor 
• Seleucid

There will be some reports - eventually - of my 5 games too, but here's a few tasters to get you started...

Alicante & Cartagena - the Podcast, and The Videos

The first Madaxeman podcast of the year hits the pod-shelves in both audio and video formats as the team discuss the recent expedition to Cartagena and Alicante.

To mark the new year and new start for what is hopefully some more regular podding, this episode is tentatively titled "Episode 1, Series 5" and sees 4 brave podcasting gamers hit the airwaves and chat about their trip to the South of Spain in mid January to take in the Akra Leuka tournament at the upmarket Benidorm that is Alicante.

We also take in the Worlds Largest Collection of Model Tanks, the current state of play with which 15mm metal casting companies are currently closing down, whether "Paella" is actually just "Rice" with a different postcode, if a War Wagon collapses in the forest can a Swiss Pikeman hear it fall, if anyone has ever seen a bigger chorizo nugget, whether we are all now far too old to understand this 3D printing malarkey, and if double-carbs is the missing link between Glasgow and the entire Iberian peninsula.

The guests on this podcast are Dave "From The Podcast", Dave "Ming the Marxist" and Mark "The FWC Man", all of whom you can actually see on this YouTube version of the Podcast.

The lists we all used in Alicante can be found on the Madaxeman ADLG Wiki.

• Marks Hungarians
• Tim & Daves Swiss
• Daves French Ordonnance  
• My video of the Cartagena Military Museum

Grab a Toblerone and head to Farnborough!

 Yes, after a somewhat lengthy delay the 5 battle reports from the L'Art de la Guerre competition at Warfare 2024 have finally made it to these pages, allowing you to see the Swiss army in all its glory!

In a series of 5 consecutive High Medieval battles the Gnome of Zurich leads his cheese-eating, cowbell-donging merry band of men with (long pointy) sticks into action against the Scottish Schiltrons, the Reconquering Medieval Spanish, the pecunious mercenary Free Companies, the even more monetarily-focused Condottieri, and finally the highly efficient Medieval Germans.

  

In each battle the highly complex and over-engineered Swiss plan unfolds in full Alpine Cinemascope, accompanied by ferocious yodelling and a faint whiff of burnt fondue

All battles come complete with speech bubbles, bizarre captions, and a series of FACTS to educate you about the lesser-known aspects of the Swiss Pikemen of the Medieval era! 

  

Pull up a Toblerone, log out of your secret bank account and take aim at the apple-on-the-head delights of these 5 full Madaxeman battle reports featuring a 15mm medieval Swiss army in all its technicolour glory! 

A Festive Bonus - a dozen Gladiators!

 Yes, the interminable ADLG 28mm Republican Roman army project has now hit a Christmas milestone, with one of the novelty items in the army list hitting the interweb in the shape of these dozen Gladiators.

They are all from the Crusader Minis range, which I think do a very good job of staying stylistically in keeping with the mostly-Foundry Legionaries I've posted previously, but at a much lower price point of £7 for 4 instead of £14 for 6! 

They were done surprisingly quickly, with the non-metallics being mostly Contrast paints - however on these figures the non-metallic parts are rather smaller than the metal-clad bits!

I also did almost all of the shield patterns myself, the exception being the chap at the back who uses a spare Crusader Roman Cavalry transfer from LBMS - unsurprisingly the shield was an exact size match for the CRusader cavalry shields ! 

The flesh is my now-standard layering of white base, Darkoath Flesh contrast then Vallejo Dark Flesh real paint, whereas all the matallics are black undeercoat and a drybrush of metallic.

  

I was particularly pleased with how this laurel wreath shield came out - it's a white base coat, GW Contrast Blood Angels Red (which does leave a bit more texture on the shield than a straight normal paint coat woudl do), then the laurel was initially picked out as a series of white blob over which I then painted GW Contrast Mantis Warrior Green. 

 

Very chuffed with the musculature of the guy front left as you look at this base of figures. The casting really helped show where to paint, and the Darkoath Flesh layer then gives you even clearer guidance as well.

The yellow on their loincloths is Yanden Yellow Contrast. 

The blue shield pattern is hand painted too (OK, this is a bit half-hearted compared to transfers, but...), but the notable thing about this is that the yellow bits are painted in a single layer straight onto (wider) black lines, using the new Warlord Games Fanatic paints - Demonic Yellow in this case. 

This is the first yellow paint I think I've ever owned that had enough coverage to give this density of colour on top of black, straight out of the dropper bottle - highly recommended.

The same technique and paint was used on this red shield too. 

Talassar Blue is the loincloth colour here.

And, here are the set, ready to accompany the Roman army into battle, and you to the dinner table for some turkey and stuffing!

And here's an AI-generated video of the guys being animated and aggressive!

 

The Legions are here!

 The almost-final element of my 28mm L'Art de la Guerre Republican/Triumverate Roman project is the biggest and most meaty - 100 Legionaries (or Hastati and Principes in old money I guess?).

The figures are almost all from the classic Foundry ranges, mainly as they are just such great figures that still stand the test of time even when when put up against all of the newer plastic ranges out there. 

They do however also stand the test of being expensive, and even though I do keep reminding myself that there is no point in saving a few quid buying sub-par figures it was still a challenge to click "buy" on the Foundry shopping cart after stacking up more than a dozen or so packs of Foundry infantry!

Luckily though, Mark Fry was selling a huge unpainted set of Foundry Roman figures at the end of last year, so that's how I convinced myself to bite the bullet and pick up enough infantry figures (as well as a set of mounted Great Commanders) to make up the meat (and two veg) of a Roman army. 

Painting up 100 figures is quite a challenge, and even more so once you add in the LBMS shield transfer application process x 100 ... so I've documented it all here with LOTS of photos of the finished and WiP figures along the way. 

There are lots more photos now on the website, along with some details of the painting process, links to the figures used and also to the LBMS shields on their site too. 

Taking Germans to Germany - whatever next?!

 A few weeks back a brave band of CLWC gamers hopped in a car and headed across Europe to take part in the ADLG German Team Tourament in Braubach, on the banks of the mighty Rhine.

On our journey we encountered many strange sights....

..including a trip to the museum in Mons in Belgium...

...some heavyweight tank action at Bastogne barracks...

..a bfrief history of medieval torture in Trier ...

...which was also the capital of the Western Roman Empire for a while...

..before finally engaging in 5 games of ADLG using a Medieval German army ...

..with what admittedly was mixed success... 

..under the expert leadership of the Kaiser Gnome ...

..before heading home via a rain-soaked, beer-soaked 800 year old 4 month long drinking festival!

For a full set of military tourism, gastronomic and liquid intake excess, musical weirdness, the Gome Kaiser trading insults with Hannibal, and the occasional spot of reportage of 15mm scale Medieval wargaming head on over to the Battle & Tourism reports now ! 

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!